A Brand New Freebie for You (No foolin!)

No, this is not an April Fools joke.  I’ve created a great freebie for you to start the month of April.  Hopefully this will help those of you who are suffering through spring break withdrawal.  This is my last day of break, although we only had off Friday and today, so it’s more like a long weekend.  I can’t believe the spring break some of you get.  This girl is JEALOUS!

Onto the freebie.  When I looked at my students’ most recent MAP test results and also as I discussed their report cards at my most recent set of parent-teacher conferences, I noticed a recurring theme: We need to work on computation.  It seems that as we’ve gotten into other math skills, such as money, tens and ones, etc. I haven’t been reviewing addition and subtraction enough.  So, this teacher is making a change.  I’m finding addition and subtraction worksheets, centers, and games wherever I can to help my students review these skills.
Of course I wasn’t completely satisfied with what I found, so I created this freebie to use at my math center and I wanted to share it with all of you!

You can click on the picture to get from google docs.  It is also available in my TpT store.
If you download, please become a follower of my blog.
I've linked up with the wonderful blog Freebie-Licious for this post.  Click the pick at the top of this post to head over there for more great freebies from all sorts of bloggers.  PS~If you did not check out their blog hop yesterday, you must do it now.  Sooooo many awesome freebies!

Hippity Hoppity, a sale is on its way!

To celebrate the {finally} warmer spring weather here in PA, I’m slashing prices in my TpT store for the weekend.  Hop on over to my store for 20% off of all my products!  Fill your basket shopping cart full of the eggs teaching resources you’ve been eyeing up. The sale starts tomorrow, 3-30 and runs through Sunday night, 3-31.

While you’re shopping, be sure to check out my newest product!

I’m just in love with these cute pages to teach the sounds of y!

Five for Friday

We had a great week this week.  From 19 parent-teacher conferences in one day to cooking pancakes for my students, we did a lot of learning and had a lot of fun too.   

1.  Swooning over spoons!  This week our phonics skill was the oo sound like in the word spoon.  So, we made this adorable anchor chart. 

I wrote on plastic spoons with a black Sharpie, then taped them to chart paper.  Easy-peasy!

2.  We held Traffic School in our classroom.  An important concept of print is interpreting environmental print.  The MAP test we take has a bit of a focus on street signs.  So off to traffic school we went!

 

I posted 10 traffic signs around the classroom and the students used clip boards to draw pictures of the signs and try to interpret their meanings. 

3.  Parent-Teacher Conferences

Well, no more parent-teacher conferences until next year.  I had 19 conferences on Wednesday afternoon/evening.  I was sp-ent by the time I got home that night.  Lucky for me I only had 2 conferences on Thursday. 

This is the sign above my classroom windows, that they parents faced as they sat with me at my table. 

4.  This baby came with our class book order this week!  I spent pretty much every bonus point I had on this sweet puppy.  Cannot wait to use it!

5.  And finally, today I made my first graders pancakes.  Our main story this week was If You Give A Pig A Pancake.  So, of course we read a recipe so that we are understanding how to read to perform a task.  Then I got busy and cooked pancakes for my class. 

I had some toppings to pretty up our pancakes (cherries, whipped cream, syrup, chocolate chips, and sprinkles).  The students were allowed to choose 2 toppings. 

The students had to complete this paper to write about what they asked for when I gave them a pancake.  I’ll compile all their responses into a class book to add to our classroom library.

I’m looking forward to next week, when this will be at our pocket chart center!

Enjoy your weekend!

Five for Friday

Well, it was quite a week!  We had a *Snow Day* Wednesday for what was predicted to be over a foot of snow, but what amounted to maybe six inches.  The snow was pretty much melted by noon and then it rained for a little while.  So I enjoyed an extra day off with my little guy and spent some time working on report cards & drinking lattes.
Speaking of report cards, in my district we do them SIX times a year.  Yes, six.  I feel like I am constantly doing report cards.  We will be handing them out next week at our spring parent teacher conference.  And here is the start of my Five for Friday.

#1---I am so glad I created this Parent-Teacher Conference packet.  It has been invaluable in helping me prepare for my conferences.  It includes anything and everything you could need for before, during, and after parent-teacher conferences.  Click on the picture to check it out in my little store.
#2---We made cupcakes and birthday cards to say happy birthday to a certain famous author who has a March birthday. 
#3---We learned about the long o sounds spelled with oa and ow.  Check out our fun anchor chart:
My kiddos really loved these two videos as a part of our oa and ow learning. 

#4---Our sparkly shamrocks!  These were created from an idea featured in an old issue of The Mailbox magazine.  It’s a simple craft using small paper plates, gold glitter, green paint, and a craft stick.  I’m planning on “planting” them in green floral foam next week to display during parent-teacher conferences.
#5---Cupcakes!  Our pocket chart center this week is one of my favorites: Cupcake Compound Words.  Check it out in my store!


Have a great weekend!

Nouns, Verbs, & Sweet, Sweet Adjectives

So, we are still in Valentine candy leftover land in my classroom.  After our party, we had sooooo many leftover conversation hearts, with no real plan for their use.  At our party last week, we did the old favorites: we estimated how many will fit into a large heart and graphed how many of each color were in our bag.

But there were bags and bags of these suckers left and these little hearts were really starting to bug me.  I just couldn’t decide what to do with them, until….Voila!  It hit me! 

I gave each student a bag of hearts and their assignment was to read the fun messages on the hearts and find two nouns, two verbs, and two adjectives.  They L*O*V*E*D this activity.  There was giggling all around as hearts with phrases like, “Shake it,” and “Let’s Boogie,” were read. 


This activity was part of a week spent learning about adjectives.  Yesterday, we watched this School House Rocks video on You Tube about adjectives and I still can’t get this song out of my head.  My kiddos are humming it constantly too!

Then I gave each student a word card with an adjective written on it.  I gave out words like cold, fuzzy, clean, fancy, etc. and the students had to put it with something in the room that could be described by their adjective.  Again, they L*O*V*E*D it. One student left her vest on her desk, which was subsequently labeled with the words soft, plain, and smooth.  Another student had her desk labeled as clean and her water bottle labeled as fancy.  And here’s the best part...today when we discussed this activity from yesterday, every.single.student remembered their adjective and the noun it described!  LOVE those moments!  I have definitely added all of these activities to my bag of tricks when teaching about adjectives.
Click on any of the pictures above to head to links for these activities.  Have a great weekend friends!