Wednesday, November 27, 2013

'Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving...

Ahhhh...  The sweet sound of Thanksgiving break...My mother, who teaches Kindergarten, got the ENTIRE week off.  I had two whole days this week.  Is it just me, or do the few days before a break feel like an eternity?

Well, I made sure those two whole days were packed with activities to keep 'em busy, busy, busy.

I bought this "Feasting on Inferences" pack from Lyndsey at A Year of Many Firsts.  Y'all, if you haven't checked out her stuff, ya should.  She is so stankin' creative!  And my kids had a blast with her activity.

It was such a fun way to learn about inferencing! 

Then we read one of my favorite books...
And then we made a text to self connection and wrote how we would help the turkey escape.

This little friend said he would put the turkey on top of the house!

This one says she would sneak out at night and tell them to run away.

Not to mention we had a pizza party because my class sold the most tickets for the fall festival!  Try listening to "when is the pizza party?"  ALL.  DAY.  LONG.  
But now...ahhhhh......the sweet sound of pots clicking in preparation for Thanksgiving.

I hope everyone's Thanksgiving is happy, happy, happy! 



 

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Nouns, Adjectives and Verbs! (and a FREEBIE!)

My students are really good at helping me compile lists of nouns, adjectives and verbs, but then when it comes down to them identifying it out of a sentence, they have a little trouble!  So I made a couple of Thanksgiving themed sentences to help do a little review.  Once we talked through the first few, they started to get the hang of it.
I put all the sentences in a pocket chart.  This activity would also be great to use as a sentence scramble!

(Please excuse my disgusting white board :)
We read one sentence and then found just the noun and the adjective that describes the noun.  We'll go back and do it again, adding the verbs.  Right now I am trying to make sure they have a firm understanding of adjectives and nouns.

As they sorted them, they recorded them into their notebooks.


If you like it you are more than welcome to click on the picture to snag yourself a copy!
It's Free Y'all!



Tuesday, November 12, 2013

It was a Terrific Tuesday! (With A WHOLE LOTTA LITERACY!)

Um...it's cold up here y'all!  I'm tropical!  I called home and it's like 80 degrees in Florida...oh to be tan again:)

Hope everyone had an awesome three day weekend!  We started our Tuesday with our new fall centers.  And today couldn't have been a more perfect day in the cozy cottage!  (the mobile unit :)  I was so proud of their hard work.

They worked really hard making as many words as they could :)


And they did REALLY well with the sentence scramble this time...I actually thought some of them would be too difficult!

They did "delicate digraphs" and flicked the two spinners to make a word and then they had to write it under the digraph it fell under.

THEN they had to GO BACK and REREAD the words and sort them under Real or Nonsense.  Whew!

To help practice with CVC words, they had to look at the three pictures and determine which one out of the three didn't rhyme with the others and place a pumpkin on it.  Then they had to write the TWO words that DID rhyme.


I started adding a lot of comprehension pieces in their literacy stations and I was really impressed with how they picked out the key details in the text.  They really liked these fall mystery critters...

The students' visualizations were so stankin' cute!

These students had to read a passage with no picture clues.  Then they had to write about the problem and solution.  I loved the speech bubbles!

This passage was an informational piece where the students had to read it, pick out three key details and determine the topic.  This particular student even asked if he could do a quick sketch to go with his visualization - LUV IT!

Hope ya'll had a Tuesday as Terrific as mine!  Tomorrow is Hump DAAAAY!



Monday, November 11, 2013

It's Fall Y'all!

Being from the state of Florida I had NEVER seen the beauty of the fall - let alone lived in it!  So it's not a surprise that when it started to turn fall up here in the great Tar Heel State I was in awe!  It's just the most beautiful sight!  I made the mistake of telling my first graders how much I loved the fall leaves - I say mistake because now I receive a small pile of colored debris every morning :)

So because I am SO IN LOVE with the fall season it was only fitting that I created a Fall pack for my math and literacy stations!  I finally finished it today and plan on incorporating the literacy activities into their stations tomorrow.  (They worked on the math last week.)

We learned how to "count on" from the largest number...


And we also learned how to use manipulatives to help us solve for the missing addend. 
I found some small pumpkins for super cheap at Michael's that my students love using to help them find the missing addend.

If you want to see what else I've included in this pack, click here!

What is your favorite thing about the fall?