Fun in First Grade

Spelling Supplement and The Lorax

2012-03-04T13:48:00.000-05:00

I was given the opportunity to go to the Special Education Inclusion Conference in Indianapolis on Thursday and Friday. It was a nice break from school and I walked away with numerous ideas for my classroom. Not just ideas for special education students, but ALL learners. I hope to get some of these ideas going in my classroom this week and to be able to share some of the strategies with you later on in the week. For now, I just wanted to recap and show you a spelling supplement that I finally finished.

Last week, we read The Lorax. {Really, who didn't though.} After reading, we made these Lorax's.

You can download the pattern by clicking HERE.

Off to a completely new topic. I have been wanting to put together a spelling supplement for our reading series forever! Well, now that it's March, I finally got around to it. Better late than never, right? Plus, I can use it all next year!

This was created to use with the 1st grade Treasures reading series by Macmillan McGraw-Hill. It includes the spelling list and four other pages to use with the spelling list. I plan on using some of these in the classroom, but mainly for homework. They would also work at a spelling station.
You can click on the picture above to download a free sample to see if it's something you would find useful in your classroom. If you think it's something you could use in your classroom, check it out by clicking below.

This is the spelling test paper that we use each week, just in case you are wanting something new. Just click the picture to download.

Now to catch up on my blogstalking. I'm sure I've missed out on a lot in the last couple of days!

Winner

2012-02-28T17:30:00.000-05:00

Just wanted to hop on here real quick to let you know the winner of our Bossy R Giveaway.

Congrats to commenter #32, Kate!! You left your email, so I will email you!

On another note, don't forget to start stocking up your TpT Cart for the big Leap Day Sale tomorrow! This only comes around once every four years and the next discount code offered from TpT won't be until Teacher's Appreciation Day in May. Here are some things you will find in my store.

Making Character Count

My Five Senses

Language Arts Games

Space Unit

Synonyms & Antonyms

Teach Me Science

Change-a-Word Circles

Saint Patrick's Day Activities

March Poems and Songs

{I also have January and February available.}

Spring Fluency Packet

President's Day Booklet

March Fluency Packet

{I also have September - May available.}

Plus many more! You can click below to go directly to my store.

Leap Day Sale

2012-02-26T10:55:00.000-05:00

Leap Year comes around once every 4 years and to celebrate, Teachers Pay Teachers decided to throw a sale! Who doesn't love a sale? On February 29th, TpT will be offering a 10% discount off every purchase. So, of course, a group of us decided to have an additional 20% off sale!

Click on the picture above for the PDF file with the links to all the blogs and stores.

Here is a direct link to my Teachers Pay Teachers Store if you want to check some things out now.

Start filling your cart right away! I know I am :)

Don't forget to use the promo code L2P9Y at checkout for your extra 10% off on Wednesday!

Happy Shopping!

Fairy Tales

2012-02-25T13:28:00.000-05:00

This week in our reading series, we studied Fairy Tales. We talked a lot about problem and solution and read a ton of fairy tales. At first, my boys weren't very excited about this unit of study. {This made it a little difficult since I have 14 boys and 7 girls. Unlike last year, where I only had 3 boys by the end of the year. There is definitely a different dynamic in the classroom this year in comparison to last. Not bad, just different.} The second day, we read Jack and the Beanstalk and the boys loved this one. After that, they were hooked and couldn't wait to hear more fairy tales.

Anyways, yesterday, I had my students do a fun writing project. I had a different version for the boys and girls. Just click on either picture to download for free.

The girls pretty much said they would use their hair as a ladder or they would yell for a prince to help them. The boys responses definitely varied. Some said they would rescue them or use a ladder. However, one said "I would leave the princess there for a couple of days and then I might go and rescue her." Lol!

Then the boys made themselves into prince's and the girls into Rapunzel.

They loved it and they turned out so cute. You can download the patterns by clicking HERE.

Here are some pictures of our bulletin board. The lighting and picture quality from my phone is horrible. Sorry :(

If you download this, I'd love to hear from you :)

Bossy R Giveaway

2012-02-21T16:30:00.000-05:00

I'm teaming up with Abby over at The Inspired Apple for a Bossy R Giveaway! We will be giving away two of our units to two lucky followers. The winners will win Abby's Learning "ar" with Pirate Mark (which I have to say if fabulous) and my Meet the Bossy R Triplets.

All you have to do is be a follower of both of our blogs and both of our TpT stores. {Click on the links below.}

Then leave ONE comment on my blog and head over and leave ONE comment on Abby's blog. We will each be picking one winner from our comments next Tuesday, February 28th!

President's Day Booklet

2012-02-20T21:48:00.000-05:00

We will be finishing up a couple of President's Day activities tomorrow. {We are not one of those lucky people that have the whole week off. I'm just very thankful that we had Monday off, some didn't even have that.} I made this President's Day Booklet for us to complete tomorrow morning.

It's a 9 page booklet that is very similar to my Veteran's Day booklet.

You can check it out by clicking below.

President's Day and March Poems and Songs

2012-02-17T21:40:00.000-05:00

I love February because there are so many fun topics to teach this month. One of my favorite topics is teaching about President's Day. We have been busy this week learning all about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

After reading some books about Washington, we created this anchor chart together.

The students made these George Washington's and wrote some facts.

These are some of our favorite George Washington books.

Next, we began learning about Abraham Lincoln. We created this anchor chart together.

The students filled out their own sheet. Click on the picture to download.

The students created these hats to write about Abraham Lincoln.

Last year, we made log cabins out of pretzels. We just haven't had time to do this yet. Maybe next week.

These are some of our favorite Abraham Lincoln books.

I also created this President Fact Sort that my students will complete next week. Students will trace Washington and Lincoln's profile onto red and blue paper. They can glue them onto a large white sheet of paper. Next, the students will cut out the facts and glue them onto the correct president.

Click HERE for the sort.

I also wanted to let you know that I have uploaded my March Poems and Songs to TpT and Teachers Notebook.

This packet includes 9 original poems/songs, illustrate the poem pages, and word cards or each poem. You can check it out by clicking below. Have a GREAT weekend!!

FREE Dr. Seuss Mini Unit

2012-02-13T06:31:00.001-05:00

Last year I posted a FREE Dr. Seuss Mini Unit on my blog. I have updated it with better fonts and clipart and have redownloaded it to TpT and Teacher's Notebook.

Click below to download it for FREE!!

If you download it and it's something you find useful, I'd love to hear your feedback.

Spring Fluency Packet Bundle

2012-02-12T10:12:00.003-05:00

Pin It

I received an email yesterday from Katie over at Queen of the 1st Grade Jungle and she gave me the idea to bundle my fluency packets. I LOVED this idea! So, I have bundled my March, April, and May Fluency Packets into one Spring Fluency Packet. I will still be selling them as individual months and also as individual weeks, but this just gives you another option and it allows you to save a little bit of money :) That's always a bonus!

This 3-month packet includes 60 fluency passages and 60 additional language arts activities, for a total of 120 pages. You can check it out by clicking below.

I also have just the March packet available, if you'd like to just purchase the one month.

You can check out the FREE samples of the March packet by clicking HERE from my post last year.

I'm currently working to update my FREE Dr. Seuss Unit that I posted last year as well.

Click here to check out my Horton Hears a Who activity.

Click here for a Yertle the Turtle activity.

Click here for The Sleep Book.
Click here for activities for The Lorax.

And here or There's a Wocket in my Pocket.

All of the above are FREE activities. I'd love to have you pin them while you're there :)

Valentine's Day Writing and some Randomness

2012-02-09T18:09:00.000-05:00

Wow! It's been one of those weeks. There was a full moon this week, right?? Teachers can always tell. Anyways, we have been busy, busy, busy and I just wanted to share some of the things we have been working on.

First, we have been working on some descriptive writing. On Monday, I decorated a heart. We talked about adjectives and we came up with words that described my heart. {Of course, I forgot to take a picture of my chart.} Then on Tuesday, the students were able to decorate their own hearts. They were in heaven. Who isn't though with glitter, markers, foam shapes, and sequins? :)

On Wednesday, we wrote our own adjectives to describe our hearts.

Then, we used these lists to help us with our descriptive writing.

You can download the writing papers by clicking here.

We have also been discussing Dental Health this week. Last year, I posted some ideas for our Dental Health Unit. You can find those here and here.

We made our toothbrushes again today and I think they turned out SO cute!

Now we're gearing up for Valentine's Day. We made our Valentine's Day pockets and they are hanging on everyone's desk. I have always seen so many super cute ideas for Valentine's boxes and bags, but we just don't have the counter space, so I have always had a lot of luck with these.

They're very easy. Just take a piece of 12x18 construction paper, fold up to leave about a 2 inch space for names, staple the sides, and decorate.

I cut out a bunch of hearts from our Ellison machine, but stickers would also be very cute. When they are done, I just tape them to the sides of their desks.

Do you have any other great ideas for holding Valentine's that don't take up counter space? I'd love to hear them.

