Friday, September 30, 2011

My Week in Review

Happy Friday!! What a week I had! I felt like I was sitting in meetings all week long. Do you ever have weeks like that? On top of that, the air conditioning wasn't working at our school for two days. It was 90 degrees in our building!!!

Despite the heat and meetings, here are some things we worked on this week:

We began our new science unit on energy! I love teaching this because there are soooo many fun experiments that go along with it. This week we learned what energy is and where we see it. We began by developing a poster with how we use energy. As we brainstormed our ideas, the students came up and drew the pictures. On a side note, some of the pictures show how we get energy and I took this picture before I labeled those.


We also began talking about light energy sources. We sorted pictures into objects that produce light and objects that do not produce light.



This week in writing, we focused on our handwriting and expanding sentences. Here is what the expanding sentences activity looked like:

Next week, we are going to write our own sentences using this worksheet. This can be used with the upper grades too! I use this terminology with my little ones, but I also model it heavily and break it down into words they understand. For example: "What color or size do you want the cat to be?" "How do you want the cat to sit?" "Where do you want the cat to go?"


Also, I introduced these colored popsicle sticks to some of my students this week. We use them as spacers in our writing. I have about 5 kiddos that writealltheirwordslikethis. Hopefully these will help!



Oh, and we shared our noun books during an Author's Chair! You can purchase them here.

Have a fabulous weekend! I can't wait to SLEEP IN!



Thursday, September 29, 2011

Word Attack Strategies

Hope you had a fabulous Thursday! My day was filled with meetings....

This year I have noticed I have a bunch of kiddos that don't try any word attack strategies when reading...they automatically guess. Grrrrr! So, I am working to correct that ASAP. One idea that I absolutely LOVE are these reading word attack strategies that come from First Grade Factory! I spent the first couple of weeks going over them with my students and making hand motions with them. Now, my students use them often on their own! I also printed out the smaller copy and taped it to my guided reading table. I love when the kids remind each other to use them.

These are the posters, but there is a small reference sheet and bookmarks on her site as well.

Do you have any great strategies that you use?

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

I Feel So Special!

My blog received an award! I couldn't be happier. This comes from Rebecca over at The Teacher's Chatterbox. Thank you Rebecca!! I am so happy that you all are enjoying my blog. I am having sooo much fun with it!

HALLOWEEN Centers, Oh My!

I FINALLY (insert sigh), finished my Halloween centers!!!

 I love holidays and so I am sure I spend waaaaay too much time planning activities for them. My latest project was creating centers specifically designed for Halloween. You can purchase them here. There are 13 different activities and 31 pages of goodies! Here's a peek at them:







Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Word Building with Paint Cards

So I saw this idea on Pinterest about a week ago and I LOVED it!! And I couldn't help myself- I rushed right over to Lowes for some paint cards and started making a list of onsets and rimes. I wanted to have a bunch of rimes for each vowel sound so that we could focus on a vowel sound a week. I decided on 11....since that's how many short "a" rimes I was able to come up with. Haha! However, it took me FOREVER to come up with 11 rimes for each of the other short vowels. Especially "u." My brain would not function! Anyways, if you want to make this fun activity for you classroom, I'll make it EASY for you- I am providing the list of onsets and rimes I used. It's posted after these pictures.

I'm using it as a center activity in my room. Here is what it looks like:

And here are what the cards looks like:

And here are the cards in use:

Okay, and now for the FREEBIE! Here is what it looks like:
And you can get it here. ENJOY!

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Noun Posters Freebie

WOW!!! So excited to see that I have 27 followers now! I feel so special. :) Here's another freebie for all you awesome followers!

Now that we have completed our study of nouns, I wanted the students (especially those that needed extra support) to have the opportunity to review what a noun is at any time. So, I made three noun posters. Each one has a picture of a person, place, or thing and the definition of it. I had a little trouble deciding on the kind of background I wanted....so I made 3 different ones. Haha! Still don't know which one I am going to choose, but here you go.

Here it is in stripes! To get it, click here.

I completely forgot to upload a thumbnail of the versions with a blank background and solid color background. Don't know how to go back and do it now... So, just use those visualizing skills we teach our kiddos and imagine the same thing as above with no background. That one is here. And lastly, visualize a solid color background with very similar colors to the ones above. Those are here. Enjoy!!!! And have a fabulous Sunday!

Friday, September 23, 2011

Nouns Books and Freebie

After studying nouns all week, we finally finished our noun books! Read more about those below. And we had our noun scavenger hunt today. The kiddos looooooved it! They were supposed to look for words around the room and figure out if it was a noun or not. If it was a noun, they kept it. If it wasn't a noun, they left it where it was. You can read more about this and get this FREEBIE here. This is what it looks like:



Here are some of my hiding places!




And here are some of my kiddos in action!



After we finished our hunt, we put our cards on a poster under the correct category: person, place, or thing. And some of us realized we picked up a word or two that wasn't a noun. :)
 Here is what the final product looks like! I didn't realize how many "things" I included. Opps! Haha!

Okay, now on to our noun books. These are available here and they only cost $3.00. My kiddos had so much fun making a new page each day! Here are a couple student samples:







Enjoy! And happy Friday everyone!

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Cloud Activity

Our class has been studying weather for the past two weeks. Today we made clouds out of cotton balls. The kids loved pulling the cotton balls apart! And it was cute to watch them try! The idea came from Science A-Z.


Here is the worksheet I used. However, the fonts are different. Same idea though! I copied it on blue paper to look like the sky. Click here to get it!

Tomorrow I will post a freebie noun activity and a preview of our noun books!

