Fact Familes Freebies!

Happy Monday!

We started fact families right before we went on Thanksgiving break, and I should have known my kiddos would come back not remembering A THING!

So we will be spending a LOT of time with fact families in the next few weeks. I usually teach fact families with two different frames for building the facts.

We start with the house. The kids LOVE this one... don't ask me why... maybe its the roof? We slide it into page protectors and use dry erase markers to make fact families, after I give them the family numbers.

click the pic to download

Later, after they have gotten better at building the families on their own, we use this really simple frame. Not as fancy, but it does the job!

click for this one too!

And now for the good stuff! I made a fun holiday themed fact family matching game/center, and it can be yours for the low price of FREE! Happy cyber Monday :) Just click the pic so that you can download the fun!

*** Update 11/30/2011: Since cyber Monday is officially over, you can now find this cute little  fact family activity for sale on my TPT page! I hope you check it out! ***

Sharing my Thanks!

Today I am linking up with What the Teacher Wants for an I'm Thankful Party! Let me tell you first that I am thankful for many things, a long list that would inevitably take forever to read, so to keep it short and sweet here are the highlights...

1. What are you thankful for in your classroom?


First off, I am thankful to have a classroom! After a year of being the "laid off" teacher and many months as a substitute I am thankful to be in my second year in the same room at the same school. It has been truly amazing, and I am forever thankful.  More superficially... my document camera and projector! I literally could not live a day with out it!

2. What person are you most thankful for?

My Mr., who  makes each day brighter! Live, laugh, love!

3. What 3 blogs are you most thankful for?

This is SO hard! I am thankful for all of the blogs that I have come across in the past months. They have encouraged me to think bigger and better! To pick three...

  * The First Grade Parade-  If she can do it, I can too, right? That's how I feel each time I read this blog. So creative and inventive. I am thankful that I can have a place to read an be inspired!

  * The Inspired Apple- So genuinely helpful! I have revived a million ideas that have impacted my classroom this year! Plus, reading this blog is like knowing the class! I am thankful to have this blog at my fingertips.

  * Finally In First- Hello Inspiration! A new idea sparks each time I read this blog.Thank you!

4. What guilty pleasure are you most thankful for?

Ok... to be honest... Christmas Music. Not just at this time of the year, but all year round! I love it!! Don't tell the Mr., he thinks I wait till AFTER Thanksgiving for the festive tunes...
 

5. What are you most thankful for?

I am thankful to be happy and that is amazing! 


 Link up and share your thanks! And enjoy your Thanksgiving Day!

Hello Nouns! Freebie

I am so excited to have this week to relax! It has been a busy and crazy past week, so the holiday week is much needed!

I have been working on a noun unit that I will be using with my ELD class the week we get back from break. Do you do ELD? We break our kids up based on the CELDT testing and language acquisition in class. This year I have the middle group. I wanted to do a noun focus because its great for vocabulary (and my ELDers need that so badly) and reinforces what we have been working on in HM during homeroom LA time.

So long story short... here is my noun unit, minus the computer lab activity that we will be doing (I'll post about that when we do it). It is all free, but you have to PROMISE to comment if you take any part of it. I need the feedback since it is the first time I am posting a mini unit on my blog! Click on the pics to download and have fun with the nouns :)

Have a noun poster!

Noun sorting cards and recording sheet!

noun cards to place about the room and recording sheet

Nouns in scrambled sentences

a possible assessment activity (it will be for me!)

And a game of course! Noun Bingo!

Have a Happy Weekend!

oh, and of course... thank you Scrappin Doodles and DJ Inkers for the fabulous clip art and fonts!

Let's Make a Turkey! Pattern Freebie

Here is the pattern for the turkey we made last week. Click the pic to download. I hope you enjoy making it too!

Happy Sunday!

Hello Turkeys!

This week was turkey week!

We started off by reading about turkeys. Can I just say is tough to find grade level appropriate non-fiction book about turkeys. I have fiction stories up the wazoo (I especially love Turkey Surprise which sneaks in a few turkey facts) but zero non-fiction. So the hunt was on. Three bookstores and a libraries later, I still had no books, and then I stumbled onto kidzone.ws.It was full of great info that I put into a little book to read to my kids complete with pictures! If you are in need click the pic below!

