Free Scoot Activity

I have fallen in love with the Scoot activity! Have you tried it yet with your kiddos???? If you said no, DO IT! They will think it's a game and love it too! Hehe. Are you wondering where you can find an oh so fabulous activity for FREE? Right here of course! I just finished a missing numbers in number sentences version and you can download it now. Just click the picture below.

One more thing, I would absolutely love it if you became a follower on my TpT site! I am finding it a bit strange that I have the same number of seller ratings and followers... Don't you have WAAAY more followers than ratings?!

Enjoy!

New TpT Products and TpT Sale

I just uploaded two new products to TpT! The first one is "Sight Word Scramble!" It contains Fry's first 200 words and would make a great center activity. Students will match up sight words to their scrambled versions. Take a look at it here. And be sure to download the preview for a FREEBIE. It has the first 24 words for you.

The second product is "Spring Into Math Time!" It contains 6 differentiated centers, with a focus on identifying the missing number in number sentences. Click on the picture to check it out.

And you can't forget about my springtime literacy centers either! Check them out by clicking on the picture as well.

And I will be joining all of you for the TpT sale on Leap Day! All of my products will be on sale!!

More New Centers

Over the weekend I hurt my foot (no clue what I did!) and so I am taking it easy and (gasp!) not exercising. I spend the "extra" time putting together new centers. I know, I know, I JUST developed new centers (see this post), but what can I say...when I get an idea, I must do it now! :)

My students go to 12 centers each week. Every week I change what's inside the center OR the entire center. For example, I may have "Write the Room," and change the words they're looking for, but not the actually center. Or I may just change "Write the Room" to "Writing Center." Does that make sense?! Here's my center board:

I now have 27 centers "names," but remember each activity in the center can change too. This weekend I added these storage drawers to my cabinet and put nine centers inside and one on top.

I love how organized this is! All of my other centers are located different places in the room. That way the kiddos don't crowd around this cabinet. (My students get to pick the center they go to...I hate rotations).

I meant to take pictures of what's in the drawers, but the day just got away from me. The centers are: Types of Sentences, Syllable Sort, Rhyming Words, Word Building, Contraction Action, Handwriting Center, Fill Your Heart With Words, Poetry Reading, Synonyms and Antonyms, and Parts of Speech.

I did manage to take pictures of a couple centers though. This is my new poetry reading binder. It has poems with word families (they come from a book I bought long ago) and poems that align to holidays (they come from Aloha Kindergarten).

And here is the rhyming center. These cards come from Have Fun Teaching.

Hope these new center ideas help. How do you run centers in your room? Or do you do Daily 5? If so, what are you thoughts on it? Would love feedback!

Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

The winner of my giveaway is...

Congratulations Holly!!!! You have won a $10 Starbucks gift card and any two products off my TpT page. Send me your email and I'll get those goodies to you!

Thank you to everyone who entered!

And, do you see that awesome border I used above? That comes from Michelle over at The 3AM Teacher. She has some AMAZING clip art for us teachers. You should go check out her blog right now!

Randomness

This post is going to be plenty random! I guess that describes how my week has been. :) I'll touch on the properties of matter, a geometry "I Have, Who Has" game, and categorizing words. I'll think I'll leave Valentine's Day out of this. Mine wasn't bad, but I'm just glad it's 363 days 'til the next one. Haha!

My class has been talking about matter for the last few weeks (way too long, but I just looooove teaching it!) and today we discussed the physical properties of matter. I gave the kiddos the worksheet below and the objects. Each group felt, smelled, looked at, and listened to each of the items. It was fun to watch them work together! I totally forgot to take pics of them working, but here's the worksheet if you'd like it.



In math, we moved onto geometry and have been discussing shapes this past week. Since I just love games, I knew I had to create an "I Have, Who Has" game for this concept. This took waaay longer than expected to create... Hope you find it useful! I actually haven't tested it out with my students yet, so let me know how it goes.



I also created this very simple page for taking a shape hunt around the room. The kiddos loved it!



Now on to our new Common Core language standard of categorizing words. Boy, do I just LOVE coming up with ideas for these standards! I made 4 different categories with 4 cards in each category. Our class worked together to sort them on the floor (which they found super easy to do) and then I gave them 4 of the words- 3 from one category and 1 from a different category- and they had to figure out which one didn't belong. That was a bit more challenging for them, but after plenty of practice they have it mastered! Sorry for the bad pics- I laminated them, which made them super shiny and hard to take a picture of.

Don't forget to enter my giveaway if you haven't already! It ends Sunday. Here's the link. And, as always, I truly appreciate comments...and new followers. :)

Giveaway Reminder, Magic E, and Blends

For those of you who haven't heard, I'm having a little giveaway for a Starbucks card and 2 items from my TpT site. Check out this post to find out more! The winner will be announced Sunday morning.

