Mapping it Out!

So... I am Back!

It has been so LONG... I hope you are still here with me. It has been a crazy couple of few weeks- but I have made my way through it all and have some fun stuff to share!

So Mapping-

Do you teach maps? We do the whole Me on the Map thing and learn our city, state, country, yadda, yadda... But I love mapping! Maybe it the Girl Scout in me! lol

So every year I break out all of the mapping skills and tools I can wrangle and teach my kids all about maps and how to use them. After we do the Me on the Map goodies, I go into directions.

We learn North, South, East, and West (and my favorite mnemonic device - Never Eat Soggy Waffles; which by the way my kids LOVE and have now mastered the names of the directions!)

To do this I have a set of compass key chains from Target. I have 6 of them so my kids work in in groups of 3-4.

They sit in a circle surrounding their compass while I give instructions on how to use it and which way to turn it etc...

Then we all look at them together, in our groups and figure out where North, South, East and West are.

After we have had a a few min of compass practice I assign them all a sign. Some groups get a direction and others get an object. Direction kids have to tape their sign to the correct wall using their compass. They object kids go to their object and use their compass to the complete the sentences: "Our object is ________. It is on the ________ wall."

Later we head outside with our compasses to locate things on our campus in each direction.

We use our compass to find the directions and talk about what we see. Then the kids draw a picture of one of those things:

We didn't use a fancy worksheet, but I have one here for you! Click the pic to download!

Next week we will be building a neighborhood map-model and the kiddos will be writing directions (informational text- hello CCSS) to get from various places in the neighborhood. I can't wait to share it with you!

And it will all lead up to using a "special map" left by Frosty the Snowman to find our holiday gifts on the last day before winter break! (Plus I get to squeeze in some sequence writing about how they found their gifts!)

Well, since I have been gone I have a bunch to share... so see you Friday!

Blends, Elections and Turkeys!

What a week it has been!

I am very happy to be celebrating our Veterans with this three day weekend, I know I need it as much as my kiddos!

So what did we do this week.... Blends, Elections and Turkeys BABY! Take a gander...

First up blends:

This week Treasures introduced r and s blends. Combined with our l blends we did a few weeks ago the kids were rockin and rollin! My para was our for the week so my kiddos had to do an independent center... GASP! Don't worry, they handled their first one really well, I was proud :)

They worked on my Fall Blends literacy center

don't look at the backwards b :(  We are still working on it... I was busy with my small group so this is the only pic I have... but there are a bunch of sets for them to work on each kiddo did two sets

You can pick up my Fall Blends center game HERE!

We also did a blend slider activity... I love sliders :) They make things so much more interesting!

The kiddos put their sliders together ( I pre-sliced the openings for them) and then made a series of words, determining them to be nonsense or real

You can pick up my Blend Slider HERE and HERE (make sure to get both to make the complete slider)!

We also finished our election unit this week, culminating with an in class election on Tuesday. We are lucky enough that our school cafeteria is used as a polling place, so we got the chance to tour the polling area. Ruth, the poll worker, explained the process of visiting the polls and what each poll worker does. Then we headed back to class, assigned poll worker jobs and went to voting...

Check in- one kiddo highlighted names and checked IDs,  the other handed out the ballots

Voting booths, courtesy of our math privacy boards :)

Tearing the voting stub and dropping the ballot in the box. Ruth, the poll-worker was kind enough to give me "I voted" stickers for all of my kids, so after they dropped in their ballot each on got a sticker :) They were beaming!

The kids voted two at a time while the others worked on their Thanksgiving place mats. All in all it took us a half hour to get through the voting process. I will be doing this again, for sure!

And as if the hasn't been enough going on we have been working on our class turkey also :) Each kiddo took a blank feather home and decorated it in any way that they wanted...

I took this photo on Tuesday when I had only a few kids return their feathers (they had all week to work on them). I'll snap another shot Tuesday with the complete turkey :)

Okay, that's enough! Thanks for sticking with me! Have a wonderful Monday!

Happy November! (w/ math freebies)

We made it!  October was crazy, but I made it through. While, I love all of the bats, ghosts and pumpkins, Halloween and October just aren't my fave...

But November and December ... L.O.V.E.!!!

So we kicked off November with a bang these last two days, take a look :)

I made a few new math tub activities centered on addition using the count on strategy:

BUMP... my kids had never played this game. They thought it was pretty cool!

+1 Cover Up... can I just say that I use those dollar store mini plastic cups for everything!

Turkey True and False

You can pick up these math activities HERE, but take note: there are no recording sheets. We use this as our "Friday Free Choice" time... only they have no choice, because I tell them where to go and what activity to... Oh well... they love it anyway and it lasts a quick 30min, two stations 12 min each with 6 min to clean up :)!  I rarely have the kids using recording sheets during this time, because I walk around and check in on each group and recording skills/participation.

We also dug in on Cara Carroll's Pint Sized Presidential Unit. I am so glad I own this! It is worth every penny...

