Showing posts with label First Grade. Show all posts
Showing posts with label First Grade. Show all posts

Friday, August 16, 2013

Back to School Sale

It's that time again...Teachers Pay Teachers is having a sale and so am I!  On August 18 and 19 TPT is offering a 10% off code PLUS I am having 20% off all products over $3.00.  That adds up to 28% off!  Don't forget to use the TPT Promo Code when you check out!


Here's a peek at some of the deals you'll find at my TPT Store:






That's all for now - I'm busy as a bee working in my classroom and I promise pictures will come soon!
Thanks for reading and please consider following my blog or TPT Store.

Thursday, August 8, 2013

Guilty Pleasures

My kids have gone off with Gramma and Papa for a fun-filled 10 days of vacation and spoiling! I'm free to spend countless hours in my classroom organizing to my heart's content without even a speck of guilt about neglecting my own children!  So...what did I do on my first free afternoon?  Laid around on the couch and enjoyed doing NOTHING!  Watched a little tv (ok, a documentary about teaching), surfed the web (pinning teaching-related items), and took a teeny tiny nap (and had a school dream)!  It's that time when I can't get my mind off teaching.  So, I decided to publish a new product on TPT to help you get ready for...

wait for it...

Guided Math!  That's right, I know it's not as flashy as all the back to school classroom decor printables but my CCSS Guided Math Lesson Resources pack was really helpful to me last year and hopefully it will help you!  This particular product is geared for First Grade only; other grade levels coming soon.

Look for future blog posts about how I organize guided math in my first grade classroom!

Thanks for reading and please consider following my blog or TPT Store!
Thanks for reading!  Please consider following my blog or TPT Store!
Thanks for reading and please consider following my blog, TPT store and/or facebook page! - See more at: http://firstgradefriendzee.blogspot.com/#sthash.cuGR8mt4.dpuf
Thanks for reading and please consider following my blog, TPT store and/or facebook page! - See more at: http://firstgradefriendzee.blogspot.com/#sthash.cuGR8mt4.dpuf
Thanks for reading and please consider following my blog, TPT store and/or facebook page! - See more at: http://firstgradefriendzee.blogspot.com/#sthash.cuGR8mt4.dpuf
Thanks for reading and please consider following my blog, TPT store and/or facebook page! - See more at: http://firstgradefriendzee.blogspot.com/#sthash.cuGR8mt4.dpuf
Thanks for reading and please consider following my blog, TPT store and/or facebook page! - See more at: http://firstgradefriendzee.blogspot.com/#sthash.cuGR8mt4.dpuf
Thanks for reading and please consider following my blog, TPT store and/or facebook page! - See more at: http://firstgradefriendzee.blogspot.com/#sthash.cuGR8mt4.dpuf
- See more at: http://firstgradefriendzee.blogspot.com/#sthash.j43xFyOA.dpuf


Friday, August 2, 2013

Back to Reality!

OK OK - time to face the facts.  My beautiful northern Michigan summer is slipping away.  With all the back to school supplies in stores I can't even pick up disgusting sugary cereal and smore fixings for my camping trip without lamenting that my summer is ending help but feel that excited twinge of a new school year and a new beginning.  Yes I have worked a lot this summer...finished my Master's degree (WOO HOO!), done some extra work for the state Department of Education, and worked out a plan for my guided math groups...but I've also spent time on the beach, cleaned my house, sang and screamed my head off for took three girls to see One Direction in Chicago, and enjoyed many many afternoon naps quality downtime with my children.  However, this all adds up to one sorely neglected teaching blog.

Here are some quick pics of my summer beachy days (thanks Louise):


Summer Slacker?  Who not me!


The great thing about a teaching blog is that your followers usually don't give up on that summer slacker "un-follow" you and I know you'll all be here for me.  Yes I had big plans for my blog and TPT this summer - after all, when during the school year do I have this much unscheduled time?  But you know, the old saying "If you want something done, ask a busy person" is true and I'm much busier during the school year.

