What Have We Been Up To????

Number sense is the name of the game. We have been working really hard to build our number sense. My goal is to get them to know numbers inside and out. Backwards and forwards and up and down. I can see our hard work beginning to pay off.
Here’s a quick ladybug activity we did for the number eight.



Skittles in my mouth. I whipped this up to use with the number nine. We completed these during math stations. They were so excited to rotate to my table to complete this.

 
Click on any of the pictures above to grab your copy.
Writing Workshop
A few weeks out of the month I have guided writing in small groups during writing time. This helps me to  really focus in on particular students, observe their strengths and weaknesses in term of composing text and everybody gets a chance to write with me, which they love. I usually pull a small group to my table each day. Here are a few examples of what we’ve produced during guided writing.
    
Word Work
Last week we worked on short u. We generated short u words together during whole group time, then the students chose four short u words to write on their nuts. They had to write sentences using the words they chose.



Halloween
The students chose Halloween related stickers then wrote a story problem for the number eight.

Literature Extension Activity
We read I Know An Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves. The the students chose their own fall related item the old lady swallowed. The mouth part flips up. If anyone would like a copy let me know and I’ll add it to this post.
    
Hope you have found something you can use, or an idea to spark your creativity! Tomorrow is “Oh my goodness I’ll be so glad when this day is over” day. Are you ready?? Here’s praying that we all make it through unscathed. Have a great rest of the week!

Savannah Baby!!!!!

This post is so not school related, so if you don’t want to read about my fabulous birthday trip to my favorite city in the whole world…please check back tomorrow when I share some school stuff with you.

Let me just say I had a blast! My niece and my aunt tagged along with me and they made the trip so much better! This year I decided that instead of what I usually do for my birthday…read NOTHING, I decided to take a trip to Savannah, GA. I’d been there once before for a Reading Recovery Conference but I didn’t get the chance to really see the city. So this year I planned a little birthday trip. Enjoy.

The view from my hotel. I stayed at the beautiful Westin Resort on Hutchinson Island. The Westin is my favorite place to stay. That Heavenly Bed is…there are just no words.

The beautiful city and it’s breathtaking architecture.

Dinner at the Lady and Sons. Shrimp and Grits….deeee-lish!

 

Savannah Candy Kitchen…enough said.

Here is the pub where Julia Roberts found her husband with another woman in the movie Something to Talk About.

Here is the mansion that Kevin Spacey’s character, from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, lived.

Here is a picture of my birthday surprise..in the hotel’s bathroom of all places.

I promise I’ll be back tomorrow to let you take a peek at what we’ve been up to in the classroom. Have a great Sunday and thanks so much to those of you that left birthday wishes! Thank you so much!

Happy Birthday to Me

Hey! In honor of my birthday I’m throwing a sale. Today through Monday everything in my TpT store is 20% off. Leave some birthday wishes why don’t cha!

Two Quick Freebies: Grammar Correction

Hey! Happy Sunday! Here are two quick math freebies for you! Enjoy.
Gotta go! The Walking Dead is about to start. Does anyone else watch? Have a great week!
These are legal size, so adjust your printer and paper size accordingly.

I noticed my grammar mistake on the fish tank freebie. Download again to get the corrected version.

Pumpkin-A-Paloosa

This week was jam packed with pumpkins, pumpkins and more pumpkins. We had a blast!

First up, Pumpkin Graph. The question of the week was: Have You Ever Carved a Pumpkin? We also completed individual sheets to go with our graph.

    

 

Pumpkin Wonderings. Before we started our study of pumpkins I gave each student a clipboard and three sticky notes. They labeled them: Know, Wonder, and Learned. Before reading I asked them to write what they knew about pumpkins on their first sticky note. Then we created this chart.

After our read alouds the students took their Know sticky note and their Wonder sticky note and completed this sheet. This made a great bulletin board display.

    

Thursday we completed our Diagram of a Pumpkin Activity. Then the students took their Learned stick note to complete the writing part of this activity.

   

If you’re interested click on the picture for your copy.

Then on Friday we ended the week with a trip to the Pumpkin Patch. We had a great time, and we practically had the patch to ourselves. Here are a few pictures.

    

   

    

Before the field trip the students completed this:

After the field trip the students completed this:

Click on either picture for your freebie. Have a great Sunday!!

Making Up for a Busted Week

I love, love this time of year! It’s been a cool 62 degrees, the leaves are turning colors, ahh…Fall.

You know how there are some weeks you can’t get anything done because of interruptions that don’t really have anything to do with actual teaching. That was my headache during the week of September 29. I had all of my wonderful apple activities planned and I was ready to go. But it was not happening. So my Apple Week was delayed just a bit, and here’s what we accomplished this week.

We created apple diagrams and wrote a sentence about our favorite apple.

  

 

We completed two apple graphs. We taste tested red, yellow and green apples and the students graphed the one they liked best.

We added apple seeds. I give credit to those wonderful ladies from Made for First Grade. I love printing activities on 11 by 17 inch paper! I’m in love and my local Staples now knows me by name.

 

 

 

 

    

Last week we talked about animal homes. I read the book A House is A House for Me.

Then the students had to illustrate an animal’s habitat and draw their own house.

           

 

This week we talked about the setting in fictional stories. Our story was The Big Blue Ox. The students completed this activity on Thursday.

   

We completed these in small group. My inspiration came from Leslie over at Life in First Grade. She always has such great ideas to use with Reading Street. She posted about the graphic organizers her students complete for the guided readers in the Reading Street series. So I created my own version for our readers this week.

     

 

Our phonics skill was short o, and we created these short o lollipops. This idea came from First Grade Wow. Her blog is A-Ma-Zing! I think they turned out great!

 

 

 

This week we worked on eight. I created this Promethean board activity to introduce all the ways to make eight. They had to keep some ladybugs on the leaves and take some off the leaf.

Everybody was so quiet, and they were quite excited when their turn came to find a way to make eight.

  

Sorry for the long post, but I had to make up for such a busted previous week. If you hung around to the end, God love you. I hope you found something helpful or something to give you a spark. Have a great Sunday! I’d love to hear from you!