Froggy's First Kiss & Tri-State Blogging Meet up

2012-02-05T22:13:00.000-05:00

I just finished a fun new Valentine's mini-unit using the book Froggy's First Kiss. Froggy books are just too cute and my students love them. This mini-unit includes a Froggy craft, writing activities, 2 Math centers, a Literacy Center, an activity for making predictions, and an activity for teaching cause and effect.

You can check it out by clicking below.

On another note, Abby from The Inspired Apple and Michelle from Fabulous in First, planned a Tri-State {Indiana, Ohio, & Kentucky} Teaching Blog Meet-up. So, we drove to Cincinnati this weekend to meet at The Cheesecake Factory on Saturday. It was so fun meeting everyone!

Abby, Michelle, and I

Myself, Michelle, Abby, LaNeesha (First Grade Awesomeness), and Amanda (One Extra Degree)

Katie from Queen of the First Grade Jungle and myself

Everyone

Happy Birthday to my Baby Girl and a Sale!

2012-02-02T21:36:00.000-05:00

Today is my baby girl's 2nd birthday!

I cannot believe it's already been 2 years! Time goes by way too fast!!!

To celebrate her 2nd birthday on February 2nd, I'm have a 2 Day Sale at Teachers Pay Teachers and Teachers Notebook.

Head on over to check out my products and enjoy 20% off through this Saturday.

Winner

2012-01-30T20:34:00.000-05:00

Hey everyone! I just wanted to hop on here real quick and let you know the winner of the book and cookie cutter giveaway.

Congratulations to Jess who said, "I follow Maria's blog as well."

Jess, please send me an email at Jodimastics@hotmail.com so I can get you in touch with Maria to claim your prize.

If you'd like to enter another giveaway for a chance to win this book, visit Primary Graffiti's blog by clicking HERE.

Our 100th Day

2012-01-29T10:16:00.000-05:00

We had our 100th day on Thursday. Even though it's always suppose to fall at the end of January, it never does because of snow days. This year, we have had a serious lack of snow and have had no snow days so far. I'm not complaining! I'd much rather not make them up in May and June.

Last year, I shared a couple of 100 Day pages. Here they are again.

Here is a cover page and two other pages that we also do on our 100th day.

You can also download some 100th Day bookmarks by clicking below on the picture.

Here are a couple of pictures from our 100th Day!

This picture made me laugh because he told me that he is so old that he fell asleep standing up :)

These were our fun hats that we made. I had purchased the 100 day crowns from Really Good Stuff. Then I gave each student 10 1x12 strips. They took their fingers and painted 10 dots onto each strip (1o dots x 10 strips = 100 dots).

We also did these fun pictures that I saw on Pencils, Glue, and Tying Shoes.

He used the 100 to make a railroad crossing.

We always do this poem that I had found in The Mailbox magazine a couple years ago.

We had a fun day and the 1st graders LOVED it!!

Winners...and a repost to TpT!!

2012-01-26T20:42:00.000-05:00

First off, something had happened to my Making Character Count unit on Teachers Pay Teachers. No one knows for sure where it went, may have been a glitch on their end or on mine, but anyways, IT'S BACK!! You can click on the pictures below to check it out.

My students had so much fun learning the character traits this week...and, I have to say, they worked really hard trying to demonstrate that they had good character :)

Now, for the winners of my fluency passage giveaway!!

Using the Random Number Generator, here are the winners:

Winner #1 (winning ALL 9 PASSAGES) is...Lisa from Live, Laugh, and Love to Learn.

Winner #2 (winning 8 passages) is...Lindsay Griffith

Winner #3 (winning 7 passages) is ... Lisa Lizak

Winner #4 (winning 6 passages) is ...Brenda ? (You included your email, so I will email you)

Winner #5 (winning 5 passages) is ...Caroline Brantley

Winner #6 (winning 4 passages) is...Mrs. Cupcake

Winner #7 (winning 3 passages) is...Julie McPeak

Winner #8 (winning 2 passages) is...Kristin (Teeny Tiny)

Winner #9 (winning 1 passage) is ...Sparrow Photography

Congratulations everyone!! If you left your email in your comment, I will send you an email. If you do not receive an email from me, please send me one :)

Pink Tiara Cookies for Three

2012-01-26T06:05:00.001-05:00

I'm very excited to be a part of the Pink Tiara Book Blog Tour. Maria Dismondy has a great new book available, Pink Tiara Cookies for Three.

It is a wonderful book to teach about having good character and not leaving others out.

You can visit Maria's website by clicking here where you can watch a short video about the book.

If you'd like to purchase the book, click here.

I have included some free downloads that you can use with the book. Click on the picture below to download.

If you'd like to win your own copy of this book and a tiara cookie cutter, here is your chance. All you have to do is be a follower of my blog and a follower of Maria Dismondy's blog. Leave me a comment letting me know and you'll be entered to win. I will pick a winner on Monday, January 30th!

Making Character Count

2012-01-24T21:53:00.001-05:00

Every month we nominate a student for a Character Trait of the Month. While I think this is a very important program, I know that in the past I hadn't truly included Character Education into my teaching. This year I decided I wanted to really focus on character traits and teach my students what they mean.

I created this unit that I have been completing with my students this week.

This unit includes an original story to introduce good character, an "I Have Good Character" booklet for your students to complete, songs to introduce 5 character traits, certificates, scenarios to lead classroom discussion, and two writing and craft activities.

You can check out this unit by clicking below.

7 Habits of Highly Effective People

2012-01-23T19:35:00.001-05:00

Earlier in the year I had posted about The Leader in Me by Stephen R. Covey. It was one of our professional development books at school and we began integrating the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People into our school. I had created this page that I posted on my blog in September.

I had some requests for the rest of the habits. Well, I finally got around to making them. I'm sorry it took me so long. I have included the rest of the habits along with a different version. Instead of "What does it mean to be..." I also have "How can you be ..." For example:

You can download all 14 pages for FREE by clicking on the picture below.

I'd love to hear from you if you are doing The Leader in Me at your school.

BTW: Make sure to enter for my Fluency Passage Giveaway by Wednesday. Click on the picture below for details.

A Day in My Shoes

2012-01-21T14:34:00.000-05:00

I have been meaning to link up with Adventures of a 6th Grade Teacher for a week now for her A Day in My Shoes Linky Party.

I have had a lot of fun reading other blogger's posts about a day in their shoes. I always think it's interesting to see when their day starts, what their daily schedule is like, and what their after school life is like. So, here it goes. I picked Wednesday, just because it's the middle of the week.

5:20 - My alarm goes off and I immediately hit snooze. I know I shouldn't, but I just cannot possibly drag myself out of bed the first time.

5:30 - I finally get up, grab my contact case and feel my way to the bathroom. {I cannot see a thing without my contacts in.}

5:40 - Shower, blow dry my hair, put on makeup, get dressed, ...

6:20 - Go downstairs, turn on the news and my computer, pack my lunch and fill up my water jug, and make a bowl of cereal.

6:30 - Time for some serious multitasking...eat my bowl of cereal, check my email and blogstalk, all while watching the morning news. {The big problem with this is that when I go upstairs and my husband asks what the weather is going to be like today, I can't even remember. Whoops!}

6:50 - Wash my bowl, turn off the computer, turn on the Keurig and head upstairs to brush my teeth, curl my hair, and put on my jewelry. {My husband is now awake and in the shower.}

7:05 - Wake up my almost 2 year old and my 4 year old. Get them dressed and ready to go.

7:20 - Head back downstairs, make my creamer and coffee {yes, I know I typed creamer first} to take to school, my husband gets our girls all bundled up and we head out.

7:30 - Pull up to daycare and get both girls out to drop off youngest.

7:35 - Get my oldest back into the van to take her to Pre-K with me at my school. {I'm very lucky that my dad can come and pick her up at 11:00 and take her to daycare so she can come to our Preschool program at school. Her teacher is wonderful!}

7:40 - Pull up at school and walk inside. Drop off everything in my room, turn on my computer, put morning work on my student's desks, and then my daughter and I walk to the office to check in. Come back to my room and say "Good morning" to my other 1st grade companions.

8:00 - Send my oldest off to her classroom. My students start coming into the room, give me their SAFARI folders, put up their backpacks, and start their morning work.

8:15 - The tardy bell rings and our principal comes on the intercom for morning announcements, the pledge, and moment of silence.

8:30 - Reading Interventions -All the teachers, teaching assistants, special area teachers, reading teachers, etc. takes a small group of students for reading interventions. We group students based on their reading needs.

9:05 - All the students head back to their regular classrooms. This is when I have all of my students go to the carpet to do calendar. During this time, we complete the calendar, do a money count, counting on the hundreds chart, number sentences, and we read a chapter from either Junie B. Jones or Ready Freddy. We also go over our Weekly Focus on the apple chart.

9:20 - Students go back to their seats and grap their Math Notebooks out of their cubbies on their way back. We use Cara Carroll's Math Notebooks. Love!

9:45 - We go on a restroom break.

10:00 - Now it's time for Science or Social Studies, whichever one we are working on. This week we were learning about Arctic Animals. We did our science experiment about blubber using Crisco, ice water, and baggies. The students recorded their information in their Science Journals.

