Homophones Baby!

Holly Batman... what a week! Coming back from break has been exhausting! We began learning a grade level Mexican folklorico dance for an open house performance (Go Mexican Hat Dance!), started our zoo/animal unit and .... did homophones, nothing crazy new but here's a peek at our week with with homophones.

We talked about them extensively... my EL's have a hard time with these, but they are really hanging in there this year! We used our anchor chart and I gave them several examples to start our list. Then we read a few books that helped us add to our list...

Later they got to play a homophone match up game. My kiddos love to get "scrambled" and then hunt to find their match, so we play games like this often :) After they found their match, each pair came to the front to explain why they were homophones and what each word meant.

this pair was meet and meat! Don't you love the shirt tucked into the sweats...lol... oh, first graders!

Then the kiddos took their word from the pair and put it onto a pear!

knight and night :)

Here's a look at our finished work

And how about a copy of the workshop sheet my kiddos did? Click the pic to download :)

Just a bit of Money...

Well, I'm back to school this week (good-bye spring break) but honestly I was happy to get back and get going! We are about to dive into our big Zoo unit, which coincidentally purposely coincides with open house in a few weeks (pics to come)... And we get to start money!! Yea! My kiddos are pretty good with base 10s and tallys, so hopefully this whole money thing will be a breeze (fingers crossed!).

We started yesterday with a money intro. We've been doing coins in board math for weeks, but this was a little more in depth.

We did our poem...Click the pic to download :)

We created a chart that compared the coins...

Those gray blobs are coin rubbings. I couldn't believe how many of my kids had NEVER done a rubbing! They were in awe!

And then we made this flip book! I am LOVE with this, as are the kids. They were really excited to practice/quiz with their friends... so cute :)

 You can get the chart HERE and the flip book HERE! I hope you can use them.

And, on an organizational note I saw this idea on a blog last week, can't remember who's... but, seriously! What a great way to store money! I just had to do it too! So, I grabbed the play money (from our math program) and mini tubs from the Dollar Tree and put it together...Love it!

and... a Food Network magazine (the chocolate one from last month.. TO DIE FOR!!)

Have a great night!

Syllables, St. Patty's and a Freebie

Happy Friday! It's been awhile, so let's catch up! Here's what we were up to this week...

We have been doing a bit of syllable work. Identifying words with 1 syllable... SO HARD for my kiddos! So we played a scoot game to practice syllable counting. When I moved into my classroom last year I was lucky enough to find these digraph and blend tubs from Lakeshore!

a $70 value... FREE for me! Super Score!

They have come in VERY handy and they worked perfectly for this game too! I placed a number and a "toy" on each desk. Then the kiddos rotated around the room counting out the syllables for each item and recording it down.

 I have to admit having them all counting out different words at the same time was loud, but SO great to see! After each child brought the toy from their desk and counted out the syllables in front of the class and we checked our recordings together! We just used a plain sheet of paper that day, but I created this one to use for the next time we play... you can get it HERE.

In St. Patty's day news... well, a whole lot didn't go on...  Since we didn't have school today, I had to squeeze what I could in on Thursday, amidst specials and a second grade musical performance, there just wasn't a whole lot of time. But, thanks to some great bloggers out there I was able to borrow some fun ideas like...

this worksheet from Michelle over at Fabulous in First that went with a Scholastic easy reader

and...

this add and cover game from Nicole over at Mrs Ricca's Kindergarten (P.S. if you want to stock up on March goodies for next year go to her blog NOW she has a ton of March themed goodies for free!)

Alright on to the free stuff! I have been gearing up for April's math activities so here are a couple of freebies I hope you can use them. Just click the pics to download and leave some love :)

I was lucky enough to have the day off today as I roll into my spring break, so I have been catching up on some work... let's be honest... blog stalking and TV... thank you DVR (ha ha)!

Hope you all have a good one!