Lighting Up for the Holiday Season {a FREE craft}

We are ready to light up the next 3 weeks of fun and learning!

There are so many fun activities planned BUT we still have a LOT of learning to do in first grade.

One of my favorite things to do at home and in my classroom is decorate!

These lights add the perfect touch of "Hello Holiday Season"!

You can call them 'Christmas Lights' or 'Holiday Lights' depending on what your district allows ; )

They will add the perfect touch of holiday cheer to your classroom!

This craft is so versatile and can be made to fit any subject matter.

Here is an example of what I have done with my classes in the past.

Other Examples Include:

singular/plural nouns

noun/adjective to describe

numeral/facts

numeral/expanded form

numeral/draw tens and ones

Stop by my TpT store to grab this craft for FREE or click on the cover photo below!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

It's Fall in the Hall

One thing I love to do whether it's at home, in the classroom, or school hall is decorate!
And tis' the season for adding a little touch of pumpkin to every aspect of life.
It may not quite be October yet, but last week we broke out the pumpkins and got down to business.

I'm sure you can tell by the picture below what we have been studying, grammar wise.

We've been practicing sorting nouns into categories of person/place/thing.

One activity we did this week was illustrate our own nouns.

Each day I gave them the category: person, place or thing.

They came up with their own idea, illustrated it and wrote the word for it.

We put them on the big green chart. Now we have 20 people, places and things to refer to. 

Here's a close up look of our noun pumpkins.

They had to search through magazines to find pictures of 4 people, places and things. 

They turn out super cute and gave our hallway just the right amount of  "fallish" feel! 

Printable Anchor Charts are HERE!

I am uber-obsessed with anchor charts y'all! I love to have things hanging around my room that I use to teach with and that the kids are able to refer back to. You may remember seeing these babies a few weeks back after I finished making my own collection...yes, slaving with the pencils, crayons, and markers making them just perfect.  

 

 

I swore to you I would turn them into easy to use, printable anchor charts for your classroom and.....WALAH!

 

 

Your wish is my command!

This packet includes anchor charts for the following 6 grammar concepts:

*Nouns

*Verbs

*Adjectives

*Adverbs

*Prepositions

*Pronouns

 

I've made it pretty simple folks. If your printer is plugged in and your computer is on, all you have to do is click, print, and laminate!

 It's up in my TpT store and I'm putting them on sale for 20% off tonight and tomorrow.

 

 

Anchors Away...

Just the title makes me wish I was on a boat, drawing up the anchor, sailing away into the sunset without 6 and 7 year old crazies....ahh...20 more days well, until school is out *cancel* the boating dream.

Speaking of anchors and my complete love-fest with making anchor charts to fancy up learning and my room (courtesy of Cara Carroll and Abby Mullins), I have created 2 new charts the past few weeks to introduce a few grammar concepts to my firsties.

~Pronouns~

~Prepositions~

 

---------Here are a few I have made in the past!---------

 

I'm in the process of remaking them on the computer to put into a packet just-for-YOU!!! Can't wait to share the final product with you.

Hang in there...tomorrow is Friday!

It's Thanksgiving on TPT!

November is here and in full swing! I'm rolling out my TPT store this week with a new literacy and social studies unit, "It's Thanksgiving!".  This unit includes some great resources to keep your kiddos busy for the next few days before Thanksgiving break.

 

 

It includes the following:

-Turkeys can/have/are organizer

- Children then vs. now Venn diagram

-Describing Pilgrims bubble map

-Describing Native Americans bubble map

-Making words with 'pilgrims'

-Making words with 'turkeys'

-Making singular nouns plural (with Thanksgiving words)

-Thanksgiving ABC order

-'If you give a pilgrim a pie....' creative writing activity to go along with If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

 

 

Take a little peek at what you get below!

 

This week we are reviewing addition, subtraction, and fact families. I made this cute little math activity for my firsties to work on one day this week. All you need is a set of dominos and this FREEBIE! Students will choose 3 dominos, add the 2 parts together to make the whole, record the 3 numbers and then write a fact family using those numbers. Easy peasy! Click on the picture to download this activity!

 

Since my birthday is tomorrow and I'm feeling a little generous, I'm going to be giving away my It's Thanksgiving! unit to the first 2 people who leave me a comment with their email telling me their favorite part about the Thanksgiving holidays!

Don't forget to check out my new TPT store! There are a few freebies on there too : )

The Great Pumpkin Investigation

Trying to fit it all in...seems impossible most days.

That's one reason why integrating across subjects is vital to fitting it all in!