10:20 - Next, is our Reading Block. During this time we use Treasures from McGraw-Hill. We start out with our whole group lesson. We also do our spelling and grammar for the week during this time. We also do our Writing lesson. This week we are working on "How to" writing lessons.

11:30 - Small Groups and Work Stations

12:00 - Clean up for Lunch.

12:05 - 12:45 - I walk my students down to the cafeteria for lunch. They go out to recess right from lunch so we get 40 minutes duty-free for our own lunch.

12:45 - I pick up my students from the playground and walk them back to the classroom. We complete our fluency passage during this time.

1:05 - Afternoon restroom break. {One of my least favorite parts of the day. I highly dislike restroom breaks anyways, but the afternoon one is so much worse!}

1:15 - Math - We do Everyday Math. Some days I love it, other days I'm not the biggest fan.

1:55 - It's time to clean up the classroom and get our things to go. It's not dismissal yet, but on Wednesday's and Friday's we have a special from 2:00 - 2:40 so we take our backpacks and coats with us. I pass out their SAFARI folders and we fill out our behavior charts.

2:00 - 2:40 - My students are in PE, so I ~~hog~~ use the copy machine to make all of my copies for next week. Then I come back to the my room, organize my copies and continue working on my report cards, which were due on Friday. It's amazing how fast 40 minutes can go!

2:40 - I go and pick up my students from PE and we walk outside for dismissal. I wait until all of my students have either walked home or are out at the car rider line. {We rotate Car Duty and I didn't have it this week, so I head back inside about 2:50.}

3:00 - I check my mailbox, clean up my room and start working on my lesson plans for next week.

3:10 - I grab my bag with my workout clothes and head to the restroom to change. We are allowed to leave at 3:15, which I don't do very often, but this week I did, so I could go workout at 3:30 instead of 4:30.

3:15 - I grab my things to go, so I can head to Crossfit.

This video is not from our gym, but when I had first heard of Crossfit and wanted to Google it, this was the video that I found and I knew I just had to do it! Thank God I did because it has been my serious obsession since September. It is AWESOME!!

3:30 - 4:20 - Crossfit - Our workout today was 20 Wall Balls and 20 Toe to Bars. It's different every day. We climbed ropes on Tuesday and I have a h-u-g-e rope burn on the bottom of my leg.

4:30 - Pick up my girls from daycare and head home.

4:45 - Get the girls in their leotards for gymnastics. My husband gets home about 5:15 and we run out the door to get to gymnastics by 5:30.

5:30 - 6:30 - I do the Parent and Tot class with my youngest, while my oldest has her regular gymnastics class. They love it!

6:45 - We head home and throw a frozen pizza in the oven so we can eat dinner before it gets too late. {Most nights I actually cook dinner, but Wednesday's are so rushed that it's usuall either frozen pizza, Fazoli's, or Qdoba.}

7:30 - Start the whole bedtime routine. Brush teeth, put on pj's, read books, say prayers, set out clothes for tomorrow. We lay the kids down about 8:00.

8:00 - At this point, I take out my contacts, put on my comfy clothes, and head downstairs to watch TV with my hubby, while I blogstalk and work on the computer.

10:00 - Head upstairs for bed.

So, there's a day in my shoes :) Sorry, if you were bored.

Science Journal and Contractions

2012-01-19T20:21:00.000-05:00

In the past, I have been SO focused on reading, writing, and math, that I just kind of let science and social studies get pushed on the back burner, even though I LOVE teaching these. The last couple of years, I have gotten much better at making sure I am incorporating science and social studies into my other areas. Once you start throwing in science activities during reading time, it becomes much easier to fit it all in. This year, after seeing so many great science experiments on Pinterest, I knew we had to start doing them in our classroom. Cara from The First Grade Parade had a great post about science and weekly experiments.

I created this Science Journal Packet to do with my students.

This packet includes a "My Science Journal."

We use this journal to keep track of our experiments. We record each part of the Scientific Method. Here is a sample image of the packet that you can find on TpT and Teachers Notebook.

The entire packet includes the Science Journal, six anchor charts to teach the Scientific Method, and two other pages to teach about scientists. This packet does not include science experiments. I have found most of my ideas for those on Pinterest.

You can check it out by clicking below.

On another note, I'm sure you've seen the idea for Contraction Surgery. I had seen it last year, but was reminded by the wonderful Cara. Her artistic skills are to die for. Just check out her bulletin board.

This picture is from The First Grade Parade Blog

So, anyways, I did this lesson with my students today. We started out by reviewing contractions and filling in this chart.

Not nearly as artistic!

After that, I passed out a recording sheet to each student. I had typed the name of our school at the top and each person's name {example, Dr. John Doe} onto the top. Click on the picture below to download.

Next, I passed out a mask, gloves, bandaids, and a name tag to each student.

They also each got their own set of words. Click HERE to download.

They looked so darn cute and LOVED it!

I definitely recommend this lesson! It was so much fun. My students wanted to wear their masks all day. Some even walked out of the building at the end of the day with them on. They got some strange looks from the 5th graders :)

Fancy Nancy is Back!

2012-01-17T18:04:00.000-05:00

If you've been reading this blog for awhile, you may remember this post about Fancy Nancy. Last year I didn't start reading Fancy Nancy until April, but this year I was determined to start earlier. Well, it's January and I actually did it :) I have kind of changed up my bulletin board a bit.

I read a different Fancy Nancy book every Monday, while I'm dressed up as Fancy Nancy, of course. Here's a flashback from last year for you.

Here is a sign of the times for you though...when I put on all of my Fancy Nancy items last Monday, one of my students asked me if I was dressed up as Lady Gaga! LOL!

Anyways, before reading the book, I write out the Fancy Nancy words on index cards and I introduce the words. After reading the book, I post the words and the book onto the bulletin board. We try to use these words during the week.

Here is the paper that the students fill out after our book. I tell the students to write their words as fancy as they can. Just click on the picture to download.

I still feel like I need to add more to my bulletin board. It needs to be fancier. Any ideas?

Year's Worth of Fluency Passages Giveaway

2012-01-16T09:49:00.000-05:00

I started writing my monthly fluency passages last February. This means that I have officially made a school year's worth of passages. Talk about time consuming, but I love them. I use them every day in my classroom and so do the other first grade teachers in my building. I have been working my tail off this weekend to go through and tidy up all of my passages. I had changed fonts three times during my year of passages and am most pleased with the one I ended up with. {Doodle Basic} For this reason, I went back through and changed all of the others. If you would like all of yours to be consistent, please feel free to go redownload them at TpT. I am still working on redownloading the ones at Teachers Notebook, so give me at least until the end of the day.

Anyways, in order to celebrate the completion of my fluency passages, I wanted to have a huge GIVEAWAY!!

There will be 9 winners!

Winner #1 will win all 9 packets of passages.

Winner #2 will win 8 of their choice.

Winner # 3 will win 7 of their choice.

Winner #4 will get 6.

And so on.

Here's how to enter:

1. Be a follower of my blog and leave a comment saying, "I am a follower of your blog."

2. Follow me at TpT and leave a comment on my blog saying, "I follow you at TpT."

3. For an additional entry, blog about this giveaway and leave a comment letting me know the site where I can find the blog post.

That's it! I will be choosing 9 winners in 9 days, so this contest will end on Wednesday, January 25th at midnight. I will announce the winners the following evening.

Thanks!

Poems and Songs

2012-01-14T18:23:00.000-05:00

I have gotten a couple of emails from people requesting a way for them to use the poems and songs from my monthly Fluency Passages more easily in their Poetry Centers.

I have created a January Poem and Songs Packet

and a February Poems and Songs Packet.

These packets include poems and songs from my monthly fluency packets, but each poem or song takes up an entire page. This is great for passing out to students and having them circle rhyming words, sight words, vocabulary words, etc. After each poem, I have included an "Illustrate the Poem" page as well as word cards for each poem or song. The word cards can be used at a Poetry Center.

The January packet is 82 pages long and includes 10 poems and songs total.

You can check it out at TpT or at Teacher's Notebook by clicking below.

The February packet is 100 pages long and includes 12 poems and songs total.

You can check it out at TpT or at Teacher's Notebook by clicking below.

Love to Joplin

2012-01-13T20:36:00.000-05:00

Mrs. Wills Kindergarten is having a great Linky Party. She received a heartwarming email from a teacher from Joplin. Bloggers are coming together to help her out by sending their teaching units. I just emailed her tons of my units from Teachers Pay Teachers and Teachers Notebook. Click on the picture below to find out more and see how you can help.

Skills Checklist

2012-01-12T18:53:00.000-05:00

As a parent, I love to know what my child is working on in school. Whenever I ask my 4 year old what she did at school today, she always says the same thing, "We played at recess and had snack." I have to say, "Well, I heard that you read Tacky the Penguin today." before she'll remember that she did something else at school. I started thinking that I'm sure my 1st graders aren't telling their parents all the skills they are working on at school either, so I created this skills checklist to send home each week.

I fill it in with 4 new skills for each week. They may be something new that we are working on during the week or it may be something that I think every child in my class should know at this point in the year. I have also put behavior or work study skills in the boxes as well. After filling in the four skills, I type some tips for parents to help their child at the bottom of the form. I print these off and circle how each child is doing at each skill.

