This week was a chunk week review for us, so I made up a little activity that would get the kids thinking about word families & popcorn words. I took a couple of lunch bags and filled them with letter tiles. In one bag, I included the letters contained in all of our popcorn words {to date}. In the other bag, I included all the vowels & word endings to the chunks we’ve learned thus far, plus a few additional letters. The kids had to pick a bag and use the tiles inside to make words. I told them to read the room if they had trouble figuring out what words to make. {We’ve got our chunk charts & popcorn ... Read More
I See The Moon & The Moon Sees Me!
We’ve been learning a little about the moon and the kids are loving it! One of our objectives is to observe changes over a period of time, so we thought this would be the perfect opportunity for the kids to observe the changes in the appearance of the moon! We made this a class project and the kids are just TOO excited! Each night, a different kiddo gets to take home the class “Moon Bag”. {I used yellow fabric & stitch witchery for the moon, a fabric marker for the lettering, and glittery puff paint to outline the moon and make the stars :)} Inside the bag is a book about the moon {from the library}, our class moon log, white crayons, ... Read More
A Couple of Math Things…
This is a CRAZY week!! Our schedule is a little off and we’re planning a FUN “Pumpkin Day” on Friday, so I set out a fewer number of math tubs this week. Here are just a couple of things that we’re working on… Greater than/less than candy jars. Each piece of candy is programmed with a number {1-50}. There is also a set of number cards {1-50}. The kids have to pick a number card and then sort the candy into the corresponding candy jars. This was just a little review that they’ve really loved! I’ll definitely keep this in my "when I’m finished…” tubs for them to revisit :) Here’s just ... Read More
Skeleton Hiccups
For a little reader’s response fun, we read this book… SO darling! And then we got to problem solving. The kids had to write using the prompt, “I would get rid of a skeleton’s hiccups by…”. Their answers were pretty dang cute! I drew the skeleton face & hips and had a mom cut them out. Then the kids decided how the rest of the skeleton would look! LOVE IT!! My favorite part is how different each of them look. Too dang cute! This might be one of my most favorite writing activities of the year…I’m just sayin’. I’ve done this for the last 7 years and I always look forward to it!! And the kids love it, too!! ... Read More
Where’s My Mummy?
We had our annual Fall Book Fair a couple of weeks ago and there was the most darling little book on the shelves… Now, this book has probably been around for a while, but it’s the first time I saw it. One of my sweeties from class bought it for me and I fell.in.love! SUCH a cute story! {And it’s since become a favorite of my two boys, too!} I immediately knew I wanted to use this story for a writing activity and here’s what we did… For a reader’s response, I had the kids use the sentence prompt, “When I get scared, my mummy…”, and they had to write about something that their Mommy does to help them when ... Read More
What’s The Weather?!
We’ve been studying the weather the last few weeks in Science and it’s been FUN to say the least! I love hearing the kids talk about the clouds when we’re outside… “Look Mrs. Carroll! That’s a stratus cloud!!” They’ve become such awesome little weather watchers, SO very interested in anything and everything weather!! Here are a few little things we did for this fun little unit! We watched a really neat video about the different types of weather and read some pretty cool non-fiction books, too! We made a little word web to show what we learned… We added weather poems to our poetry journals {no pics, but you can download them below.} We ... Read More
I Want Candy!
Since it’s so close to Halloween…and the kids are SO very crazy about candy right now…I popped this little activity into a math tub this week! The kids were SO excited to work with candy and immediately wanted to know if they could eat it ;) No shocker there. I glued these little signs onto 4-5 different paper bags and filled each with different amounts of candy. The kids reached into the bag and pulled out a handful of candy and recorded the # of pieces they grabbed onto a corresponding recording sheet. Then they reached in a second time and pulled out another handful of candy and recorded that amount as ... Read More
Who Lives Here?
At the beginning of each week, we usually introduce 3 new chunks to our kids. We brainstorm words for each chunk both real and nonsense…they LOVE coming up with nonsense words! We also encourage our kids to come up with words that contain the chunk somewhere inside…not necessarily at the end of the word. I LOVE seeing what they come up with! After we brainstorm our chunk words, I give the kids a tri-folded piece of paper to make houses for their word families & they record the words they can read inside. This has become their favorite Monday activity! They usually keep their houses in their book baskets ... Read More
Jack O’Lantern Addition/Subtraction Sorting
I bought these darling little jack o’lanterns at Wal-Mart YEARS ago when I first started teaching Kindergarten. I used to have the kids do a little one-to-one correspondence activity with them. Since my 1st graders are knee deep in addition & subtraction right now, I knew these little guys would come in handy for the perfect sorting activity! I wrote a different number on each jack o’lantern {6-18}. Then I took popsicle sticks and wrote a different math fact on each….about 6 facts for each number…4 addition problems and 2 subtraction problems {subtraction is still pretty new to us}. The kids sort the math ... Read More
Candy Corn Math
This week I set out a little candy corn math activity for my kids to use in their stations. Because I have such a sweet tooth, I ate the whole bag of candy corn, so the kids had to settle on the laminated cardstock version instead ;) Each candy corn is programmed with either an addition or subtraction problem. I cut off the bottom {yellow} portion of the candy corn and left the rest intact. The kids have to match the bottom {sum/difference} to the top {number sentence}. We’ve been working on vertical addition & subtraction, so this is a perfect reinforcement of this concept! The kids love ... Read More