This week we are focusing on the long A spelled "a_e." What better way to introduce it than with a magic E wand?!  This was NOT my idea! I saw it on Pinterest and knew I had to make my own. The idea comes from Mrs. Wheeler over at Mrs. Wheeler's First Grade Tidbits. My students fell instantly in love with Mr. Wand and of course spent the day searching for words we could use our wand on.

I made a list of short a words and the kiddos had fun using the wand at center time to change the words.

Then, while we were doing our word building, they wanted to make their "e" magical too! I just love their creativity.

This week, some of my kiddos and I are also focusing on blends and digraphs. I spent a HUGE portion of the weekend searching the web for ideas and then prepping the activities for them. To make it easier for you, here is a list of some of the best resources I found:

Rain Showers File Folder Game for "sh" and "ch"

Lots of Blends Activities

Cara has a ton ideas over at The First Grade Parade

DeAnne has a bunch of ideas over at First Grade and Fabulous

Hope this helps!

GIVEAWAY and New Springtime Unit

YAY! I've reached 200 followers! That means it's time for a giveaway to say thank you to all of you wonderful followers! I recently discovered you can send Starbucks EGift cards (am I behind on the times or is this new?!). Check it out here! So because I'm obsessed with overpriced coffee, I figured that's what I should give away!

 You can win a $10 gift card

AND

any 2 units from my TpT store!

Here's how to enter:

1. Follow my blog and leave a comment saying you do.

2. Follow my TpT store and leave a comment saying you follow.

3. Blog about my giveaway and leave a comment letting me know.

4. Add my button to your blog and let me know!

The giveaway will end on Saturday, February 18th. I'll pick a winner first thing Sunday morning!

Be sure to leave your email address so I can send you the goodies!

Thank you for all of you who follow my little blog! I truly appreciate it!

Here's a preview of my new Spring Into Center Time unit on TpT! Sorry, the pictures are so tiny.

You can check out the unit here. Happy Saturday to all!

Peek at My New Centers and Stations (Yes, there are freebies!)

Over the past couple of weeks, I've spent way too much time creating new literacy centers and math stations for my room. I always forget how much time it takes to laminate and cut things! When I start something, I just can't stop until it's finished....even if that means working late...or putting off some more important things on my to do list for a little bit. :)  But my class enjoys them so it's a success!

Here are my new literacy centers (I already have about 18 that are in constant rotation- the activities within each center change every week along with the centers. Yes, it's a lot of work.):

Contraction Action- the students match up contractions to the two words it was built from. You can get it here.

ABC Order- I made a bunch of these apple cards with words on them. The students sort the cards in ABC order by removing the cards from the clothes pin and moving them up or down. I also made a worksheet to go with this. You can get this FREEBIE here!

Boggle- I saw this idea all over Pinterest and knew I had to do it too! My kiddos love it. I just change the letters every week. And this center isn't "open" every week. You can get the letters from Rebecca over at Create-Teach-Share. I used pocket envelopes and cut squares out of an them using an X-ACTO knife. The kids can pull out each card and sort in the envelopes or they can take them all out and sort elsewhere.

Fill Your Heart With Words- this idea came from Cara over at The First Grade Parade. In fact, that's where you can get the worksheet. I bought the hearts at the Dollar Tree and made word cards with our spelling words we've had this year. (Sorry, I forgot to take pics of the word cards) I divided the words up by phonemes...sort of. My kiddos love it sooo much that I'm making this a regular center, not just a Valentine one. :) Plus, it's great spelling review!

Before I go into my math stations, here's a peek at my reorganized cabinet. It's now the kid's cabinet. You don't even want to see all that I had to shove into my second cabinet to empty this one out! The second shelf down has a couple literacy centers and the third and fourth shelves have the math stations.

Now onto the math stations. These are simple ideas, but the kids are happy with them! I always have 6 math stations out at a time. And I change them regularly too.

War- Who doesn't love this classic game??? I made it with numbers to 1,000 to challenge my kiddos. Boring pic, fun game.

Number Building with Base Ten Blocks- Another super easy station to set up. But again, those first graders love it!

Greater Than/Less Than Sorting- this activity also comes from Cara at The First Grade Parade. Oh how I love her ideas!

I have sooo many more new math stations, but the laminating and cutting is taking forever and I've taken a break from it for now. :) If you've made it this far in my post, congrats! I'm off to have some wine and watch TV. I am addicted to "New Girl" now!

Currently in February

Whew, I've been busy! But I can always find a little time to fill out the Currently for February. Here it is:

And link up with Farley here.