Clear as mud, right?!

The picture above is an example of one that I have already typed up the skills and parent tips. Here is a form for you to use. It's free on TpT. I couldn't get it to download correctly on Google Docs.

If you have any questions, feel free to email me.

Currently January

2012-01-09T06:50:00.000-05:00

I'm linking up with Oh Boy 4th Grade again for her Currently January Linky Party.

Head on over and link up and check out her Pencil Sharpener giveaway!

Free Penguin Mini Unit

2012-01-06T18:08:00.000-05:00

The first week back from break is soooooo hard. I am absolutely exhausted!! One thing that makes it easier is that we always do some fun penguin activities the first week back. I have compiled some of them together in this FREE Penguin Mini Unit. It's only about 15 pages, but it includes a writing and craft activity, some chart ideas, and a couple other things. Enjoy and have a great weekend! Just click on the picture to download or you can download it for free at TpT.

Winter Writing

2012-01-04T16:17:00.000-05:00

First off, I cannot thank everyone enough for your outpouring of support and prayers for my brother in law. The latest update is that he is doing as well as expected. He has a long road to recovery, but it's a journey well worth it. Organ donation is such an amazing thing!

In school this week, we have been doing some "Winter themed" writing. We've been lucky with some pretty mild temperatures so far this winter, except for Monday night and Tuesday morning, but it did give us a 2 hour delay Tuesday morning.

On Monday, we made a list of Winter words. My students made their list in their writing journals, but you could also do it on this paper. (Just click to download.)

You could also make a word web with Winter words.

Today, we used our lists to write a winter poem using this paper.

Next, the students drew a winter picture on light blue construction paper. After school, I sprayed the papers with silver spray glitter that I had gotten at Walmart for Halloween. This gave each of the papers a sparkly shine. {I really don't know if this is something that you can find year round, but I would imagine that it would be. Definitely do this when the students are not in the room and outside if possible because it really stinks.}

Then I stapled their winter writing onto their picture.

Here is another option for winter writing using their five senses.

On another note, Fun in First has finally joined the Facebook world. You can "like" this site by clicking on the Facebook Like symbol in the upper right column of this blog or by clicking here.

{All clipart above was purchased from Scrappin Doodles}

A New Heart

2012-01-02T18:18:00.000-05:00

This is not a school related post, but a post that is very dear to my heart. Last year, my brother in law became very ill with a virus that attacked his heart causing him to go into congestive heart failure and shut down his organs. His wife was told that he was not going to make it. This once perfectly healthy 30 year old was going to die and leave his pregnant wife behind. It was devastating. He was Life Lined to Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis where they performed open heart surgery to place an LVAD (Left Ventricular Assist Device) into his chest. Many complications and many months later, he recovered and was placed on the heart transplant list.

TODAY HE GOT THE CALL! My brother in law is getting his new heart tonight! It's very exciting and very nerve racking. Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers, if you would. Thanks so much!!!

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T09:46:00.001-05:00

The first post of the year! I hope everyone had a safe and wonderful New Year's Eve! We had family over, watched the kids play, played games, ate food, and had a great time! Now everyone is still sleeping and the house is quiet, so I thought I'd get on here real quick and post a New Year's poem that I'll do with my students bright and early tomorrow morning.

Just click on the picture to download.

I'll also have them complete this goal sheet.

I'm making these cute pencil flags that I found at Sunny Days in Second Grade for my students tomorrow.

We will also do some activities from Cara's FREE unit at The First Grade Parade.

I'm trying to make that transition back into learning a smooth one on Monday morning and I hope you can too. (Unless, of course, you're like the rest of the country and you don't go back until Tuesday.) Please tell me there are others going back tomorrow?!?!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

New Year's Blogging Bash Giveaway

2011-12-30T09:17:00.000-05:00

New Year's Blogging Bash Giveaway!

Welcome to the New Year's Blogging Bash Giveaway! The contest runs until midnight on Saturday, December 31st! The rules are simple and easy:

One entry for following all of our blogs. Your comment would look like this: "I follow all 13 blogs."
One entry for following all of our TpT stores. Your comment would look like this: "I follow all 13 TpT stores."

One follower will win all 13 PRIZES. The winner will be chosen at random and announced on Monday, January 1, 2012!!!!

Here are the 13 fabulous prizes that you could win!

(For more information on a particular prize, click on its thumbnail picture.)

From Erica Bohrer of Erica Bohrer's First Grade:

Click {here} to follow my blog.

Click {here} to follow my TpT store.

From Melissa Freshwater of Mrs. Freshwater's Class:

Click {here} to follow Melissa's blog.
Click {here} to follow Melissa's TpT store.

From the Lesson Plan SOS Teachers:

Click {here} to follow Lesson Plan SOS's blog.

Click {here} to follow their TpT store.

From Donna Glynn of Welcome to Kinderglynn:

Click {here} to follow Donna's blog.

Click {here} to follow Donna's TpT store.

From Rachelle Smith of What the Teacher Wants:

Click {here} to follow Rachelle's blog.

Click {here} to follow Rachelle's TpT store.

From Jodi Southard of Fun in First:

Click {here} to follow Jodi's blog.

Click {here} to follow Jodi's TpT store.

From Lindsey of The Teacher Wife:

Click {here} to follow Lindsey's blog.

Click {here} to follow Lindsey's TpT store.

From Deanna Jump of Mrs. Jump's Class:

Click {here} to follow Deanna's blog.

Click {here} to follow Deanna's TpT store.

From Anna Brantley of Crazy for First:

Click {here} to follow Anna's blog.
Click {here} to follow Anna's TpT store.

From Alessia Albanese of Mrs. Albanese's Kindergarten:

Click {here} to follow Alessia's blog.
Click {here} to follow Alessia's TpT store.

From Michelle Oakes of Fabulous in First:

Click {here} to follow Michelle's blog.
Click {here} to follow Michelle's TpT store.

From Amanda Nickerson of One Extra Degree:

Click {here} to follow Amanda's blog.
Click {here} to follow Amanda's TpT store.

From Cheryl Saoud of Primary Graffiti:

Click {here} to follow Cheryl's blog.
Click {here} to follow Cheryl's TpT store.

*Best of luck to you. Remember, you get one entry for following all 13 blogs and one entry for following all 13 Teachers Pay Teachers stores. Please, comment below to enter. I also suggest leaving in your comment, an email address where we can contact you.

January Fluency Passages

2011-12-29T11:51:00.001-05:00

My January Fluency Packet is finally done!!

Here are the samples for the month.

Penguins

Click on the picture to download the sample.

Arctic Animals

Good Character

Inventors

The entire packet includes 20 fluency passages written by me. There are a variety of fiction, nonfiction, poems, and songs throughout the entire month. Along with each passage, there are Power Words (vocabulary), comprehension questions, phonics work, and a home connection component. I have also included an additional language arts page to go along with each passage.

You can purchase the entire packet by clicking below.

I also sell each week seperately if there is a particular week that you're interested in.

Linky Parties

2011-12-27T15:55:00.000-05:00

You know how those last few weeks before Christmas Break, you start thinking of all the things you are going to get done in your time off, and then the time comes, and somehow you don't get ANY of it done. Well, that's what has happened to me at least. I completely put off my January Fluency Passages to work on during break, but now there's less than a week left, and they are still not done!!! Sorry :( I will be working on them this week and hope to have them posted towards the end of the week. I have to say though that this last week has been wonderful!! Christmas is so magical through the eyes of a 4 year old and an almost 2 year old. I wish every morning could be Christmas morning!

Since I starting Blog Stalking again this morning, I found two fun Linky Parties that I wanted to participate in. The first one is over at Fern Smith's Blog.

Fern is asking everyone to share their top three blog posts from 2011. This is always so interesting to go through stats to see which posts are the most popular. For a long time, my Dr. Seuss activities were the most popular, by far. However, three new posts have officially taken the top spots.

1. "What's Your Favorite Back to School Activity?" with 21,459 views. This was a Linky Party as well, so I'm sure that is why there are so many views.

2. "Helping Parents Help Their Children" with 16,330 views.

2. "Teaching Reading with Small Groups" with 14,734 views.

Another interesting Linky Party going on is over at A Teeny Tiny Teacher and Miss Kindergarten.

This one has 11 different categories for you to discuss.

11. Favorite movie you watched:

This one is hard for me because I'm not really a movie watcher. I pretty much watch Disney movies with my daughters. Other than that though, I did go and watch Breaking Dawn with my friends from my school.

We all went to the 10:00 pm movie on the last day of school before Thanksgiving Break. We all put our kids to bed and left them with the hubbies, while we went to the late movie. We all needed caffeine to stay away so late, but it was a fun time :)

10. Favorite TV series:

I have always been a huge Grey's Anatomy fan.

One of my new favorite shows is Person of Interest. It is awesome and my husband loves it too.

9. Favorite restaurant:

Tokyo Japanese Grill, Olive Garden, or Applebees

8. Favorite new thing you tried:

Selling on Teachers Pay Teachers and Teachers Notebook was something new from this year. One of the best decisions I ever made.

