I love starting the month of October learning about spiders. We read several non-fiction books that the kids adored, but they also LOVED this Eric Carle classic…The Very Busy Spider. After we read the story, I gave the kids a writing prompt to complete… “I am very busy____________________________________ in First Grade!” Their responses were cute and some of them were downright hilarious!! Apparently we spend our time running away from girls and coloring all day?! Hmmmm… I cut out a class set of large black circles and a class set of smaller white circles to fit on top of the black {for a spider body}. I also ... Read More
Morning Meeting
I LOVE our morning meetings! This seems to be the kids’ favorite way to start the day, too! Although this part of our day is quick, the kids get so much out of it…and they are totally responsible for doing everything on their own {with my guidance, of course ;)} Here’s just a little peek into our calendar/morning meeting area. I’d LOVE more suggestions of things I can add!! Before starting our calendar time, I pull sticks to see who my calendar helpers will be. I usually choose 8 kids. The calendar jobs are as follows: *Change the “Yesterday/Today/Tomorrow…Last Month/This Month/Next Month” chart *Add the date to the calendar *Write the ... Read More
Skip Counting
My kids are really getting the hang of skip counting! At least, I think they are ;) Here are just a few little activities/ideas that I’ve incorporated to help reinforce this concept! I requested that the parents send in {labeled} socks with the kids. I hung these on a clothesline to reinforce skip counting by 2’s. The week that we introduced skip counting, we had the kids help us create these skip counting “anchor charts” to hang in the room as a visual. I guess I missed the 10’s chart! Ooops! The 10’s chart used pairs of feet for counting by 10’s. I created this little ... Read More
Apples, Apples, Everywhere!
My kids this year are SO very much into non-fiction stories. I LOVE IT!!! We started our week of apples with a KWL. I set out this little KWL and fill it out with the kids as we go along… After reading a few short non-fiction books about apples, we filled out the “What You LEARNED” apple and had the kids complete their own KWL to keep in their Reader’s Response Journals. They LOVED this activity! I told them to choose 1 thing from each apple to write down.KWL Printable: APPLE KWL And we labeled the parts of an apple… I also had the kids fill out their own version. I found it on Mrs. Nelson’s Apple Unit Page. We also start out the week ... Read More
Word Helper Strategies
I originally saw these darling Word Helper strategy cards on the First Grader At Last blog and knew I had to have them!!! My kids are seriously OBSESSED with word strategies now! Every time they get stuck on a word, I’ll hear someone say, “think Stretchy Snake!” OR, “don’t forget Fly Eye!” I changed up a few little things to fit the needs of my kids and to go along with the clip art I had available :) I also created bookmarks that I laminated and cut out for each student to keep. They have a “keep at home” bookmark and one to keep at their desks. They love these little guys! I have the large ... Read More
Reader’s Response ~ The Big Orange Splot
What a random little book find! Have you ever read The Big Orange Splot by D. Manus Pinkwater?! I never had until one of the girls on our team was telling us about it a few weeks ago. It’s a cute little story about people who live on a street where ALL the houses look EXACTLY the same until one day a guy spills orange paint on his roof. SO…he decides not to “fix” it, but paint the rest of his house instead. Everyone tries to get the guy to change his house back to being “normal”, but he encourage people to embrace the differences! SUCH a cute little message! After we read the story, I passed out a little house template and had the kids ... Read More
Growing or Repeating?!
When we talk about skip counting with our kids, we explain how the numbers “grow”. Before we get too deep into “growing numbers”, we illustrate this concept by talking about growing patterns. Since my kids were having a little trouble understanding the difference between growing and repeating, we practiced the concept every morning {quickly} during our morning meeting and then completed this fun little activity the following week in their math tubs. I gave them a tub full of cardstock pattern blocks and instructed them to create two repeating patterns and two growing patterns. Then we hung them up in the classroom as a ... Read More
Brag Tags
I mentioned Brag Tags in an earlier post and received a few questions asking about them. The Brag Tags are sponsored by our AWESOME PTA and organized by our school counselor. Every student in the school gets brag tags. They all start the year out with a grade level tag. Here’s First Grade’s first brag tag… Darling, right?! I write their names on the back of each tag so that we know which tags belong to each kiddo. As the year goes on, they can earn lots of different tags. There are some for reading, honor roll, attendance, field day, variety show, summer reading, birthday, etc. ... Read More
Draft Book Publishing
My kids write in their draft books almost every day during our Writer’s Workshop block. Every Tuesday, I have publishing moms that come in and take the kids one-by-one to help them publish one of their writing pieces into a little book they can keep in their book baskets to read at different times. Hopefully by the end of the year the kids will have quite a collection of published books to take home and read to their families. The kids look forward to Tuesday because they absolutely LOVE having their hard work published! The publishing basket contains pencils, markers, a stapler, plain white paper {cut}, construction paper ... Read More
Reader’s Response – The Napping House
We’ve been talking about families this week one of our favorite books to read is The Napping House, by Audrey Wood. After reading the story, we talked about different things that we like to sleep with. CLEARLY, we’re not sleeping with a snoozing granny and a wakeful flea…well, I hope we’re not…so we talked about different things that we take to bed, or things we took to bed with us when we were "little”. I told them how my son sleeps with 5 Mickey Mouse dolls and they thought that was the funniest thing! HA! Here’s a little peek at their entry. One of the teacher’s on our team had this cute little ... Read More
