Word Building Revised

For much of this year, I've been following the Trophies word building activities with my kiddos. I've shown this board before, but here is where I build the words.

And the kiddos get their own set of cards to build with too! But my problem has been that the words are just waaaaay too easy for much of my class. So normally I add in some more challenging words for them to build as well. However, I still wasn't entirely happy with this. So, last week I made a page for the kiddos to create their own words on. They write down our goal and then work for 3-5 minutes, before we start word building together, to make their own words. They were sooo good at this!

After that time, we build some words together. Then I give them another 3 minutes to add more words to their list, many coming from the words we just built. My kiddos filled up their papers in no time! Even my struggling students were able to come up with a bunch of rhyming words that followed the sound. And they loved doing this because they had little competitions going with each other.

If you would like this template to use with your class, here you go!


I'm off to a wedding in Los Angeles now. Have a great weekend!

Summer Is On the Way! And a FREEBIE!

I was working on this problem and solution pack for TpT a while ago and just forgot about it. Does that ever happen to you?? I found it again this morning and decided I'd just offer it as a freebie. So, here you go! It includes:

- a poster for problem and solution
- a match-up activity
- a fill in the problems worksheet
- a fill in the solutions worksheet
- a page for students to write their own problem and solution

Get it here!

I honestly am not counting down the days until summer break. As much as I enjoy the time off, I am NOT a fan of the heat (I live in Vegas). But, one thing I am thinking about when it comes to summertime is my first grade kiddos and all the progress we have made this year. I don't want them to forget all those important concepts! Especially since I am looping with them! It is extra important to me that they get additional practice with the skills we've learned over the year during the summertime as well. Sooooo, as I was searching the web this morning I found this great new product from Tammy over at Teacher Tam's Educational Adventures. It is a first grade Common Core based summer skills review pack. How perfect is that?! My kiddos are each getting a copy of this wonderful packet! Click on the link or the picture below to head on over to her blog!

Sale! Late is Better Than Never!

I finally finished 3 new products! Woohoo! So, now I'm joining most of you and having a sale in my TpT store for today.

And here's a preview of the new products in my store! Click on any picture to go to the product.

1. An Adverb Book! This goes along with all of my other parts of speech books

2. A Collective Noun Packet! This meets common core standard L.2.1a.....yes, I'm planning 2nd grade ALREADY! Hehe (Don't worry, I'm still planning first grade too)

3. A set of activities for your math wall (calendar area). There are 9 cards included and more. These meet many second grade standards! But, they can easily be modified to meet first and third grade standards too.

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday!

Fractions!

First of all, thank you to all of you that pointed me towards some 2nd grade blogs! I'm feeling overwhelmed with work I need to do, but excited too!

My class has been talking about fractions all week and I kept promising them we'd do some sort of art activity with them at some point (fractions just lends itself to all kinds of art activities!). Anyways, I totally forgot about coming up with something, so at the last minute (middle of class) I drew stick people on the board and gave them funny hair and shoes (This was very similar to the lesson I did on ordinal numbers here). Then we made fractions out of how many had yellow hair, blue shoes, green hair, and so on.

Next, it was the students turn to make their own stick figures and add details to them. It was so fun to see all the creative ideas the kiddos came up with- big heads vs. small heads, different colored shirts, stick figures holding dogs, tall vs. short... the list goes on and on. Take a look at some below!

Although this wasn't exactly the sort of art activity I had in mind, they still turned out cute. And I found out after the fact that this didn't exaaaacttllly go along with a Common Core standard. It sort of goes with 1.G.3. But not really. Shhhhhhhhhhh... Happy almost FRIDAY!!!!!

Ohhhhhhhhh, and happy 100th post to ME!!!

Oh Boy! 2nd Grade!

I recently found out that I will be teaching second grade next year! I was asked to consider the possibility and after some thinking (and a pro/con list) I decided I'd take on the challenge! The biggest benefit is I get to loop with my awesome kiddos. I just LOVE my class!

To be honest, I'm a little sad because I have spent soooooooooo much time and effort getting first grade materials together and now I need to start all over again....though I suppose I'm used to that after teaching third, fourth, and first in the past 7 years. Anyways, I still plan on posting first grade ideas on here for this year (although I may mix in some second grade stuff now too).

So this is where I ask for your help! :) I know a bunch of you have second grade blogs or know of some good ones. Point me in the right direction! I am going to need all the help I can get. And believe me, the wheels are ALREADY spinning and Pinterest is my new best friend. Thank you!!!!

Those Pesky Irregular Plural Nouns...

Now that my students have a solid understanding of what a noun is, it's time to discuss those pesky irregular plural nouns. How often do you hear "foots" or "tooths" in your room? To help my kiddos learn the irregular plurals, I've developed this "Go Fish!" game. Students will match up the singular and plural forms as they play. Included are directions and 48 game cards! And you can download this NOW for only $0.00! :) Click the picture to download this freebie! And be sure to comment or become a follower if you're not already!

This activity meets second grade Common Core standard 2.L.1b, which states that students will form and use frequently occurring irregular plural nouns.

Easter Egg Idea- Categorizing Words!

I'm on Spring Break this week, but it certainly doesn't feel like a break. I'm spending the week moving and running errands I've put off until now. Hopefully I will get an actual break before the week is up!

Before I head off to pack some more, here's an activity I did with my kiddos last week. I bought a ton of eggs and needed some kind of standard based activity to do with them. I finally decided on Common Core standard L.1.5a, which is sorting words into categories.

I took the eggs and wrote 3 words on one side and the category they fell into on the other side. Sorry, the pics are super close up!

I started with basic categories like colors, foods, animals, and weather. BUT THEN, I got more creative and began integrating all the skills we've talked about this year. Here's a few I created:

It took some time to come up with all the different categories, but it was a great review for the kiddos! If you look closely you'll notice a bunch of black marks on the eggs. This is because I initially wrote all the categories and 3 words on the same colored egg.... Once I finished, I realized that wouldn't be so much of a challenge because they'd just have to match up the colors. Soooo, I blacked out all the categories and rearranged a lot of the colors.

The next step was breaking the eggs apart and hiding them all around the room. Then, it was time for the egg scavenger hunt!!! The kiddos rushed around the room looking for pairs that matched. They were only allowed to hold 2 halves in their hands at a time. When they found a match, they set it on their chair.

The students did a GREAT job matching up the eggs and I was impressed by how quickly they found the matches. Every student found at least one egg, with most students finding two or three. Gosh...I guess I really did make a bunch! At least 40!!

Hope this gives you an idea of what you can do with all those leftover eggs!! Here's a breakdown of some of the categories I used. Some meet standards and others are just for fun!

-inflectional endings

-nouns

-pronouns

-verbs

-adjectives

-mammals

-parts of a flower

-objects in space

-planets

-transportation

-fruits

-veggies

-body parts

-weather

-colors

-shapes

-3D shapes

-ice cream flavors

-objects in the classroom

-vowels

-holidays

-numbers

-names

-types of books

-types of flowers

-contractions

-types of sentences

-parts of a book

-grades

-types of writing

-punctuation marks

-clothing

Okay, my brain has given out. That's all I can remember at the moment! Enjoy your day!!