So I'm hoping that many of you are like me...and in the summer you don't especially want to think about school or read about an over-achiever who has no life a teacher who is probably making millions in TPT sales dedicated teacher who already has her lesson plans for the year done and classroom set up by early July...but now that it's August you are starting to get the bug to eat, breathe, and live teaching!  At least that's MY justification for being a summer slacker!

Back-to-School Beaver Fever


So join me in my Back-to-School (Eager) Beaver Fever and let's get this party started oops, that sounds like a summer slacker talking get ready for a great school year together!

Here's what I've been working on during the past few days:
  • set up my classroom tables
  • created a Butterfly Life Cycle Unit for my Fall monarch butterfly hatching
  • worked on my OWL Book (Organized While Learning) labels
  • purchased some totally unneeded super cute new bins for my library
  • created Volume 2 of my Common Core Choice Books for Independent Writing (AKA Daily 5 Work on Writing)

BTW...There's a FREEBIE in the preview:  3 different farm-related books.  And Volume 1 has a FREEBIE in the preview too:  3 different apple-related books:




And here's some of my to do list for next week:
  • blog post, blog post, blog post
  • change bulletin board paper in my classroom (I'm TERRIBLE at this)
  • laminate, laminate, laminate
  • assemble OWL Books
  • copy, copy, copy
  • decorate my classroom...this e-card says it all:

I think it's a manageable list.  Photos of my classroom to come!  What's on your to do list?

Thanks for reading!  Please consider following my blog or TPT Store!
Thanks for reading and please consider following my blog, TPT store and/or facebook page! - See more at: http://firstgradefriendzee.blogspot.com/#sthash.cuGR8mt4.dpuf
Thanks for reading and please consider following my blog, TPT store and/or facebook page! - See more at: http://firstgradefriendzee.blogspot.com/#sthash.cuGR8mt4.dpuf
Thanks for reading and please consider following my blog, TPT store and/or facebook page! - See more at: http://firstgradefriendzee.blogspot.com/#sthash.cuGR8mt4.dpuf
Thanks for reading and please consider following my blog, TPT store and/or facebook page! - See more at: http://firstgradefriendzee.blogspot.com/#sthash.cuGR8mt4.dpuf
Thanks for reading and please consider following my blog, TPT store and/or facebook page! - See more at: http://firstgradefriendzee.blogspot.com/#sthash.cuGR8mt4.dpuf
Thanks for reading and please consider following my blog, TPT store and/or facebook page! - See more at: http://firstgradefriendzee.blogspot.com/#sthash.cuGR8mt4.dpuf

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Proud Peeps Writing and Craft Activity

Just a quickie post to share something I'm going to do with my kiddos this week - and it's FREE for you!  Thank you to Jennifer Bates of Finally in First for the inspiration!  Included are all templates and a pre-writing brainstorming page.







The Proud Peeps Writing Craftivity is available for FREE here.

Thanks for reading and please consider following my blog, TPT store and/or facebook page!


Saturday, May 4, 2013

EGG-citing news!

Big news!  It's only day 20 but I stopped by school today just in case, and look who I met!  Our first chick is still wet and worn out and if you look closely another is one it's way!


It's going to be an EGG-citing week in first grade!

Thanks for reading and please consider following my blog, TPT store and/or facebook page!

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Earth Day

April 22, one of my favorite days each year.  I love celebrating Earth Day with my students and teaching them about the 3 R's.  Last year I did the "litterbug" art project inspired by First Grader at Last.  Alas, I was not an obsessive blogger/TPTer last year did not get any pictures of my litterbug museum, so here is her version.  Cute, right?

  

This year I will be doing this wonderful "I Love My Earth" flip poem by First Class Teacher.  I love flip books and they turn out very well.  Not to mention it ties in with landforms and we never have enough time to teach science and social studies love those cross-curricular connections!  Click the pic to download this freebie!


I also wanted to create an Earth Day math activity to go in my math tubs this week, so I quickly made a Making 10's Freebie.  Students will be doing this in math tubs with a partner.  Visit my TPT store to download!



Thanks for reading and please consider following our blog, TPT store and/or facebook page!

Friday, April 12, 2013

Spring Chicks!

