The Fifth Day After Christmas

               Snowy Day Bingo1

 

On Fridays I usually let my students complete a Work on Words Activity with a partner or small group. This game would be perfect for that.

I hope you have found something useful during these past five days after Christmas. It’s crazy how much contentment I get from creating and sharing ideas.

I hope all of my followers will continue to be my faithful friends, and if you haven’t considered following me, I hope you’ll think about it.

To all my fellow teachers, Happy New Year! I wish you all a wonderful second half of the school year. I’ll be back after Winter Break to post pictures of our activities for our Arctic Animal Unit…unless I have a great idea to share before then.

Happy New Year

Ms. A

The Fourth Day After Christmas

Coin Match

 

I was thinking about printing this game off on the back side of scrapbook paper, then laminating and cutting out the triangles. The students play it just like concentration, they have to match the coin pic with the money amount.

The Third Day After Christmas

Three in a Row

 

I bought this cute Bunco clip art set at Scrapping Doodles. Usually I have the students roll three dice and write the addition sentence, but this is just some quick practice. They write the totals for each die then write the answer in the blank die. I want my kids to be able to subtize groups of numbers, and I’m thinking about setting a timer to see how many they can get done in 2-3 minutes.

The books below are a few of my math time bibles. I really, really, really want my first graders to understand the math we use on a daily basis, and these two books help me do just that. You should check them out if you get the chance.

                    

 

 

                      

The Second Day After Christmas

Here is an activity in a sack. I’m using this game as a review for my first graders. All you’ll need is a gift bag of your choice. Enjoy!

       
Aye Aye Sort

Five Days After Christmas

 

The First Day After Christmas

Last week my blog crossed the 20,000 page view mark. I know it’s not a lot for you seasoned bloggers out there, but it made me feel good. So as a thank you I’m going to post a new idea for the next five days after Christmas (you get it?) . I wanted to post things you can use for those Winter Units after the break. I hope you enjoy them. Don’t forget to check back tomorrow.

This game is simple and easy to assemble. Just laminate the game boards and cards. Cut out the cards and follow the easy directions. I make several games like these for word families, sight words and math facts. My students love to play it over and over, and its also perfect for those fast finishers. If you want a student to play alone, just omit the word cards, and have them toss a pom pom or chip onto the board, then write a word with that chunk, or write a sentence using a word with the chunk.

           
Winter Ginger Chunk Cover Up 

White Christmas…Kind of

My neighborhood woke up this morning to this sight. It’s the first time in a long time that I’ve seen a white Christmas in Alabama

 

For Teachers Who Use Reading Street

        
Retelling An Egg is An Egg

 

Retelling

I’ve been thinking of fun and innovative ways to get my students involved in retelling(My school system uses Reading Street).

This year my own personal action research involves Comprehension Strategies, and retelling is very important  in comprehending text. So I’m thinking about creating a retelling station with activities students can use during Reading Workshop. This is going to be one of my “Have To” weekly assignments all students would have to complete. The first couple of times I’ll work with my students when they come for small group reading instruction on this task. Then I will release responsibility to them.

Directions for Teachers: Laminate the TV mat and the retelling pictures. Cut out the retelling pictures. Make copies of the retelling sheet. I plan to place the activity in a basket labeled “Weekly “Have To” Comprehension Assignment”.

For teachers who use Reading Street I hope you find these useful. I’ve completed all stories for Unit 3  and will work fast to complete the rest of the units(If you would find this type of activity useful). Please let me know your thoughts, would this activity work in your classroom?

 

     

          
Retelling Ruby in Her Own Time

 

 

        
Retelling Jan's New Home

 

 

        
Retelling Frog and Toad

 

            
Retelling I'm a Caterpillar

 

         
Retelling Where Are My Animal Friends

 

Merry Christmas

Ms. Arnold

Christmas! Christmas! Christmas!

           

          

Where Did Rudolph Go?

Here is a class book we created. I read the story Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer to my students. Then we brainstormed all the places Rudolph could go in Santa’s sleigh the day after Christmas. The students came up with some pretty good places, including New York, Tokyo and Detroit. The skyline of New York is priceless.

Christmas Tree Fact Families

The students pulled an index card with numbers for a fact family. They placed the numbers on the stars and wrote the addition and subtraction problems on the ornaments. The First Grade Parade had this as a math station. After we completed the station in small groups we completed the trees whole group.

