Showing posts with label Freebie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Freebie. Show all posts

Monday, August 12, 2013

Under Construction

Our school hosts a Back-to-School Open House each year before the school year starts.  Students and families can meet their teachers and explore their new classrooms.  Sometimes I have supplies or center materials that I do not wish students (or their younger siblings) to get into during open house, or even the first few weeks of school.  My solution? Under Construction Signs.  They are FREE for you!  I also made a sign to put up on bulletin boards that I am intentionally leaving blank for eventual student work or anchor charts we create together.

Again they are FREE for you!  I hope they make your Back-to-School organization a little easier!

Thanks for reading and please consider following my blog or TPT Store!

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!


Thursday, May 16, 2013

It's Almost Summer...

Only 15 1/2 days left of school in my district and I'm racing to get all my end-of-the-year assessments done.  And with teacher evaluations now based largely on student achievement data it's an even more stressful time of year.  But summer vacation will be here before we know it and to celebrate, I've created two new surf kids themed clipart sets to help you "surf" through the rest of the school year!  There is a 35 image Colorful Collection of Surf Kids and a 13 image Black & White Digital Stamp Surf Kids Set; both are available at my TPT Store.





And a FREEBIE!

And to show you all how much I'm looking forward to summer vacation and some much-needed beach time, here's a freebie for you!  5 Colorful Surf Themed Clipart Images - click the images to download!



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!

Thursday, April 4, 2013

1000 Followers Celebration!!

Yes you read that right!  Of course, WE don't have 1,000 yet but Nicole from Mrs. Rios Teaches Second Grade does and that deserves a CELEBRATION!  She has invited fellow bloggers and TPTers to join her in partying, and we're so excited to be part of it!

We're offering "Winner's Choice" from Becky's store to the winner of Nicole's giveaway. That's right...you get to choose any product from the store.  Visit Becky Brand's  TPT store to see what your choices will be.  But that's not all!  Nicole's giveaway winner will get 107 products!  Woo Hoo - now that is a celebration!

Giveaway Starts April 6th!



Click the picture to join the party!!!  Of course you have to wait until April 6th at 7:00 a.m.!


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




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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