I know the calendar says April but here in northern Michigan we're enjoying the only benefit of an OMG I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S STILL SNOWING LET'S MOVE TO FLORIDA STOP SNOWING ALREADY STORM early spring snow/ice storm - a Snow Day!  But the winter weather hasn't stopped me from getting excited to embark on a sad lesson in the circle of life successful spring chick hatching in my classroom!  My friend Patti, who raises more animals than you can imagine with her daughters for 4H, just stopped by with her egg incubator and the fertilized eggs have been delivered to school so I should be all set.  But then I remembered our failure to hatch any live chicks from our eggs last year and thought I'd better get more prepared.

Hatching Chicks Survival Guide

I wanted an easy way to keep track of how many times I turned my eggs and the temperature guidelines for my incubator so I thought I'd make a simple chart I could post in my room.  But one thing led to another, and two hours later I had my Hatching Chicks Mini-Unit! I will definitely be using these posters and printables during the next few weeks, and maybe you can use them too!

Mini-Unit Includes:
  • incubator recording poster (color and b & w)
  • chicken life cycle poster
  • chicken life cycle writing prompts with lines and without (color and b & w)
  • A Hen Lays An Egg original song
  • 6 page student booklet to read and color
  • egg hatching paper chain countdown links with daily chick/embryo stage of development





Thanks for reading and please consider following our blog, TPT store and/or facebook page!

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Tens and Leftovers Linky

Since spring break, we've been learning about making groups of ten and putting any leftovers in the ones place (a key Common Core State Standard).  We have been spiraling this concept throughout the year during calendar with ten frames, straw bundles, and base ten blocks, so it's been pretty easy.  Today as a fun team-building math activity I borrowed 3 inch plastic links from a fellow teaching friend and we went crazy with our own tens and ones "linky" party!

It's so easy, you can do it tomorrow!

I split the class into groups of 4 students, dumped a large pile of links in the middle and off they went!  It was interesting to listen to some students talking naturally about numbers that add to 10 while they were building 10 and others have trouble with one-to-one correspondence when counting their links!  Ahh...such is the life of a first grade teacher, dealing with such a wide range of skill levels.  Some students understood immediately that if two students had chains with fewer than 10 links on it, they could combine the chains to make 10, while other students didn't think to combine shorter chains together and simply dumped both chains in a huge pile of "leftovers" just because there didn't happen to be any single links lying around.  We had some really rich math talk and all in all it was a great math activity.  Next week, in my independent math stations, students will have a chance to do it all over again with tiny links.  Here are some photos of our "linky" party action!




If you can't beat 'em, join 'em

The energy level was really high as the kiddos were busy counting tens of links, and of course they wanted to link ALL the chains together.  Since I would do almost anything to avoid inside recess thought it would be a great way to practice estimation, we did it!  We linked all the chains together and predicted where in our school the chain would reach from our doorway.  SO FUN and a great way too avoid the craziness of an inside recess body/brain break!

Oh!  And in case you forgot...

There's still time to register for the HUGE giveaway Nicole Rios is hosting! Even though her blog is for second grade, she's got awesome prize packages for grades K - 4.  Click on the picture to get registered!
 
Thanks for reading and please consider following our blog, TPT store and/or facebook page!

Monday, April 1, 2013

Spring is Here - April Fool's!

It's snowing here on April 1st!  I guess spring is never coming taking it's own sweet time...I suppose that's what we get after a long winter with 10, yes 10 snow days!  Anyhow, it's spring break for me and since it's not very spring-like outside I thought I'd try to bring some spring inside with this fun "Hop into Spring" Making 10's freebie for you!  This is a great Common Core State Standards based activity to help students learn combinations of ten!

 How We Did It

We actually used this spring Making 10's game in my class the week before spring break in math choices (More about how math choices in an upcoming post) and it went great!  Here's how I organized the activity:

I printed out all 4 game boards along with the 4 Easter themed game boards (part of  Making 10's throughout the Year) and I put one of each inside a plastic page protector.  
 


