What we did this week

This week has been so busy! Open house is next week and we are in the midst of testing so, you know its all "nose to the grindstone" around here :)

Here are some pics of what's be happening this week...

We have been working on fluency all year but I am making one last BIG push by using the APE! The kids think he's funny and they are encouraged :)

We also sent our 4/5th reading buddies some extra love for STAR testing.... just to let them know we were cheering them on!

I bagged and stapled and the kiddos wrote encouraging words on the back of the tags!

We worked on our zoo animals from my Off to the Zoo! Unit... so far we have done the tiger, lion and flamingo

We learned about zookeepers and made the too (also from my zoo unit)

The cutest zookeepers ever and a bonus....I am in love with the border I got for this board!

And to top it all off, we took a cue from Cara over at The First Grade Parade and created cinquains! It worked just as well with animals as the subjects and the crayon water color art is a perfect pair!

so yes.. it says "it makes me feel sad"... so I asked the kiddo why that was (because the teacher in me was like"WHAT!") and she stated, "well... in the book I read it said that some people treat gorillas badly and that made me feel sad." I should have known she had a great reason...I love first graders!

See! It was quite a week and that's only a snippet of what we did! I hope you all have a great weekend!

Oh... and I just revised the writing paper on my Fun in the Sun! unit, so if you already purchased it, go re-download!

solid figure freebie and fun in the sun!

The weather has been absolutely beautiful this weekend, so this will be quick because I want to be outside at the pool! And wanting to be at the pool has inspired my newest pack posted to TPT... Fun In the Sun :) complete with two craftivities and 8 math and litereacy centers all summer themed. Take a peek:

I always do a summer themed week our last week of school. And we do a beach party on our last day instead of a classroom party, so this will fit in perfectly! You can pick this up for $3 in my TPT store.

And onto the free stuff... A few people requested the solid figure activities so click the picks to download!It has the flip book and a few other worksheets we did to follow up our activities from earlier in the week.

Have a great day!

Solid Figures and a winner!

Hi all!

First things first... if you have already purchased my Off To The Zoo! Unit from TPT it was just revised :) Head on over and re-download!

And congrats to the winner of the giveaway....commenter #9 Kate! Check your email!

Alrighty...

This week has been all about solid figures. Now this is not new to the kiddos (solid shapes are discussed in kinder) but, honestly, they have the most difficult time remembering the names of the figures and counting the faces and corners! So I thought it would be worth it to give them a fun review this week!

Since my kiddos loved the coin flipper, I had them make a sold figure one too... They loved it just as much... first graders are so easy to please :)

nothing super fancy... but if you are interested in the project let me know and I'll post the patterns and pieces!

Then we began to classify and sort our solid figures. I've seen this hula hoop venn around the web a bit so I had to give it a try... Super fun!

 The kiddos helped me sort the solid figures by the type of face it had... we used some actual solid figure blocks and some realia... the kids were really crossing their fingers that there were graham crackers in that box and we weren't using it for math... nope! lol

Today we worked in small groups to investigate the solid figures. I only have one set of blocks so I broke the kids into groups of two and three. I assigned them each a solid figure and they had to create a poster that told us about their figure (it had to include the name, a picture, the number of faces and corners and if it was flat or round).

I LOVE seeing firsties working on group projects!

Here is a completed poster.

P.S. I NEVER, I mean NEVER let them use markers in class, but they have been so unbelievably awesome lately, why not? right? So I handed a box of markers to each group with the instructions... "trace and decorate your poster" ... A hot mess? ... No...I think they turned out great!

And... I had totally planned on posting some solid figure freebie worksheets that we did with our investigations... but I left my thumb drive at school... so I'll post them tomorrow :)

Till then.. :)

We're off to the zoo! and a freebie

Happy Sunday!

Okay... we're not actually heading to the zoo :( We are going to the Academy of Sciences instead! But believe me, it has its fair share of animal antics, along with a bunch of other goodies too! So... I decided to make this month Zoo month in my class! We have been up to our ears in all things zoo! The kids are LOVING it!!

I have been mentioning my zoo unit here and there for the past couple of weeks... and its finally done :) Hooray!! It include all of what you see below and a little bit more!

You can pick it up at my TPT store for just $5! Check out the preview there for a better look at things :)

But wouldn't you love a chance to win it? There are two ways to enter this give away:

1. follow my blog (leave a comment)

2. follow my TPT store (leave a comment)

I will choose a winner at random on Wednesday evening :)

Oh... and a freebie to celebrate Earth Day!