7. Favorite gift you got:

A Citizens watch from my husband.

I love it!!! He said he has had his eye on this watch for about 3 years and he finally got it for me this year.

6. Favorite thing you pinned:

I don't think I could ever decide. I love Pinterest. You can follow me here.

5. Favorite blog post:

This one is a hard one. We will go with my post from August titled 1st and 2nd Day of School. In this post, I shared my lesson plans and activities that I would be doing during the 1st and 2nd day of school this year. I know I love to get a glimpse into other teacher's classrooms during those first few days and I was trying to do this for others.

4. Best accomplishment:

I actually just had one of my ideas published in The Mailbox for the February/March 2012 1st grade edition. I thought that was pretty cool.

3. Favorite picture:

My friend from school, our PE teacher actually, is an amazing photographer. She took some pictures of my girls this fall and this is one of my favorites. I love the sisterly love here. I know it won't last forever, but I will always have this as a reminder once they hit their teenage years.

2. Favorite memory:

I don't think I can narrow it down to one this year. I was lucky enough to have a new niece and a new nephew born this year, we went on a great family vacation to Washington DC and to the mountains in Virginia, Christmas this year was AWESOME, and many more.

1. Goal for 2012:

I want to take advantage of every second with my family. My girls are growing up so fast and I know in the blink of an eye, they will be grown up.

Currently December

2011-12-19T15:34:00.000-05:00

I'm linking up with Oh Boy Fourth Grade for her Currently December Linky Party.

I'm sure someone has mentioned A Teeny Tiny Teacher already, so technically I am breaking the rules of included someone that has not been used already. Sorry :( But, she just cracks me up!

Check her out, if you haven't already.

Christmas Wrap Up

2011-12-17T22:06:00.000-05:00

Talk about blogging withdraw. I have been without a computer at home for about a week, which may or may not have involved a 1 year old and a glass of water. All is fine now, so this post may be a little random because I have been making lists of things to include :)
First, I wanted to share a New Year's activity. First, we read the book, Squirrel's New Years Resolution.

After discussing New Year's resolutions, we created a list of some of our own. Each student wrote their own resolution.

Click here to download the writing page.

Then I passed out the numbers 2012, students glued them onto their papers and decorated them with crayons, glitter, and sequins.

This week, we also made our parent gifts. For the past couple of years, I had been making handprint calendars. Every year, I told myself, "I am not doing these next year" because they are so time consuming and then when students move away or move in, it was a nightmare trying to catch everyone up. This year, I finally chose a different project.

I'm sure you have seen these ornaments before.

They turned out SO cute and they were SO easy compared to the calendars. Here are some recommendations for making these. Use acrylic paint. I was the idiot that used tempera paint. After painting 21 little hands, I let the ornaments dry only to come back and see all of the paint had flaked off.

Tip number 2, if you can find blue plastic ornaments, do this with these instead of glass. The glass ones are shiny and pretty, but so fragile. One of the students broke hers before she made it out of the building.

I had the students decorate paper bags to place these in.

Sorry. The picture is sideways.

I really wanted to make these cute gift bags that I found on Pinterest, but we just ran out of time.

I also found this idea from Mrs. Lee's Kindergarten.

I decided to have my students measure their own strips since we just began working with rulers and inches. I gave each student five 12 inch strips. They had to measure a 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, and 2 inch strip for their tree.

Then they decorated the trees.

The last thing I wanted to share is another Pinterest idea.

This idea was originally created as a gift to give a neighbor, but I loved this idea to give my grade level companions. I just attached a gift tag that said, "Ho! Ho! Ho! From the Ding Dong next door! Merry Christmas!"

So, now it's officially Christmas Break and I have 2 weeks off. I am very excited to spend tons of time with my family and relax.

Sparkly E

2011-12-08T21:26:00.001-05:00

I found the idea for a "magic e" last year on Mrs. Wheeler's blog. When I saw this wand, I knew I had to make one. When I searched through my cabinet for a cut out letter, I found a sparkly one and taped it to a ruler. I decided to call my E, "sparkly E" and I love it!

I tell the students that when Sparkly E shows up, the vowel in the word is SO excited because the E is just so beautiful and shiny that the vowel just has to introduce itself. "Hi, it's so nice to meet you. My name is A." I make a huge deal about this and really elaborate the story. The kids really get into it.

We practice using the Sparkly E as a whole group.

Next, we made our own Sparkly E's so we could practice changing CVC words to CVCe words on our dry erase boards.

This is just a 3x5 index card cut in half and glued on a popsicle stick.

We also had fun learning this song that I made up about Sparkly E.

Click on the picture to download

If this is something you think you'd use in your classroom, leave me some love with a comment :)

Writing, a Sale, and a Fun Website

2011-12-03T09:37:00.000-05:00

Wow...what a title! However, I wanted to share three things with you. First, here is a fun Christmas writing activity that we just completed yesterday. First, we reviewed statements, questions, and exclamations. I passed out the planning page {click here to download} and we began to write our first statement about Christmas. I discussed adjectives and how they make our sentences more interesting. Students tried to think of an adjective to add to their sentence, then they revised their first sentence. We did this one more time with a statement and then once with a question and once with an exclamation. We tried to squeeze this into one day, but I will definitely spread this out next year.

The following day, I passed out a 12x12 piece of white construction paper and two 12x2 strips of red or green.

After the students glued on their strips, they used their planning page to write their two statements about Christmas in the first two boxes, their question in the third and their exclamation in the fourth. I let them decorate their "ribbon" and place a bow in the middle.

Very simple and can be modified in numerous ways.

On to topic #2 from the title. I'm having a 20% off sale at Teacher's Notebook.

Every item in my Teacher's Notebook store will be 20% off until next Saturday. If you haven't had a chance to pick up my December Fluency Packet or my Christmas Activity Packet, this may be a good time.

And topic #3... an awesome website for your own children.

http://www.portablenorthpole.tv/home

This website allows your child to get a special message from Santa. You upload their picture and put in some personalized things (favorite color, toy they want, favorite food, ...) and Santa gives them a message. We did this last year with our oldest, who was three at the time. Her eyes were as big as saucers and she would just shake her head and talk back to Santa. It looks SO real!!!! Amazing!

Hope you have a great and productive weekend.

Advent Calendar for Home

2011-12-01T21:07:00.000-05:00

This really isn't a "school related" post, so feel free to ignore this if that's what you're looking for :)

I wanted to share this advent calendar that I made last year after being inspired by the blog Brown Paper Packages.

Last year when I saw this, I knew I HAD to make it. Holy cow. Talk about time consuming, but it was so worth it because my oldest daughter had a blast last year with this and we started it again this evening.

This is a piece of sheet metal that I placed inside of a frame that I removed the glass from. I bought 25 small paper mache' boxes, spray painted them black and decorated the tops with scrapbook paper {modpodged on}, number stickers, and scrapbook embellishments. Finally, I hotglued ribbon around the edges of each box to finish it off. Then I hotglued magnets onto the back of each box. Like I said, time consuming and a bit pricey, but it will last for years, so it's totally worth it.

Side view

Close up of boxes

Starting December 1st, my kids open a box for each day of December. Inside of the boxes, we have an activity for the day. Some days have a small gift, like red and green fingernail polish, chapstick, a Christmas bracelet, etc., but most days just have a family activity.

Here is the list of activities that I used last year.

Click HERE to download the complete list

You can head on over to Brown Paper Packages for the complete tutorial.

I'd love to hear if you have any fun activities that you use for your advent calendar.

SALE STARTS TODAY!!!

2011-11-28T04:00:00.001-05:00

Don't Forget! The Cyber Monday Sale starts today!

Head on over to TpT and check out my items as well as the following sellers that are offering an additional 20% along with the 10% that TpT is offering. (Make sure to enter CMS28 at checkout - only valid today.) Every seller below will have their items at 20% off through Dec. 2nd.

Scrappin Doodles Black Friday Special

2011-11-26T15:23:00.000-05:00

I just thought that some of you might be interested in the Scrappin Doodles Black Friday special that is going on until midnight tonight.

Click on the picture below to head on over and check it out.

Happy clipart shopping!

Cyber Monday Sale

2011-11-26T06:00:00.001-05:00

Are you ready for an awesome

Cyber Monday sale on TpT?!?! Many bloggers, including myself, are offering 20% off the products in our stores on top of the TpT 10% discount (use promo code CMS28 at checkout-valid only on Cyber Monday)! You can also enjoy 20% off our products from November 29th- December 1st!!

Happy Shopping to our Sweet Customers!!!

Here are some of the things you will find in my store:

And, much more!

December Fluency Packet

2011-11-22T18:04:00.001-05:00

I just posted my December Fluency Packet on Teacher's Notebook and Teachers Pay Teachers.

There are 4 weeks worth of passages for those of you that may be in school for 4 weeks during December. I will be starting my 1st week on Monday (November 28th). We only have 3 weeks of school until Christmas Break so I will just be picking and choosing 15 of my favorite passages, or I may send 5 home as "Holiday Homework" over the 2 week break.

