Black Friday FLASH FREEBIES

Want to join in on some holiday fun today?

All you have to do is follow me on Instagram!

@fortheloveoffirstgrade

Throughout the day I will be posting ALL of my holiday units as a FREEBIE for a limited amount of time.

All I ask is that you leave feedback if you download.

Thanks for playing along!

Five for {Thanksgiving} Friday!

Gobble, Gobble.

This teacher is off for Thanksgiving after today!

Here's a peek at a few Thanksgiving activities we completed throughout the week.

This doesn't have anything to actually do with Thanksgiving BUT I LOVE this shirt.

So cute and comfy!

Find it {HERE}

On to actual Thanksgiving things...

 

We disguised a Turkey as a Pigeon and tried convincing people to eat hot dogs instead of turkey for Thanksgiving.

We read Sarah Morton's Day (well skim read it since it's so long) and recorded what we would do if we were pilgrims. We did a little rip art as well!

We reviewed fact families and wrote our facts on feathers.

One of my favorite Thanksgiving activities is our "How to Cook a Turkey" writing.

Some of thm are just down right hilarious!

"....put it in the oven for 1 hour at 25 degrees..."

I hope you enjoy your Thanksgiving break with your families!

Introducing Compound Words with a FREEBIE!

Compound Words.

I just LOVE them!

They are so much fun to teach because firsties just LOVE them too.

I introduced them last week using my anchor chart I created below.

{I most always pre-make my charts for the purpose of introducing a topic}

We also watched Dr. Jean's catchy song. My class this year is a singing group!

We read the book Once There Was a Bull.... (Frog).

This book is a great compliment to an introductory lesson as well. It gets the kids involved as they guess the second half of the compound word using the clues the book lends.

In small groups we played a card match game. I wrote compound words on 2 different color cards and the kiddos had to match the two words together to make a new one.

I put together a FREEBIE with all the activities mentioned in this post (minus the book and song).

Click on the picture above to download.

It includes:

*anchor chart

*center game

*recording sheet

Have a great week and happy {almost} Thanksgiving!

November, Turkeys and FREEBIES, Oh My!

Oh how I LOVE this time of year.

Routines are in place, rotations are abounding, readers are blooming...

But most of all it leads to fun themed filled learning experiences. 

Let's talk Turkey!

Decorations:

My team and I turkey'fied' our hall this past week.

We each took a different color feather and had our kiddos trace their hands. 

We change out our picture each month and this month WE are in the Turkey's roasting pan! AH!

Math:

We've been putting our addition and subtraction knowledge together to make fact families. We created fact family turkeys. The numbers to make up the family are on the turkey's head and his tail feathers are actually the facts!

Here's a little extra practice we do with dominoes...

{Click on the picture to download the FREEBIE}

Phonics/Spelling:

To review blends I give each student 4 feathers and have them look through their books in their book boxes for words that have that  blend in them. They record the words on the feathers, I have them read me their words, they outline with marker and create a turkey with them!

{Find the FREE template here from Cara Carroll}

Writing:

Alliterations, or tongue twisters, are one of the most fun things to teach!

Kids love them and what they come up with is even better.

You really get to see how creative firsties can be!

To start this activity, we first brainstorm a list of "T" words.

 

Each students has to do the following:

1. Name their turkey with a "T" name

2. Give their turkey an action

Here is my example I share with the class:

Student work:

"Teddy the turkey threw the tiger at the teacher."

We obviously LOVE turkeys!

It's Time for Thanksgiving

November is in full swing, and I absolutely LOVE it!

The holidays are my favorite time of the year. Not to mention...It's my birthday month (yes month!), the kiddos are finally into a set routine and I get to spend a week at Thanksgiving with my family!

Here's a little bit of what we do during the week of Thanksgiving using my It's Thanksgiving unit. 

You can pick it up on sale the rest of this week...perfect time for the week before Thanksgiving!

Stop by my shop to find this Thanksgiving FREEBIE !

{Click on the link to grab it in my shop}

Addition & Subtraction War

Do your kids need some extra practice with addition and subtraction?

Mine always do!

Here's an easy game to teach your kids that can easily be switched from addition to subtraction once they know how to play the game.

What you need:

a deck of playing cards

Yes, that's it!

To start, I removed all of the face cards and the joker.

Addition War:

Students play with a partner.

1) Cut the card deck in half, one for each partner.

2) Both partners flip over 2 cards.

3) Cover largest number with one hand.

4) Beginning with that number, add by counting on.

5) The player with the highest sum wins.

Play until all the cards have been used. The player with the most cards at the end is the winner!

Change it up!

Subtraction War:

Students play with a partner.

1) Cut the card deck in half, one for each partner.

2) Both partners flip over 2 cards.

3) Cover largest number with one hand.

4) Beginning with that number, subtract by counting backwards.

5) The player with the highest largest difference wins.

Play until all the cards have been used. The player with the most cards at the end is the winner!

It's My Birthday and Five for Friday!

What better day to have a birthday than Friday of course!

And what better way to celebrate than with a little 5 for Friday.

My birthday is today and I'm throwing a 20% off my ENTIRE TpT store to celebrate.

So go get your shop on for the next 3 days to help me celebrate!

Time for a little flashback to last Friday for Halloween...my wonderful team and I participated in the character parade our school has annually. We were Cat and the Hat and the Things.

(I'm on the far left)

Then my teaching bestie and I decided to ditch the blue wigs and put on a much cuter and comfier second costume for the day...

We spend this past week reviewing digraphs. Each day we focused on a different digraph. We went on word hunts, recorded our words, and turned them into anchor charts!

In math this week we introduced positional words and used them to sequence events in the story Duck on a Bike. This cute lesson is from Lindsay Keegan.

We've spend quite a bit of time with non-fiction text and discovering schema. 

We talked about what we are "specialists" on and what we have LOTS of schema about.

They took their "specialty" and turned it into their first non-fiction writing piece and I have been BEYOND impressed!!!

Don't forget to stop by my TpT shop and to hop on over to Doodlebugs to link up!

Backwards Numbers...Still!?!?

I have never had a group of kiddos as backwards as these are....

well not the kids, their numbers!!!

It's like an epidemic.

And it's driving me crazy.

So none other than Cara to the rescue.

I came across this little gem of a lesson {here}.

I taught this lesson in small groups during Math Tub rotations.

Numbers 0-4 are good numbers.

They always line up facing the right way ready to leave.

Numbers 5-6 are bad numbers.

When they line up, they face backwards and aren't ready to leave.

Number 7-9 are good numbers.

They always face forward and see the bad numbers.

My firsties were SO able to relate to this since we line up numerous times a day.

I even refer to the numbers as the kids line up:

"Look at ____. She/he is lined up just like a (3). And uh oh, look at ______. She/he looks like a (5)."

I hung it up under our class number line and my kiddos numbers have changed drastically.

LOVE!