 Have a GREAT DAY!

It's Sparkling!

Two tidbits before we get to the teaching stuff...

So... today I am meeting my kiddos in line after lunch and one of my cuties comes running up to me and says, in the most excited voice ever..."Mrs. Hodson! It's SPARKLING!" Um... he meant sprinkling :) LOVE!

And...I spent all day thinking it was Tuesday (it's not, my kiddos informed me after we went to the computer lab and there was another class in there)... well at least I didn't spend the day thinking it was Thursday!

Yes, it was one of those days.

Alrighty, onto some teaching stuff...This week we started in on clocks.

I got these fun dry erase clocks from donors choose and the kids love them! We practiced setting the time to the hour and to the half.

And here's a game that we will be doing in math tubs next week. Just click the pic to download :)

 We also started our animal reports this week (a part of our zoo unit). The kids were allowed to choose any animal that could be found in a zoo, which opened up ALOT of options! My kiddos choose everything from elephants to the duck-billed platypus  (thanks phineas and ferb!). Since our school's library is tiny, I headed to the city library to pick up some extra books and it was SO worth it. Each kiddo was able to get their own book to do research out of! Today's assignment: find two facts about your animal!

And since it is BEYOND impossible to find animal books at a 1st/2nd grade for every animal, we headed to the computer lab (yep.. we had to come back later in the day since I slipped up earlier) to do some research on kids.nationalgeographic.com. OMG! A great site... complete with pics, info, videos and even sound clips of the animals.

They will start writing down their facts and organizing them tomorrow :) The class is buzzing about animals non-stop!

Oh! And I have been tagged :) I will get those questions answered soon!

Have a great rest of the week!

LOOK!

Look what I made today....

I hope you all had a happy Easter :)

A little Bit of Everything

Today is a furlough Friday :( ... but at least it is giving me a chance to finish up my Zoo unit and share what we did this week.

We are still reviewing homophones and the kiddos went on a homophone hunt around the room. Since we can't do language arts centers at our school, the kids don't get to "read the room" very often, so this activity was a real treat for them! I posted homophone pairs around the room and sent them off to look for them :) You can find this activity in my Homophone Mini Unit on TPT!

I love seeing firsties at work! Please advert your eyes from the disaster called my document camera cart... yikes!

We are also going  full throttle in money right now! The kiddos are actually doing really well! SO PROUD! We played a Stamp It! Game to practice making amounts with coins. Each kiddo got a Stamp It! board and a tub of coins, then they went to work. I gave out mini stickers for three in a row (vertical), small stickers for five in a row (horizontal) and a large sticker for a completed board... (p.s. my kids will do just about anything for a sticker...lol). As they made their amounts I quickly zoomed around the room to stamp their boards. It was crazy and noisy, but completely on task, on standard and SO MUCH FUN!

You can pick up the Money Stamp It! page HERE :) There are two versions, one at grade level and one below/for kinders.

And, since today is a non school day we squeezed in a tiny bit of bunny/Easter stuff yesterday. We did this cute addition and subtraction egg hunt from Miss Kindergarten. My kids loved using the magnifying glasses. We also made bunny ear hats. This is not a new idea by any means, but honestly, the kids think it is the greatest thing ever. They are so precious!

and... want a peek at my zoo unit?? Look at this cutie!

This craftivity will be included in my giant Zoo unit... to be released soon :)

Have a great weekend!

Elmer! and Is/Are

Do you read this book to your class?

 

I just love it! This quirky patchwork elephant named Elmer (fyi-the name of my future basset hound!) feels bad because he looks different than the other elephants, but he comes to find out that being different is what makes him special! Such a happy story :) and it fits perfectly with our zoo theme so... It's this month's quilt!

We "quilted" different colors of tissue paper onto our Elmer pattern with starch and then wrote about what made us special. The kiddo above can do animation! Super special, right :)

On TPT note...is/ are is our grammar focus this week so I put together a couple of small group/center activities for is/are (picture sorting and sentence matching with an independent/recording sheet) and added it to TPT for $1.50, check it out HERE ... and due to some interest in a homophone pack, I put my worksheets from the other day together with a new one, two center games and the perfect pair pear pattern for $1.50 as well and you can find that one HERE :)

Happy Monday!