The themes for this packet are Winter, Gingerbread, December Holidays (includes Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Christmas, and New Year's) and Christmas.

If you aren't allowed to celebrate Christmas at your school or do any Christmas themes, you may want to purchase the first 3 weeks seperately and not buy the Christmas week. I always post the entire packet as well as each individual week to allow for those that are just interested in one particular theme.

Here are the samples for each week: {Just click on each picture to download.}

Winter

Gingerbread

December Holidays

Christmas

You can head on over to check them out.

I am Thankful for...

2011-11-21T06:50:00.006-05:00

I'm linking up with What the Teacher Wants for their I'm Thankful Linky Party.

1. What are you thankful for in your classroom?

I am very thankful for the fact that I teach 1st grade. Our principal did an experiment with us last week where all of the teachers were paired up and had to switch grade levels for the morning. I was sent to 5th grade for this experiment. The students were great and I loved certain aspects of it, but I was very happy to get back to the "Land of the Littles." I also could NOT be more thankful for my team of 1st grade teachers. They are a-ma-zing! We are great friends and I am so blessed to work with both of them!!!!

2. What person are you most thankful for?
Absolutely, without a doubt, my husband and two children! They are the light of my life :)

3. What 3 blogs are you most thankful for?

This one on the other hand is MUCH MORE DIFFICULT! I love, love, love so many blogs that I have a hard time deciding. However, I have to go back to my 3 standby's that I know will always have great ideas.

And, to add another to the list.

She is seriously HILARIOUS!

4. What guilty pleasure are you most thankful for?
Pinterest! Love it and I'm absolutely addicted!

5. What are you most thankful for?

This could go on forever, but I'll keep it short. My family {they are the best}, my job and my co-workers, great friends, and my health!

It's Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas

2011-11-16T22:01:00.001-05:00

Ok, ok, I know, we haven't even made it through Thanksgiving yet, but once it's 12:01 a.m. on Friday, November 25th, it's Christmas season!! Since next week is only a 2 day week for us, I'm already getting some things ready for the following full week, which means... Christmas activities. Wahoo!

I just posted my Christmas Activity Packet on Teacher's Notebook and Teachers Pay Teachers.

This is a 51 page packet that includes a ton of activities to keep your students busy and engaged during those cr-a-zy weeks before Christmas Break. Here is the Table of Contents to give you an idea of what you will find.

I'm really excited about this packet and I know my students will have a blast!

You can head on over to check it out.

Word Lists

2011-11-12T14:18:00.001-05:00

Something new that I started doing this year was to time the students on word lists each week. I created lists of words to go along with our phonics skill for the week. On Monday, I time each student while he/she reads the list. I do this mostly during morning work time, restroom breaks, or when a child finishes something early, but sometimes I have to finish up during small group time. I record their time on their list and send it home for them to practice during the week. I also keep track of each student's time on my class list as well. Then on Friday, I time each student again. They LOVE to see if they can beat their score. Here are what the lists look like:

In the box, I would write somthing like, Jack's time on November 11th was 1 min. 32 sec.

Here is the class list where I keep track of the pre and post times.

You can download these for FREE at either Teachers Pay Teachers or Teachers Notebook.

I'd love to hear if you downloaded these and found them useful :)

Thanksgiving Bulletin Boards

2011-11-08T11:38:00.001-05:00

I just thought that I would share two of my current Thanksgiving bulletin boards.

The first one is a Math bulletin board.

I do not have a pattern for this, I just freehanded them. But, I can tell you the dimensions of the paper. You will need a 5x6 brown, 1x3 red, and 2x2 yellow for the turkey body. I just cut out a bowling pin type shape for the body.

Next, I labeled each brown part with a number (2-22). The students colored a paper plate with a brown crayon and made their turkey body.

After the students make their bodies, pass out 6 feathers (approximately 3x6) to each student. I guided them through ways to make their number. We did each feather one at a time with different directions for each. Each student had one with tally marks, 2 with addition number sentences, one with a subtraction number sentence, one with a picture to show their number, and one with money.

Another bulletin board in my room right now is a turkey body that I had made about 5 years ago using the overhead projector. I put this up every year with feathers that the students write on to show what they are thankful for.

I have done others in the past where students have had to write about how they would cook a turkey. You can find this idea at What the Teacher Wants.

What are some of your favorite Thanksgiving displays?

Veteran's Day

2011-11-03T14:10:00.002-04:00

Veteran's Day is next week, so we've been learning about veterans this week. We make a huge deal about Veteran's Day at our school and I am so thankful for that. My brother is in the Air Force and I could not be more proud of him for his sacrifice to our country. We discussed what a Veteran is and what the military does for our country. Next, we wrote letters to veterans to thank them for their service.

Click to download

Next, we made the soldiers found in Deanna Jump's Veteran's Day Unit.

They loved these! Tomorrow, we will be completing this Veteran's Day Booklet that I created.

It's just a quick 6 page booklet that the students will have fun doing while learning about Veteran's Day and some of the vocabulary words that are associated with Veteran's Day. The booklet contains a word search, a crack the code, a fill in the blank comprehension reading page, and two other pages. I have uploaded this booklet to TpT and I hope to get it uploaded to Teacher's Notebook tonight.

What are some of your favorite Veteran's Day activities?

Christmas Cards from Shutterfly

2011-11-01T18:57:00.000-04:00

Halloween is over and it's officially November. Do you know what that means? Time to start thinking about Christmas cards. Some years, I'm on top of it and others I wait until the last minute and I'm scrambling the week before Christmas to get them out. I'm hoping this year I won't be waiting until the last minute. The good news is that I have already searched through the gazillion options available at Shutterfly. If you have never used Shutterfly, I highly recommend them. I have created and purchased numerous photo books in the past through Shutterfly and I LOVE them. I used to scrapbook, but haven't done it since finding Shutterfly. It's so much easier and much more affordable.

Shutterfly also has tons of other options like calendars and other photo gifts.

After searching through all of the Christmas card options and narrowing it down to close to 25, I still can't decide, but I think I have a few top choices.

I like the modern feeling of this one.

I love the idea of including a sentence about each person. Cute!

I like the bold colors on black.

This one gives me the option of including a lot of pictures.

I still have a little bit of time to decide, but I love them all. I keep my photo Christmas cards up all year long on a card display from Pottery Barn, so I feel like I need to make my Christmas cards great just in case anyone else does this too ;)

Now I just need to break out the camera and go capture some really great shots of my kids!

I did receive a free product from Shutterfly for this post, but I truly love Shutterfly and have had great experiences with them.

Five Little Pumpkins

2011-10-30T13:58:00.001-04:00

If you are needing a last minute Halloween activity for tomorrow, here is something that I did last week. I passed out the poem, "Five Little Pumpkins."

Click to download

We read it a couple of times and I introduced quotation marks. After giving some examples of quotation marks, I passed out each of the quotes from the pumpkins in speech bubbles.

Click to download

I gave each student a 12x18 piece of construction paper and 5 orange squares, about 4x4. The students drew a fence, cut out and decorated their pumpkins, and glued on the speech bubbles to illustrate their poems.

I know that tomorrow will be cr-a-zy with it being Halloween and "Book Character Day" at school!!! It will be an organized chaos kind of day :)

November Fluency Packet

2011-10-29T10:52:00.002-04:00

My November Fluency Passages are completed and uploaded to Teacher's Notebook and Teachers Pay Teachers.

If you are unfamiliar with the Fluency Passages, you can get more information here and see how I use them in my classroom.

Here are the samples for each week.

Fairy Tales

Click on the picture to download

Transportation

Native Americans

Thanksgiving and Veteran's Day

For the Thanksgiving and Veteran's Day week, I have included 3 Thanksgiving passages and 2 Veteran's Day passages. Since Thanksgiving is a short week and we get Veteran's Day off, I combined these two topics.

You can purchase the entire month long packet, or I have uploaded each individual week onto Teacher's Notebook and Teachers Pay Teachers, if there is one particular topic you are interested in.

Clipart from these passages are from ThistleGirl Designs and Scrappin Doodles

Spiders

2011-10-20T16:00:00.001-04:00

Wow. I just cannot seem to find the time to get any posts written lately. I am still working on some follow up things from my last post about Small Group Reading and I hope to have that up eventually ;)

This week, we are discussing spiders. We have read some great books.

Next, we came up with ideas for Spiders can, spiders have, and spiders are.

Click to download

We used these for our writing.

Click to download

After students completed their writing, I painted their hands to make handprint spiders.

We also made an adjective and verb chart, inspired by Cara at The First Grade Parade.

Tomorrow, we will be making some fun spider hats. If I get a chance, I'll try and post a picture.

Teaching Reading with Small Groups

2011-10-08T12:18:00.001-04:00

Quite a few years ago when we became a Reading First school, our Reading Coach talked a lot about flexible grouping during small group reading lessons. It took me a while to really figure out how to make this work in my classroom. I kept wanting to make myself a group during small group time, but this did not allow for flexible grouping {grouping that changes very frequently, even daily if needed, based on your student's needs}. I finally discovered that if I take myself out of the groups I created for Work Stations (centers) then I could pull any students that I wanted over to my small group table.
This was a great change, however, I still had a hard time figuring out which skills each student really needed to work on and I found myself always having the students read and discuss books or reviewing the weekly phonics skills that was taught during whole group instruction.
Anyways, long story short, two years ago I created this binder.

