The Day It Rained Hearts and a Monkey...

Yes, you read correctly... a monkey! But before we get to that... I have posted my mini unit to go with the book The Day It Rained Hearts, by Felecia Bond. I LOVE this Valentine's Day book! If you don't have it... GET IT, you'll be happy you did! And then check out my mini unit, on TPT right now for only $3.50!


This is what you'll get:

check it out HERE on TPT

and now for the monkey! Have you seen Mrs. Cupcake's cute V Day crafts?? Well I love them but we have a different craft on the agenda for Valentine's Day... Still, I couldn't resist putting a little twist on hers and making this one! I'm sending it to my sister for Valentines Day ( I wish I could be there for when she opens the giant envelope!!)

not as cute as Mrs. Cupacke's, but fun none the less!

 Happy Tuesday!!!

100th Day Fun!

This week was our 100th day of school. I love this school celebration because the kids take so much pride in how far they have come! Our day was a little tight since we had specials that day but we did manage to fit in some fun. This is how we spent some of our day...

We started the day by introducing these cards. OMG! The kiddos LOVED them... Periodically throughout the day I let a kid (chosen at random) tear a card from the ring and read it aloud, then we all did what it said. By the end of they day we had done everything from jumping jacks to high fives (10 things 10 times each!).

If you would like the cards you can get them HERE.

And we needed to make our hats... I know the norm is a 100th day crown, but I love wacky. So instead we made 100th day Crazy Hats! Each kiddo added ten strips with ten squares to their headband to add up to 100.

Can you find the zombie? Oh, first graders...

We also did this book imagining our life if we were 100. Their answers were great!

just in case you can't tell he wrote... Farrari, brother, mom's house

I love this one!

If you would like the book you can get it HERE.

I hope you all have a fun 100th day too! I'll be back soon with some polar bear fun and can you believe that is is almost February... yikes! I'll post some of our valentine to dos soon. Happy Saturday!

Workshop Revamp! In Pictures

I don't know about you, but language arts workshop is my favorite time of the day. But ...

I felt like it was lacking. My small groups were rockin' it out over at the table with me, but the others were drowning in a sea of worksheets (and we are not "permitted" to do centers) . In any case it's NOT what I wanted for my kiddos. So a revamp was in need. After many months of blog reading and pinterst searching I found it... ADD A NEXT DO! duh!

So now my kids have three steps to their independent workshop. 1. Must Do (related to our HM lessons) 2. Next Do (a skill related game or activity) 3. May Do (independent reading) And I pull kids as needed!

Check out pics of our new system!

Our Next Do activities lists... I rotate their numbers every other day.

This is where the kiddos can pick up their Next Do activities.

These are some the next do activities that they have...

Thank you Donors Choose for the CD players and books!

HM vocabulary ABC order

Monster HFWs and and Fry's Phrases

HFW Pass It Sticks

Making Words- Short Vowel Version

HFW Blast Off!

And my favorite next do is this take on Boggle Jr. that I made (lots of love and hours went into it, but the kiddos are eating it up!)

The kids are really digging our new workshop (and I am saving on grading and copies... YES!). 

So... do you have any other next do ideas? I'd love to hear them!!

Let's Catch Up!

So it's been super crazy around here lately.... way too much going on. But here is what we have been up to :)

We completed our January quilt. I think this one turns out the funniest because they have to free cut all of the shapes. I mean... look at the boots!!!

We started our I Love America unit and kicked it off with talking about how we honor America. We do the pledge and sing flag songs every morning (their favorite if Yankee Doodle, mine is You're A Grand Old Flag) so the concept of honoring America is totally relatable. We made our American flags and completed a pledge cloze worksheet.

And this weeks HM story was The Sleeping Pig. It's about a pig that falls asleep in a watermelon patch and the child in the story calls on her animal friends to help get the pig out of the patch. So, to go along with the story we made ourselves enjoying watermelon (just like the girl does at the end of the story) and wrote how we would get a pig out of our patch. I think they came out darling!

(on left: I would get Mrs. Pig out by rolling her with my skateboard on right: I would get Mrs. Pig out by playing the gong)

See busy... Ill be back soon with some freebies, plus I have to tell you all about my new workshop (I'm in LOVE with it)! See you then!

Penguins!

Next week will be penguins week and I wanted to share one of the penguin projects that we'll be doing. We will absolutely be reading one of my favorite books Tacky the Penguin. LOVE HIM!

 

So, to go along with the book is this craft...

I haven't decided whether or not to do wiggle eyes instead... what do you think? In any case, construction paper and scrapbook pages will make up the rest of Tacky and the kids will be writing to go along with it! I will post pics next week when the kiddos have made theirs.

But, in case you were looking for another penguin craft... below is the pattern for my Tacky the Penguin. Have fun! And... if you end up using the pattern, let me know! I'd love to know how your kids liked it.