                           

                

Click here to download Christmas Tree Fact Families

Christmas Candy Facts

          

Mrs. Carroll from The First Grade Parade posted an idea for this cute math activity. Instead of doubles the students chose a number and wrote two addition and one subtraction sentence, or two subtraction and one addition sentence for their chosen number. I think they turned out great! Thanks Mrs. Carroll!

Candy Cane Grab

The First Grade Parade is one of my favorite first grade blogs. If you haven’t checked it out, you should hurry. She posted a candy grab idea for Halloween. I bought a bunch of mini candy canes from The Dollar Tree and decided to create this Christmas Candy Cane Grab. The kids enjoyed it.
    

                         
                                                         Christmas Candy Cane Grab

Candy Cane Patterns

The students choose a pattern of their candy. This was the biggest hit of math stations. There were a few of my students who wanted to do this each day during stations.

                                                                   

Here is the download to go with the Candy Cane pattern activity.                                  

                        
I made a big candy cane pattern

The Gingerbread Man

We also completed a pie graph form Mrs. Jump's Gingerbread Man Unit. I gave each of the students a gingerbread cookie and we graphed which part of the cookie they bit first.

The Gingerbread Man Song

I made this book to go along with The Gingerbread Man Phonemic Awareness song found in Kim Jordano’s Winter Phonemic Awareness Songs. The student’s used mini Elkonin boxes to write the name of the animal The Gingerbread Man ran away from.

                           
The gingerbread man ran through the town book

Christmas Packages

I love, love, love Kim Jordano’s books. I used the poem “Holiday Packages” to create this kit. It’s filled with ideas  you can use with the poem. We didn’t get a chance to use it this year, but maybe you can save it for your files.

                        
                                                        Holiday Packages Poem Activity Kit

                             

Word Work

Here are two of the Word Work choices the students had this week during Daily Five. In Santa Sentence the students toss a counter onto the game board. They have to write a silly sentence using one of the long e words.
                        
Santa Word Toss

                        
ELF Bingo2 -
I hope everyone can find something to use from this post, and I hope you have just as much fun using them with your students as I did with mine. I also had so much fun making them. Don’t forget I love, love, love comments. So why not leave a few. To all my fellow teachers I hope you all have the Merriest of Christmases and a blessed and happy New Year. Besides enjoying spending time with my fantastic family, I’ll be planning games and activities for Winter.
Have a wonderful weekend!
Yolanda

Winter Already

I am now officially a seller on Teachers Pay Teachers. I have uploaded a few ideas for penguins and winter. There is a sample free download.  I will be working on more during the break (yes, I have no life). Hope you find something you like.
Here is the link to my store. I hope you take a look around.

Ms. Arnold's Store

Three Little Pigs Literature Study Pt.2

This past week we finished up our literature study of Three Three Little Pigs. On Monday the weekly graph was “Which Three Little Pig Story Was Your Favorite Last Week?” Below is a picture of our graph results.

 

Here is our finished story element chart on some of the books we read during our study.

 

How to Trick a Wolf

As a writing/art activity we completed a Cut and Create pig and the students wrote about how they would trick the wolf in the story.

 

          

          

 

Vegetable Soup

During math time the students played Three Little Pigs Vegetable Soup”. They rolled two dice together, added the numbers then collected the ingredient to go into their soup. The winner is the first person to collect all their ingredients. I’ve seen this idea on many blogs and created one to accompany our lit study. I forgot to take pictures of the kids playing it.

           

 

Click here for a copy of Vegetable Soup

 

We had a great time with this study. It really helped the students comprehension. I think I’ll incorporate more literature studies in the coming year, along with the non-fiction units of study I have planned.

Have a great week!

The Three Little Pigs Literature Study

This week we started a literature study of the Three Little Pigs. On Monday we created a Circle Map with all the things we knew about The Three Little Pigs story.

The students were also given a Three Little Pigs Reading Response Log. This is where we are keeping all the information about our literature study. We completed a Story Map after we read each story.

 

      

          

Click here to download Three Little Pigs Literature Response Journal

 

After reading a few stories we created a Noun Chart. The students each choose a noun from the stories to illustrate.

 

Here is the beginning of our Story Map chart. This is where we will place all the story elements of each story we read.

Yesterday our Buzz Book was devoted to describing the Big Bad Wolf. The students later completed their own charts in their Reading Response Journals

 

 

 

At the beginning of next week we will explore variations of The Three Little Pigs. Here are just a few of the books we’ll read.

 

Have a great weekend.