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Inside My School Bag

The Inspired Apple is having a linky party with what is inside your teacher bag. I have to admit....I threw out my teaching bag last year. Not because I didn't have anything to put in it, but because I started using my car as my teacher bag.

I figured some days I have very little that goes home with me and other days I have tons, so I'd rather just carry all my stuff by hand. This is a PERFECT day to post about this because today just happens to be one of those days where I have tons of stuff.

Here is all the stuff I carried into the house with me this evening.
  • My snacks- can't forget these! And I can't leave them in the car in this heat.
  • My lesson plan binder, which includes my lessons, to-do lists, standards, notes, and other random stuff.
  • My home computer....which comes with me to work on occasion since it has the fonts I like on it. 
  • My MUST have items that I would be lost without...2 USB disks. They contain ALL of my files. I mean everything! I spent this summer scanning my workbooks on them, so these little guys really are my life.

And here is a pic of my car seat. It's not always this messy. Just sometimes. And by sometimes I mean two to five times a week.
  • I have cotton balls for a cloud activity we are doing tomorrow.
  • Raffle prizes for our prize bin.
  • K-CUPS!!! I have a Keurig in my classroom and I LOVE it! It is my midday treat.
  • Nerds. For me. Enough said.
  • Notebook paper for my to-do lists.
  • Paint cards for a lesson I'm working on
  • Panera Bread food...for dinner tonight and breakfast tomorrow. I love that place, but don't go very often. And normally I cook, but I decided to spoil myself tonight. :)
  • On the floor I have folders with laminated papers that need to be cut.
That's it! Well, actually there will be more because I have a lot of printing to do tonight. Ahhhhh!

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Fall Activities

Don't forget fall begins on the 23rd! I can't wait for it to cool down here in Las Vegas. What is your favorite fall activity? Here's a writing I plan on doing with my kiddos on Friday.

To get it, click here. And check out the fall linky party going on over at Teaching First!

Pinterest Love

First of all, I have to say a HUGE thank you to Teaching Blog Addict for welcoming us new bloggers into the blogging world and creating a space for us to connect!! It's truly appreciated!

On a different note, my love for Pinterest keeps increasing! I am getting so many good ideas from it....my to-do list is a mile long now. See my previous posts for the other ideas I love. My new idea is to create a word building center using paint cards....so smart!

words w/paint chips

This picture is from Pink and Green Mama. Now I just have to go to Lowes and grab a bunch of different colors...Hmmm, this may not actually get done for awhile, seeing as how lesson planning and grading come first.....or should at least. Hehe.

My noun activities this week are going great! I'll try and post a freebie tomorrow and look for pics on Friday!

Monday, September 19, 2011

Awesome Teaching Strategies

Have you heard of Whole Brain Teaching?! I recently discovered their website and I'm in love with some of their strategies! Here's their site: http://wholebrainteaching.com/. My FAVORITE (and honestly the only one I've tried) is "teach-ok." I am definitely over-using it in my classroom right now, but I can't help it. And my kids looooove it! I think that is their most popular strategy is "class-yes," but I haven't tried that yet. Stay tuned...I plan on trying it soon. Here's a video I found on You Tube with some of the strategies.



This week, my class is working on nouns! I'll be posting some pics from the books we are creating later this week. So excited about them!

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Teachers Pay Teachers

I spent a good part of today updating my files on Teachers Pay Teachers to include graphics from Scrappin' Doodles. Love the graphics! Here's a preview of some of my documents:

Free short vowel bingo gameFree inflectional endings poster



I have 11 documents on there now (including 3 freebies)! To view them, click here.

Saturday, September 17, 2011

U.S. Constitution Poem and Addition Sentences

Here are a couple of quick freebies from activities we did on Friday. One is an acrostic poem with the word America spelled down. We did this as a class for U.S. Constitution day. I made a big poster and had the students copy it down on their own papers.



Click here for it: America Acrostic Poem

We also worked on writing addition sentences. Here it is:



Click here for it: Addition Sentences
My school district wants the students to be able to write the addition part of the sentence by itself, so that is why the worksheet has the two parts to it.

Hope you enjoy these! Please leave a comment if you take them!

Looooong day

Sooo, I spent a long part of the day searching for wooden puzzles to use for the activity I posted about yesterday. And guess what?! No luck. I went to Target, Wal-mart, and Dollar Tree but didn't find what I was looking for. Then I had an idea to use blank puzzles you can buy at Michaels, so I went there. They had no clue what I was talking about and I couldn't find them ANYWHERE in the store. So saaaad! Therefore I've given up on that for now, but no worries, I have a new idea for it!!! Stay tuned...

Anyways, I spent the rest of my afternoon working on an idea I had for one of the new common core standards. It's all about the shades of meaning in adjectives and verbs. I developed posters with the meaning of 3-4 words and then worksheets to go along with them. The worksheets have sentences with blank boxes to cut and glue in a word (same as the words on the posters). See below for a preview!

Here is a sample poster


And this is a sample of the worksheets.


You can view the product here: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Shades-of-Meaning-for-Verbs-and-Adjectives-Meets-Common-Core-Standard

Friday, September 16, 2011

Love THIS

How cute is this?!
A great idea for working on spelling with the kids!
Saw this idea on Pinterest and LOVE it! I will have to remember it during Easter time since I don't think I can get the eggs now... This is going to be a great center activity!!! See it here: Easter Egg Word Families Can't wait.

Here's another awesome idea for a center:

Puzzles with homophones, antonyms, or synonyms on the pieces and board. Students just have to match them up. What a great idea! See it here: http://secondinshawnee.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2011-04-09T20%3A05%3A00-05%3A00 I want to get this ready ASAP....still trying to figure out the best way to use it with my firsties.