We took the theme of pumpkins this week and learned about them all across the board!

Here's a little bit about our pumpkin-y kind of week!
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GRAMMAR ACTIVITY

We looked through magazines and sorted nouns into the 3 categories of person, place, and thing.
We then glued them on to our pumpkins.

Our nouns pumpkins grace our hallway like a pumpkin patch!


READING/SCIENCE ACTIVITIES
We read The Pumpkin Book to learn some facts about pumpkins
Then we recorded our learning on our 'can/have/are' chart that was shaped like a pumpkin!

We also studied how a pumpkin grows, the life cycle, while reading the book From Seed to Pumpkin.

After whole group discussion, we worked on our sequencing skills and sequenced the steps of the life cycle using pictures from {here} and sentences I typed up to match them.

We reinforced our learning by completing this life cycle chart together.

 The following day they had to apply their new pumpkin schema of the life cycle and complete this little sequencing art activity.

WRITING
We've been trying really hard to write our sentences using correct grammar and punctuation.
  I had them transfer their pictures of the pumpkin's life cycle into sentences.
This writing activity came from Oceans of First Grade Fun. 
Click on the picture for their freebie!

  

MATH/SCIENCE ACTIVITIES

 After learning a little bit about pumpkins, I brought a pumpkin to school for our pumpkin investigation! 

Words cannot explain how excited the kiddos were. Here are a few things we did during our investigation.

{I prepped this chart to hold all of our pumpkin data we observed}

 First, we examined our pumpkin and described what it looked like on the outside.

 Then, I cut the top off and we scooped out the seeds and saved them to count.

We worked on our skip counting by putting the seeds into groups of 10. 

  Putting them all to work, well this took no time at all. I had them estimate how many seeds they thought were inside. We counted by 10's to find our answer and I think we were all surprised by our number of 463!

We practice our measuring skills...

 We measured how tall the pumpkin was with cubes.

As the day went on, we recorded all of our data on our chart. 

Here is our pumpkin investigation data. The kids had their own paper to fill out.

It can be found {here}.

Fitting it all in may seem impossible at times. But it is units like these that help make it all a possibility. 

It's also SO much fun that the kids don't even realize they are hard at work!

A Pumpkin-y Kind of Week

Sunday's over already?  {Insert long s-i-g-h}  At least the weather here in Texas is looking a little bit more Fall-like!  I'm sure it will be back up to 90 degrees before long (boo). Since this is the last week of October, I thought I would share a few pumpkin activities I plan to do with my firsties this week! 

We've been working really hard on contractions and nouns for the past few weeks and I wanted to incorporate some independent practice into my center rotations.  So I made this here little Pumpkin Literacy Center packet of goodness for my firsties.

 

It includes a cute pumpkin poem, a contraction match up (using not contractions), and a common/proper noun sort.  It even comes with recording sheets! Great for literacy centers.

 

Click on the picture to download!

   

Since Halloween falls on a school day {insert 2nd long s-i-g-h}  I have put together a 'Pumpkin Investigation' for my class to do on Wednesday.  I'm hoping (fingers crossed) that all ...you know what... doesn't break loose!  This fabulous investigation printable is from Julie Lee over at Mrs. Lee's Kindergarten. Click on the picture below to download her amazing freebie!

Here are a few other things I plan to do all inspired by the magnificent Cara over at The First Grade Parade.  Check out her post {here} and {here} all about her Pumpkin Day! 

 

I will be back later this week with all the pumpkin-y fun we had during our Pumpkin Investigation and lots more pumpkin activities!

 



A Little Bit of This (Nouns), A Little Bit of That (Contractions)

There is just something about this week that has got me beat! I'm ready for a few days off (amen?). And how f---a---r  off is Thanksgiving break again??  30 days....ohh Lordy. That week off never sounded so good.  Now that I'm wishing it was November, back to October.  Here's what skills we have been working on the past week.

First up: nouns. Together, we make a big chart that lists types of people, places, and things.  I give each student 3 white squares.  On it they draw a picture and label one person, place, and thing.  Then I glue it on the chart.  Here's what our final product looks like.

Next up: contractions.  I was so anxious to do this cute little activity I found on Pinterest.  But, oh my word...it's SO much work ya'll.  I bet the mommas who I sent all the circles and legs home with to cut out just love me right now!

We've only learned about 'not' contractions so I made a list of words they could choose from to add with 'not' and make their contraction. All that hard work and they look pretty darn cute!

 

And when you add the two together...this is what you get...

 

 

This teacher is off to get some much needed rest...for I think my firsties have drove me batty (which I mean literally in every sense)!