Who's ready for Valentine's Day???

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for our weekly Five for Friday!

Love is in the air and I am getting ready for Valentine's Day - at home and at school!  I've always loved Valentine's Day and have always made a big deal out of it.  Scott always makes sure he makes a big deal out of it for ME.  

I got my new Stone Scoop ready - my kids liked the January Stone Scoop so much that I just had to make a Valentine edition!  It turned out so stankin' cute!

One thing that I learned from the last one I made is that permanent marker rubs off of the glass stones!  It gets to be annoying when you have a little one coming up to you every two seconds to let you know there is no letter on the stone!   So I went to Michael's and found a white paint pen.  I've already test driven it and redid the stones from January.  Ain't nothin' comin' off!

I even caught one of my little friends trying to scratch the paint off...yeah!  Nice try!

If you liked the Stone Scoop and want the Valentine edition you can CLICK HERE to get it for free!

I've also made a pack for collecting data using surveys.  We are starting measurement and data this week and I'm sorry y'all, those surveys from the series are not very much fun.  Snooze... Since we are starting measurement and data in February, I have LOTS of surveys related to content for this month!

If you are interested, you can check them out HERE!

And lastly, I thought that it snowed before.  Um, nope.  THIS was snow!

I'm not sure I signed up for all this cold!

Rosco doesn't really enjoy the cold either...

Stay warm friends!

The Emperor's Egg (FREEBIE!)

I saw this and bout died, y'all!  We got let out today at 11:00 because of possible snow...

I'm still waiting.

With all that going on, we're trying to wrap up our penguin unit.  I work with some wonderful and creative ladies and some of them came up with a literacy companion to "The Emperor's Egg."

We activated our schema's by asking what we knew about penguins.  

Then we used "penguin's can, have, are" to collect words.  Then we sorted the used by whether they were nouns, adjectives or verbs...

After reading the book, we used our interactive reading notebooks to collect three key details and the topic.  I don't have a picture of that activity :(

With the weather permitting, tomorrow we'll get our minds warmed up using a four-square model with the word "hatches."

Then, I'll put my little friends into groups.  Each group will get a set of pictures to put in sequential order.  They'll use their interactive reading notebooks to write about the order of the pictures.

We also have lots of comparing and vocabulary activities to get done.  

This was such a great unit, I figured I'd share it with y'all for free!

If you're interested in all the reading response activities, vocab, etc.  CLICK HERE!

Hunker down snow friends!

Five for Friday!

It's time for Five for Fridaaayyyyy!!!  with Doodlebugs Teaching!  (I say that in my best Oprah voice.)

 So the future hubs is starting to think that maybe it wasn't such a great idea to buy me the Silhouette.  I now have him helping me do projects all over the house!

He complained that it was not manly to do arts and crafts...

But it turned out so lovely :)

How could you NOT relax when you see that? 

 I say all it needs is a little greenery...

It SNOWED!!!

  Now don't get me wrong - I HAVE seen snow.  I guess I was so excited because I'm actually living in a place where it can snow.  As you can see, Rosco wasn't quite sure what to make of it...

And yes, Scott and I will always represent the University of Florida regardless of how bad of a football season!  Gators for LIFE!

My bachelorette party is a month away!  Yikes!  I was ordered by the MOH (maid of honor) to wear a white dress (working on that).  I have also been working on little baggies for my girls :)

 Aren't they just darling??

I was also going to add some snacks and baby cokes but then I was in my local monogram shop and saw these...

OBSESSED!  And so adorable!  With the girl's monograms!  AH!  I have to be sneaky about purchasing them because Scott says I'm not allowed to spend any more money...hhhmmmm...

One of the reasons I wanted to start blogging is so that I could start connecting with all those brilliant teachers out there and share ideas.  And lemme tell you - there are some AMAZING teachers out there!  I wish I could get into their brains!  One fabulous idea was from Tara West from Little Minds At Work.  If ya'll haven't checked out her guided reading plans - you must!  I bought all four of her guided reading packs!  She does this thing in her class called "Mix it and Fix it"  where there is a scrambled sight word and the students have to unscramble it and record it.  So stankin cute..

I found these cheap pop top jars at the dollar tree and labeled them with numbers.  The students unscramble the words and record them.  Easy center to help with sight words!

The only thing I did was make a recording sheet (hopefully Miss Tara won't mind) to go with the center.  Ya'll can get it here!

As I said, fab teacher with fab ideas!  This one came from Mrs. Hudgens at Smitten with First.  I needed something that taught cause and effect - it's such a difficult skill with first graders.  Michelle had the most precious activity that used the Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats.  And it related with my firsties to a T!

I introduced the topic through a few examples, made an anchor chart, etc.  Then I read the book and used Michelle's activity for a follow up.  It was wonderful how they were able to get the connection!

 Not to mention the precious craftivity that went with it!

Too stankin cute!  I have a sweet parent that comes in to volunteer and she helped my students get this project finished.

Hope ya'll have a fabulous weekend!

Isaiah 40:31

but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.

Winter Math Fun!

Is it bad that I'd rather spend my Saturday night at home???  Scott was out of town and I took every advantage of hanging out in peace and quiet.  Our wedding is RIGHT around the corner.  I have bridesmaids that still haven't ordered their dresses - move it heifers!  (Why no - I'm not a BRIDEZILLA!)  My mom made 200 jars of homemade guava jelly for wedding favors and I decided that on my peaceful evening at home, that I would make tags for them...

Aren't they adorable???  I got the print from a sweet girl on Etsy...

It took a LONG time to cut them.

So in the midst of all my wedding planning I have managed to get school work done as well (sleep?  anyone?)

We do word problems in our math notebooks every single day.  But I am REALLY bad at running to the computer (as my students are opening their math notebooks) and quickly whipping up a word problem.  I know.  Not cool.  So I sat down in front of the TV one night and came up with 30 of them!  Ready to go!  All I had to do was print them and my teacher's assistant cut them all out and put them in individual baggies.  All I have to do is grab one and go!

I wanted to make sure the students would be able to use illustrations to help them create an equation...

And I also tried to include a variety of higher level thinking.

As I said, I made 30.  20 of them for interactive notebooks and 10 on cards for math centers.

If you are interested, you can get them HERE.

For some reason, my babies are starting to enjoy math more and more these days.  This week we focused on NBT.3 which is taking two two digit numbers and using the >, < and = symbols to compare them.  I wanted to take it a little further than that and make it a little more rigorous.  We started out with the basic comparing of two digit numbers.  I created two different sets to differentiate my instruction.  One with numbers to 20 and another set with numbers up to 100.

This friend is taking the sort we did the first day and is practicing it during math tubs.  It's funny because we have such a limit on copies and the students have gotten so used to just drawing a line down the middle of a piece of blank paper!

So after we gained a concept of the symbols and comparing the two digit numbers, I created a set where the students had to compare equations.  This one was tricky.  I made two sets for this one - one set with equations to 10 and one set with equations to 20.  But once we gained an understanding, we were able to do the same activity in our interactive math notebooks.

I also continued the comparing using ones and tens blocks.  I don't have a picture of the sort, but it's the same concept.  The activity that goes in their interactive math notebooks is actually a little trickier because they have to read the symbols and sort them accordingly.

If you need a pack for NBT.3 you can get it HERE.

I made sure that when I made it, I included lots of differentiation and activities for interactive notebooks.

  

Hope y'all have a fabulous Sunday!