I just changed the cover yesterday to add some cuteness ;)

Inside of this binder, I have sheet protectors with paper inserts of all of the phonemic awareness and phonics goals for my 1st graders.

Sorry. I don't know why it loaded sideways.

I write all of my students names on small Post-It notes and place them on the first page, which is letter names. I start off the year by calling small groups over and making sure that my students know all of their letter names. Once a child knows all the letter names, I move their post it to the next section of phonemic awareness (rhyme and alliteration). I have now created a new small group that I will work on these skills. If a child has mastered rhyme and alliteration, their post it will be moved to the next section (sentence segmenting). You will find that many of your students will move quickly through the phonemic awareness sections, but others will get stuck at one or two. This is why this is so helpful, because now you know what to focus on for these particular students and you also know that those that have moved on, truly have these skills mastered.

These students have mastered all of the phonemic awareness sections and they have moved onto the phonics sections.

This allows me to pull over 4 or 5 students that all need to work on words with short a, for example. Usually during small group time, I will work on a phonemic awareness or phonics skill and then we will do some guided reading or some other type of reading work.
Also, behind each sheet protector with the skill, I have 3 hole punched a two pocket folder that contains materials that I need in order to teach that particular skill.

Another sideways picture

Here are the progression sheets that I used. (These were based off of the 1st grade Treasures Reading Series, so they may not fit your needs.) If you have a different set of phonics skills, email me the progression of your phonics and I can get those made for you.

Click to download

The download also includes recording sheets for letter names and letter sounds. For example:

Reading back through this post, I'm not sure that it was all clear enough. Feel free to ask questions if you have them.

More Bat Activities

2011-10-05T16:01:00.001-04:00

One of my favorite bat activities to do every year is to tell students the number of mosquitoes that one bat can eat in an hour... 600! If that doesn't make you love bats, I don't know what will!! Then I put students into 6 groups, give each group 100 mosquitoes to cut out, and a paper plate. Each group cuts out 100 mosquitoes and glues them to the plate.

This is such a great {and disgusting} visual. You can download 100 mosquitoes by clicking here.

We also talked about the size of bats. The smallest bat is the Bumblebee Bat with a 5 inch wingspan and the largest is the Flying Fox with a 6 foot wingspan. We measured these two lengths and cut yarn to show them.

If you want the signs for these lengths and for the mosquitoes, click here.

Next,we wrote about the things we have learned about bats. We filled out a graphic organizer first, then transfered it to our final draft. Click here for these pages.

I love this one, "Bats are the best thing that ever happened to me." Too cute!

Tomorrow we will be playing a fun game outside that is very similar to Marco Polo. One or two students will be blindfolded {bats} and the other students will be walking around them {mosquitoes.} The bats will call out "Echo" and the mosquitoes will call out "Location." The bats will have to tag the mosquitoes. The kids love this and it really makes that great vocabulary word, echolocation, stick in their little brains.

New Blog - Classroom Freebies

2011-10-04T17:55:00.000-04:00

Give me an F. Give me an R. Give me an E. Give me another E. What's that spell? FREE!!! Who doesn't love freebies?! Well, if you do, there is a great new blog to check out.

This blog was created by Charity Preston of The Organized Classroom. Every post on this blog includes a freebie for you. You can even click on sections that are broken down into PreK-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12. Head on over and check it out!

Bats

2011-10-03T19:58:00.000-04:00

I love teaching my students about bats. I think they are such interesting animals. It's so much fun to discuss the truths and myths about bats. Many of my students start off the week being scared of bats and by the end, they love them and know how important bats are to our ecosystem. Even my 4 year old always says that bats are her friends because they eat bugs ;)

Today, we started off by making a list of things that we wonder about bats.

Then I drew a quick chart on the board saying "Is a bat a bird?" I passed out a small Post-It to each student and had them write either "yes" or "no." Then they went up and placed their answer on the board.

{I thought I took a picture of this chart, but I guess not.} More of my students thought that "Yes" bats were birds. I think it was 13 - 7, so they were very surprised to find out the real answer. We discussed the reasons why bats are not birds.

Next, we read this book.

It's very informative with great pictures. Finally, we returned to our seats to discuss some of the things that we have already learned about bats.

If you would like a sheet for your students to fill out while you complete the group chart, click below.

Here are some more books that we will be reading this week.

Stop back by this week and check out some of the other activities we will doing about bats.

October Fluency Passages

2011-09-27T21:03:00.000-04:00

They're done! I just posted my October Fluency Passages on Teacher's Notebook and Teachers Pay Teachers.

For those of you that are not familiar with my fluency passages, the unit includes 40 original passages, written by me, myself, and I. The passages are a variety of fiction, nonfiction, poems, and songs. Each daily passage includes Power Words (vocabulary), comprehension questions, phonics work, a home connection component and some other type of language activity. Here are the weekly samples:

Pirates

Pumpkins

Spooky Animals

Halloween

If you enjoyed the samples and you'd like to check out the full packet, head on over to

Lesson Planning

2011-09-24T17:45:00.000-04:00

A couple of years ago while I had a student teacher, I organized all of my year's lessons and materials into a huge binder. It took a lot of time, but has saved me a HUGE amount of time since then. Here's how it worked. I print off my lesson plans for the week, three whole punch them and place them in my binder. Behind the lessons, I place a sheet protector with one copy of each thing I will need copied for that week. This way I can just take out my sheet protector and walk it down to the copy room with me.

Here are my lessons:

Here are my materials in a sheet protector located behind my lessons:

One copy of my morning work is there for the week along with one copy of anything else I would need for that week. Here is another example:

You can see that this one also has some examples that I will use during this week.
Now, when I first organized this, I didn't have all of the examples and all of the extras in it. However, as I went through the year and continued adding, my binder looked like this:

Are you kidding me?! This was a monster on my desk. No way was this going to work. So, this year I decided to have a binder for each month instead. Much smaller and manageable. Plus, if I want to take it home, I can. {Unlike that monstrocity above.}

Click on the picture below to download a cover page for each monthly binder.

On another note, I am working like crazy this weekend to finish up my October Fluency Packet and hope to have it posted sometime next week. I've never come down this close to crunch time on these before. I have them all written, it's just a matter of getting them typed up and ready to go. {Excuse time: I started doing Crossfit. If you've never heard of it and you enjoy being challenged when you work out, I would look into it. You can google it or watch some videos on YouTube. It is seriously, hands down, the BEST workout ever! I am absolutely beat when I get home.}

But, seriously, I am working on them and will have them ready for you as soon as possible. Here is what to expect:

Have a great weekend!

Teddy Bear Day

2011-09-18T20:38:00.000-04:00

This Thursday, we had Teddy Bear Day in our classroom. This is my second year doing this and I have loved it both times. I always get a little nervous wondering if some of my "tough" boys will think it's silly and not get into it, but I've been wrong both years. Every one of my students loved it. I told the parents about Teddy Bear Day in my weekly newsletter and then I also sent home a reminder on Wednesday, but I also made sure that I brought some extras to school on Thursday just in case. Here are some Teddy Bear Activities we completed:

-We thought of describing words about our bears. I briefly told them that these were called adjectives, but we didn't go into that too much. We will be learning about adjectives later in the year.

-We predicted how many gummy bears were in a jar and filled out this paper. {Click on the picture to download.}

-We also made graphs using teddy bear cut-outs. I just cut out a ton of teddy bears using our Elison and passed out a handfull to each student.

-We wrote about our bears. {Click on the picture to download.}

-We compared real bears with our teddy bears.

-We read tons of bear themed books while discussing some great vocabulary words. (I went through each book before reading it and wrote down about 4 vocabulary words on index cards. Then, I introduced these words to the students prior to reading the book.) We kept track of them here. {Click on the picture to download.}

-We also completed some anchor charts while reading some of our bear books.

-Then we voted for our favorite book.

I had each of the students leave their bears on their desk when they left for the day. Overnight, the bears moved.

When the students came in Friday morning, they had to find their bears and them fill this out. {Click on the picture of download.}

The students had a great time and it was a lot of fun to break away from our "normal" routine, while still learning.

The End of Molasses Classes

2011-09-17T21:26:00.000-04:00

A couple weeks ago I was asked if I would like to read Ron Clark's new book, The End of Molasses Classes, and of course, my answer was YES! I loved his book The Essential 55 and I was so excited to read his new one.

Let me tell you, I was not disappointed. Ron Clark is an amazing teacher that has opened up the Ron Clark Academy, which I would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to visit! Reading about this amazing school gives you so much hope for the future of education. They absolutely refuse to give up on any child. They set high expectations, while making learning fun and exciting!

One of my favorite messages from this book was, "Give all that you have to your children even though you will often receive nothing in return." This is so true in teaching. Many times teachers may not be appreciated the way they should be, but great teachers will continue to work hard everyday and not expect to get anything in return.