We started with If we were president and completed the craftivity

so cute!

On Tuesday we will hold our election and the kids are already buzzing about it!

Have a great week :)

October Fun

So, it has been FOREVER since I've been here. So busy the past couple of weeks. Crazy conferences, assessment weeks and an observation in the works.

But even with all of that we have has a bit of time to squeeze in some October fun! Take a look :)

This past week we worked on turning subtraction word problems into number sentences. We also learned the classic "Five Little Pumpkins" poem. So, I thought... why not combine them!

In pairs, the kiddos told pumpkin subtraction stories to each other. The listener worked out the story with their pumpkin puppets and together they created a picture and number sentence to match. They would have done this ALL day had I let them :)

You can get the clip art pieces and the recording sheet HERE (thank you DJ Inkers!). If you need details on how they were made, let me know!

We also read the story Where's My Mummy? and made these adorable tear are mummies.It is a simple gingerbread template with the hands cut off. Then the kids tore white and shades of gray paper into thin strips. A couple of torn black circles make the eyes.

This week I also made cupcakes with my auction winners. Our school hosts a fall auction where each teacher donates some time to complete an activity with their auction winner and a friend or two. Some teachers take their winners for ice cream, host a pirate lunch party, or take them to a movie. I decided to decorate Halloween cupcakes!

My winner and her friend learned how to make a pumpkin, monster, spider web and then one of their own design. I even busted out the piping bags and tips for them :)

not too bad for first graders!

These ones were mine :)

Alright, I will be back soon (I promise) with some workstation and guided reading activities.

Have a wonderful Friday!

Picture Day! Project

This last week was individual student picture day and we did the best art project to go with it!

My teammate introduced me to this book:

It's the cutest book written and illustrated by a second grade class here in California (which, by the way, totally impressed my kids!) full of funny things that happened to them on picture day; crazy hair, loose tooth etc...

So, we went ahead and read the book and did a directed art activity; drawing how we looked on picture day. This was hilarious. I took their picture (so I didn't have to wait to get the minis back from the photog). The kids were sure into it! And to be honest, most of them are spot on to their real picture!

Instead of having them create something that happened to them on picture day, we wrote something that we did to get ready for picture day. 


This one cracked me up...

Thank goodness for big sisters! lol

Each one came out different which was PERFECT!

So, if you haven't had your picture day yet or want to tuck this away for next year, I'm letting you know it is a must do!

I'll be back with some blend freebies so swing by again soon!

Sight Words!! and a Freebie

How many sight words do your kiddos need to learn by the end of the year? 50? 100? Well, we are pushing 180!! So I do as many sight word activities as I can each day to help my littles get their words down.

One of their favorites is I have, Who Has. We play that pretty much every other day. Thank goodness there are SO many versions on TPT to choose from, because I seriously CAN NOT get that game to line up when I make it! LOL

But this week I switched it up and introduced Sight Word Races! This is not my idea. In fact, I have seen so many versions out there, who knows who invented it? But it is genius. My kiddos especially LOVED that one word comes in 1st, another 2nd and then a 3rd. They were begging to keep playing to find out who would be 4th, 5th and 6th. I love firsties!

I chose 6 words that I KNEW they needed to work on  and filled them into each row. Then I gave every kiddo a dice and let them at it! I told them they were the track announcers, so each time they rolled that number they had to announce the "car" (word) that was coming around the track. With all of the announcing and dice dropping it was noisy, but you just cant quiet the "we are ALL on task noisy"...

With sight words on my brain I came across these guys at the Lakeshore Outlet...

I have the level one version. I am super excited to match these cubes with some reusable sight word race cards for my word work center.

So, want to do some sight word racing of your own? Just click the pic to get my version of sight word races and have some fun!

Thanks Scrappin Doodles for the cute Gators!

What do you do to help your kiddos learn their sight words? I am ALWAYS on the lookout for new ideas!

Apple Lap Books and Pictures

We did it! We finished our apple unit and lap books! And to be honest, I was SO ready to be done with apples. I am ready to move into pumpkins and spiders!!

This week was busy...

apple tasting!This is the first year my class has liked the red apple best. Usually they are digging the green apple, so this was a nice change!

 Onto the apple lap book! This has taken up the whole unit to finish. Each time we did an activity, we added it to our lap books. And on Friday we finished with our tissue paper apples and made some apple sauce.

My kids LOVE them! You should have seen them yesterday, they were smiling ear to ear at their finished products! And I am am happy that all of their hard work on apples is neat and organized in these cute books :)

If you are interested in my lap book goodies, it is up on my TPT on sale for a few days! Check it out!


And, this is the only proof I have that we made apple sauce. We were so busy enjoying the fruits of our labor,  that I forgot to take pics of the kiddos eating. But according to one of my cute firsties... It was "heavenly" lol, love her!

And to top it all off we had miss-match day this week...

miss-matched shoes! That's me in the brown and black boots!

miss-matched socks!

Hope you all had a fun week as well! See you soon :)