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!

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!