Then we put all of our turkey facts into a circle map. I have been easing them into expository writing the past few weeks, so this was their first stab at writing from the circle map alone.
 

And today we finished up turkeys with a turkey of course! 

The glue was still drying as I left school today, so they will make their way onto the windows Monday morning!If you are interested in the turkey pattern, comment and I'll post it!


Enjoy your long weekend... I know I will!

Update: Here is the Turkey Pattern! Enjoy!

Clouds!

Hooray! We are so close to finishing our weather/seasons unit. Today was our last day of clouds and we push into the water cycle starting tomorrow.

The kids have done SUPER AWESOME with clouds, especially the pronunciation of the cloud names. They are so darling... every time there's a cloud in the sky they are staring up deciding which type it is, LOVE IT! To finish off clouds I had a tone of ideas, but a short week + a release day = less projects :(  So, we did a cloud accordion book with cotton ball clouds and a little black (which was to turn out gray, but you know those heavy handed first graders!) watercolor paint for that "stormy/fog" look.

Not super fancy but the kids adored it! After we finished the "art" aspect, we read they book to our buddies telling them all the facts we knew about each cloud. A fun way to end clouds!

Tomorrow is turkey day and I am excited! I made a new turkey pattern and I think it will be super cute, plus we have been talkin' turkeys all week, so their stories should be good, fingers crossed!

A Turkey Time Freebie!

Happy Sunday!

I have been been out and about this weekend in awe of all of the Christmas goodies making their way into stores (LOVE this time of year), but we can't forget about the turkey! So, in honor of the gobbler himself, here a little game I made called Turkey Time. We are reviewing time to the hour and half in class so this will fit in great this week. Click the pic to download and enjoy!

Weather Tools, Clouds and Pilgrims!

Okay, here we go.

This week we have been doing district benchmarks so, keeping up with classroom goodies has been tough. So here is a recap of some highlights from our week!

We are closing in on the final stretch of our weather unit. We finished up talking about tools to measure weather and completed these pages in our science journals.

You can get the weather tool pages HERE!

We also began learning about clouds. I took some tips from Cara at The First Grade Parade and Abby at The Inspired Apple to get our cloud week in gear.

And using my limited tech skills I managed to connect my desktop to the document camera and projector to show a powerpoint presentation I made about clouds. I amazingly found one pic of clouds over the Golden Gate Bridge... the kids were in awe :) If you think it might be useful to you, click the clouds to download the presentation.

The font wouldn't transfer, so hopefully you can change it to something cute when you download!

Next week we will do our cloud accordion books and It Looked Like Spilt Milk writing and art. Stay tuned for pics.

Yesterday we did our first "November" art of the month. We cranked out our Pilgrim boys and girls for our literacy quilt and compared and contrasted Pilgrim kids to 2011 kids in response to our literature, Sarah Morton's Day.

And a random, because I love my kiddos work... We reviewed short I this week and we made these short I pigs. I gave a directed art lesson on how to make the pigs and they filled them with short I words...SO cute :)

lengthy right?... well I'm glad you stuck with me. Have a very happy weekend!

Why Thank You :)

Thanks to sweet ol' Marcy over at Buzzin' on Cupcakes in 1st grade, I have been awarded the Blog on Fire Award! So to play by the rules, here are seven things about me and few blogs to check out...

1. I love cold, winter weather! It doesn't happen too often in Cali, so when we get it, I relish in the crispness of it all.

2. I am an avid crafter... cards, scrapbooks, and my latest adventure holiday decorations.

3. My husband and I desperately want a dog, but feel bad to keep him cooped up in an apartment all day.

4. Red is my favorite color! I mean ALL TIME FAVORITE! One Christmas when I was young I actually requested RED THINGS from Santa!

5. I am addicted to the DVR. Who knew life could be so blissful without commercials?

6. I want to visit every national park before I die... hello bucket list!

7. I love Disneyland, especially at the holidays!

Alrighty, you now know 7 random tidbits about me. Here are a few blogs I have come to adore:

The Teacher's Cauldron
Color Me Happy in Kindergarten
Pencils, Glue, and Tying Shoes
Rowdy in First Grade

Have fun checking them out! Stay tuned for some weather and cloud activities!