Another message that stuck with me was, "Fake it to make it." We don't always feel like giving 100%, however, our students deserve our best. This means that some days we just have to fake it and put on a smile.

This truly is a great inspirational book and I recommend reading it!

Friday Favorites

2011-09-16T16:03:00.000-04:00

TGIF...and it's time for my Friday Favorites.

Over at Lesson Plan SOS , they had a cute idea for a "Don't Monkey Around. We're serious about learning" bulletin board and writing activity that I just loved.

I took the pictures of my students on the monkey bars today at recess so I can do a similar version to this next week. I'm thinking about doing "Hanging out in 1st Grade" or "Flipping for First Grade." I haven't quite decided yet.

Another great idea I found was at Mrs. I's Class . She has posted these great labels that can be cut out and used at the bottom of student's writing journals so they can double check their work.

I loved this idea!

We had aTeddy Bear Day this week in our classroom and it was ~~chaotic~~ a lot of fun. {I like to call it organized chaos.} The students were SO excited to have a furry friend at school. I will be posting pictures and tons of freebies about our Teddy Bear Day this weekend!

Habitats

2011-09-13T21:09:00.000-04:00

We have been learning about animal habitats this week. We started by reading about the different kinds of habitats from our Science books and creating this chart together on Monday.

Today, I gave each group of 5 students a large piece of white paper and assigned each group a habitat to draw on their papers.

Just getting started

Beginning to add some more details and some animals

Wow! There's a lot going on there :)

Tomorrow, we will be completing this habitat sort. Click on the pictures to download.

September 11th

2011-09-11T14:04:00.000-04:00

I know most of us can remember 10 years ago today like it was yesterday. I was doing my student teaching in a 1st grade classroom when we had a 5th grader come by and tell us that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. The first grade teachers turned on a tv in the pod area and we all took turns during the day watching the days events while going on with our teaching like nothing had happened so we didn't scare any of the little ones. That afternoon, some ~~idiot~~ person had called in a bomb threat to our entire corporation and all of the schools had to be evacuated. It was definitely a day that none of us will every forget.

However, even though it is forever etched in our memories, our own students were not even alive. That is just amazing to think about. Every year I read this book to my class:

It's a great kid friendly book that I use to lead a discussion about September 11th. I tell them how I will always remember where I was and how I felt on that day. I also explain to them that my brother is now in the Air Force because he wanted to help our country after this event. On Monday, I will be sending this home for homework. Just click on the pictures to download.

Did you do anything special to discuss September 11th with your students?

Friday Favorites

2011-09-09T15:15:00.000-04:00

I have not had a whole lot of time for blogging since the start of the school year, but I am bringing Friday Favorites back today. I have used numerous things from the blogging world in the last couple of weeks. My Friday Favorites for this week include the following:

I started using Cara Carroll's Math Notebooks this year from her Calendar Companion and I LOVE them!!! The daily sheet took quite a while during the first 2 weeks, but already, my students are becoming more independent. I know that even the ones that need an extra push will be independent in all of these important skills by the end of the year.

In the front of the Math Notebooks, I have students keep a spiral notebook that we use as our Math Notebook. Each day, I cut out a Math prompt for the students to glue and then solve. I have been using Anna Brantley's Math Journal prompts and they've been great. Sure, I could create my own, but why reinvent the wheel. I'm hoping she will be having some more available for next month ;) Hint, hint, Anna!

I found this FREE idea at Funky First Grade. I have scrambled up someone's name with magnetic letters each day for us to do our Name of the Day. We will finish up next week. It's takes about 5 minutes of the day and it's totally worth it to see that student's face light up when they are the mystery name.

I have tons more ideas to come that I have found in the Blogging World. I will share more next Friday :)

Helping Parents Help Their Children

2011-09-06T21:36:00.001-04:00

I feel that I am very fortunate as a parent to also be a teacher. For the most part, I have a pretty good idea of how to help my child succeed in school. Of course, we will have many bumps in the road, but being a teacher, I at least have a fairly good idea of how to help with school work. Unfortunately, many parents that we come into contact with, do not know how to help their child in school. I was reminded of this again today when I had a conversation with one of the parents of a student in my class.

She was asking what she could do to help her child at home. She told me that she never felt like a good reader in school and no one from her family had ever gone to college, so she wasn't real confident in how to help her child with reading or math. She told me that even though she wasn't good at school, she wanted her child to be smart and make something for herself. Broke my heart! It doesn't matter your race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, EVERY parent wants the best for their child.

We are having a 1st grade parent meeting this Thursday and I will be giving these handouts to my student's parents to give them ideas of how to help their child at home.

Click to download

{Graphics from Thistlegirl Design and Scrappin Doodles}

I'd love to hear any other ways that you help your student's parents help their children.

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Top Ten

2011-09-05T20:30:00.000-04:00

Over Labor Day weekend, I received the Top 10 Award from some fabulous bloggers.

Thank you, thank you, thank you! You must go and check out their blogs.

and

The Corner on Character

Thank you again!

First Grade Expectations in Pictures

2011-09-02T21:41:00.002-04:00

What child doesn't love to see his or her picture? I took advantage of this and used pictures of the students doing exactly what was expected of them to hang in our classroom.

Click to download this page

The ones in my room don't have the smiley faces on them, of course :)

For now, I have these hanging in the front of the room on the white board.

The students have loved seeing their pictures on the board, but I love it even more because I use these as reminders for the students. I just have to say things like, "Remember what the picture looks like" when we're in the hall. This is also great if you take a picture of a student that may have difficulty sitting still and listening. Then you can show it to that student frequently to remind him/her that he/she can do it {and you have proof.} These are also wonderful for Autistic students that need that visual reminder.

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Teaching Blog Expo

2011-09-02T06:51:00.000-04:00

Join TBA on Saturday, September 17th for the first, but not last, Teaching Blog Expo.

Click below for more information.

Dealing with the Difficult Child

2011-08-28T21:41:00.002-04:00

If you've been a teacher for more than a day, you've probably had to deal with a difficult child.

When you're little and dream of becoming a teacher, you never imagine having a behavior problem in your class. However, then comes the real world and you quickly realize that there's no such thing as a "perfect" class. You will always have some type of behavior issues to deal with. I have definitely had my share and some years are worse than others. Here are some tips that I have found to be successful:

1. Focus on the Positive in Your Classroom

I have found that the best way to get students to behave is to make a HUGE deal about the students that are doing the right thing. Using the behavior clip chart has been amazing for this. {Check out the post here.}

A new component to the chart that I have added this year is to put a sticky jewel that I bought at JoAnn Fabric's on a clip when a student has reached purple. Once they earn 5, I wear their clip around my neck attached to a piece of string for the day, then they get to take it home with them. At that point, their name goes on the board under Five Jeweled Behavior, and I include their name in the weekly newsletter. Any student earning this title will get to come to an Eat with the Teacher Celebration at the end of each month. We will order pizza and eat in the classroom together.
Just having a good system that rewards the good behavior in your class can be enough to get many students to step it up. Plus, it's a lot more fun to focus on the positive!

2. Always Make Your First Contact with Parents a Positive One
I never make my first note home or first phone call home about something negative. Even if you have the most challenging student in the world, deal with it until you send home at least one positive letter or make a positive phone call. {Trust me, this can be very difficult to do sometimes.} You can always find something positive to say about each child and this will let the parents know that you care about their prized possession. They will be much more willing to help out with poor behavior if they know that you are not always going to give them bad news.
I love sending home Positive Postcards that I order from Vistaprint.

3. Find Something You Have in Common
Discover what your "behavior problem" child likes and learn about it. If they love sharks, get some shark books and use these as a reward or read them and have a discussion with the child. If the child has a favorite tv show or movie, watch it and talk about it with him/her.
4. Recognize EVERY Little Thing that the Child Does Correctly
For a child that is a behavior issue, you need to take notice of every single thing that they are doing right and make a big deal of it. For example, if "Johnny" is standing correctly in line, make sure you say, "I love how Johnny is standing. Wow Johnny! I am so proud of you!"
It can be a long road for some students, but eventually you will start to see some improvement for a longer period of time. At this point, I usually present the student with a sticker that they can put on their shirt so everyone in the school can recognize their good behavior. {I just write a message on a name tag.}

5. Practice, Practice, Practice
Students need tons and tons of practice and modeling of good behavior. It seems so repetitive sometimes, but it's totally worth it. We have tons of discussions about how we should behave the right way, even when no one is watching. Using our 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, we discuss about being proactive.

Click to download

{Graphics by Scrappin Doodles}

7. Show Them You Love Them
Nothing is more important than showing your students that you love them and truly care for them. Greet your students every day with a smile and a good morning. For those students that need some extra support, make sure you remind them numerous times throughout the day that you are glad they are here. When a "difficult" child comes in late, say something like, "I am so glad you are here today Johnny! I would have missed you so much if you weren't at school today!" Just think...it might be the first nice thing that child has heard today.
I'd love to hear how you deal with behavior issues in your classroom. Link up below. If it's a new post on your blog, please place a link back to Fun In First, so everyone can check out your amazing ideas. Also, be sure to link up your post, not just your blog url or the link will be deleted. Thanks