Students used dry erase markers to find combinations of 10 by circling adjacent numbers.  Since I had a parent volunteer helper that day I asked students to play the game as a 1-player game while the parent helped, and now that they know the game it will go into the games rotation as a 2-player game.  The kids enjoyed the activity and little did they know, they got to practice many of the first grade Common Core State Standards including: CCSS 1.OA.B.3 (Properties of Addition), CCSS 1.OA.C.6 (Fluency of Facts within 10), and CCSS 1.OA.D.8 (Unknown Numbers).

 
A fun alternate version of game play to increase fact fluency would be to give each child in your class or group a game board, set a timer and see how many combinations they can find within a set amount of time. 

And Now for the Freebie!

Click here to go to the download, available on TPT


I  hope you get a chance to use this spring freebie with your class or maybe just looking at  the cute spring flowers will brighten up your day.  Thanks for reading and please consider following our blog and/or facebook page




Friday, March 29, 2013

Happy Easter and a Sale!

Happy Easter!  We started our spring break at the end of the school day yesterday, and since we're not going anywhere this year I thought I'd spend every waking moment on Pinterest obsessively check for more followers/TPT sales hold a 20% off sale at my TPT Store! All items which are regularly priced at $2.50 or above are on sale until April 1st!  Check out some of the items on sale below:

20% off items Math



20% off items - Language Arts

   

20% off items - Other


Of course there are many other products that are already priced at $2.00 or less also!  Thanks for reading and please consider following our blog and/or facebook page!  Oh, and before I get to carried away with my sale, I wish you all a Happy Easter!

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

March is Reading Month

So, like many of you, our school spends the month of March engaging in a variety of activities specifically designed to help us remain sane through the long winter month encourage a love of reading in our students.  For the past two years our spring fundraiser has been a Read-A-Thon and since this year's theme is outer space, we were all encouraged to decorate our doors in a spacey way.  Now, people who know me (Becky) know bulletin  board paper and I do not get along, so I always dread this kind of thing.  However, my competitive must be the best at everything good natured spirit took over and thanks to the magic of Pinterest I stumbled across this great space ship craft from Danielle's Place of Crafts and Activities.

Reading Takes Us Out Of This World


Danielle's Place of Crafts and Activities

It's hard to see, but these cute little spaceships include the words "I went to visit..." and students finished the sentence with a favorite book character or setting that they have visited through the power of reading!  If you look closely, you'll notice SkippyJon Jones, The Interrupting Chicken, and Corduroy!  It was an easy craft to do, but did require a little prep before letting the kids loose with it.  My husband who never knew he would have to work so hard when I gave up nursing for teaching is very supportive, cut around the centers of 28 paper plates!  If you're a member of Danielle's Place of Crafts and Activities, she has detailed instructions and a template for the center part available.  I found it easy to let the kids paint the plates and decorate the inner circle on paper, then glue the paper on top of the plate.  Anyhow, it turned out great, especially for a bulletin-board-paper-phobic! 

Saturday, March 23, 2013

Academic Vocabulary That Works

Our district has undertaken the daunting exciting process of teaching academic vocabulary words to all students in grades K - 12.  When we were first presented with this idea, many of us early elementary teachers thought, "No way will this work with (insert your early el grade level here)!"  However, even bossy know-it-all the best early elementary teachers can admit we were wrong.  Academic Vocabulary instruction has been going very well in our first grade classrooms and we discovered a way to make it even better!

The Academic Vocabulary Word Wall!


We decided to incorporate the (not new) idea of a spelling or high frequency word wall to our vocabulary words.  And because the most important thing is that our classrooms are cute and colorful functional and meaningful we created this poster set.  We took the reason for teaching academic vocabulary plus the inspiring brightness of The3amTeacher's zig zag background set and waa-laa!  Academic Vocabulary - Sparking a Brighter Mind and Spark of the Day.  It's one of the most beautiful useful bulletin boards in our rooms!  Having our words posted along with the journal page examples keeps the words fresh in our minds (ours and the students) making it easier to reflect and review forgotten previously learned terms through review games.

And now for the FREEBIE!

If you'd like to grab your own copy of our poster set, click here!

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