A Day with MLK {mini-unit}!

It seems like January starts the beginning of the never.ending holiday celebrations. First, there is Martin Luther King Jr. day, followed by Groundhog's day, the 100th day of school, and Valentine's Day. {Holy holidays!}  Uhhh, can anyone say PTL for Spring Break!

Since there are SO many things SO close together to touch on, I figured a day or 2 for each would just have to do. Therefore, I made a MLK mini-unit to kick things off!

This mini-unit is the perfect way to teach MLK in a day (or two)! All you need is a non-fiction book to accompany the pages in this unit and you are set!

Here is what the unit includes:

*Who Was MLK? {describing graphic organizer}
*MLK was/had/wanted facts organizer
*MLK 3 facts and a fib {students produce & record 3 facts and a fib)
*Comparing MLK and Me! {Venn diagram}
*MLK: Fact or Not so Much {cut and paste fact activity}
*I Have a Dream, Too! {creative writing prompt}
*I Have a Dream {writing paper}
*MLK ABC order

It's now available in my TpT shop (and since it's small, it comes at a small price)!

 

I also saw this amazing idea on Cara's blog to show kiddos the difference between races, good ol' equality as MLK would call it. You need 2 eggs (1 white and 1 brown). Talk about how the eggs are different, the only big difference being color. Then, break the two eggs (removing the shell from sight) and ask the kids if they know which egg came from which shell.

 

 

Hopefully this is what they get from it “So…the eggs are like people. Dr. King knew that everybody was really alike and the only thing that was different was the color of our skin, so that’s why he thought that things were unfair.”  TOTALLY GENIUS, right!?!?  Such a great way to show the concept for those visual learners!

 

 

 

Currently in January

Say hello to 2013!

It's a new year, so they say! And this is my first.time.ever to take part in a currently! I'm looking forward to taking part in currently each month as I continue my new journey as a blogger.

 

 

Listening: As I'm blogging, Full House is playing in the background. It just seems to captivate all of my attention when I'm trying to get things done...takes me back to the 'good ol days'!

Loving: Football is my fav-o-rite sport and I'm so so so sad that college football is already over. BUT I cannot wait to watch my Aggies BTHO OSU this Friday! WHOOP!

Thinking: The week we got out of school was nothing short of cray-to-the-ZZZ! I can't think of what I am teaching tomorrow to save my life! Oops!

Wanting: I can.NOT. believe that I have been off for 2 whole weeks already! Time never ever slows down and I sure could use another week off! But then again, who couldn't!?

Needing: I just posted my biggest packet to TPT to date. So proud of myself (as I'm still learning)! Can't wait to teach my kiddos about penguins! Need to print off my packet to get ready to lesson plan.

OLW: This is only my second year of teaching which means long days and long nights...but going into this new year I am going to try my hardest to leave work on time (or shortly after), and when I go home, I'm going to try to relax and focus on family time instead of constantly thinking about what I need to do! {Fingers crossed}

Here's to 2013 and making it a great one!

{My} Perfect Penguin Packet

I just can't bear to think that in less than 12 hours from now I will be listening to my alarm go off as I take the dreaded step out of bed....to go back to work tomorrow, ugh! Our district got out a week before Christmas, but how is it that 2 weeks have f--l--o--w--n by already!?  I have thought about my firsties a time or two and can't wait to hear their stories! Ok, enough complaining already...I know, I know!

In January, we love, Love, LOVE to teach about penguins. They aren't icky or gross like the spiders we study, so it is much more enjoyable to teach! Our whole grade level sends home a penguin project for the kiddos to complete with their family.  They have to create a life-size penguin and do a little report (trust me, it's not much).  I just love the look when they all come in and it looks like a winter wonderland in our hallway...that's because we don't get a winter wonderland down here in south Texas, sad day I know!!

I've been working on {my} perfect penguin packet that I know my firsties will just swoon over! And I'm here to share it with you!! It's my biggest product to date and I can't help but say I am one.proud.momma! It has first grade skill work (long vowels, verbs, nouns, contractions, alphabetical ordering, labeling) some creative writing prompts, graphic organizers, a poem, social studies printables and my favorite...'My All About Penguins Book'.

Let me break it down for you:

*Penguin Pals ABC Order
*Playful Penguin Punctuation
*What Can Penguins Do? (verb practice)
*Iceberg Noun and Verb sort
*Cocoa Contractions
*Assorted Penguin Long Vowel practice
*Penguin Pie (ice cream activity)
*Word Search
*Poem
*How to Make a Snowman creative writing
*If I Was a Penguin (creative writing prompt) {2 choices}
    -with art activity on my blog
*Story Elements (made to go with any fiction book about penguins)
*Penguins can/have/are chart
*Label that Penguin
*Where Do Penguins Live?  (world map)
*Penguin fact/opinion writing craftivity

*All About Penguins book
  -Penguin Trivia (facts about penguins recording sheet)
  -3 facts and a fib (recording sheet)
  -Penguin types (fact recording sheet) {4 types}

 

Since we just rang in a new year, I would love to give this bad boy away to the first person who comments telling me what they are most looking forward to this year. GO!

It's now available in my TPT store for all you penguin enthusiasts like me!

 

I wanted to share one more thing with you. It's a cute penguin craftivity my kiddos loved last year.  It goes with one of the two creative writing templates in my packet. 

 

 

Hope you found something useful from reading this post. As for me, I'm off to eat dinner and get things ready for work tomorrow, sigh!

 

 

Happy New Year and a FREEBIE!

I'm not much on making resolutions for the new year.  It's not that I can't keep them...more like I get too busy and just forgot about them!?  I like to think of resolutions as 'things I plan on doing more of''.

 Here is what I have come up with on the {personal} side of life.

 

Doesn't seem so bad...although, I may have trouble with the 'leave work on time' part! Now that the blogging world knows about it, I have some accountability, ha! Speaking of the blogging world, I have 2 "things" I plan on doing more of {blogging} wise:

1) Posting on more things any teacher could use in the classroom, more like day to day functions in the classroom.

 

2) Making more products for my bloggy friends! This is one thing I am *totally* new at and am loving doing...talk about a new addiction!

 

Since I have found my new addiction (besides my Moscato wine discovery over Christmas), here is my first FREEBIE of the new year! There is OH.SOOOO.MUCH to cover the week's we come back from our break, so we kind of just breeze through "new year's resolutions and such" and talk about it for a day or two.  Here is a quick little sheet your kiddos can fill out that helps them look back on last year and forward to the coming new year!

 

 

Click on the picture. It will take you to my TPT store where you can download for free!

 

Happy New Year to you and your family!

 

 

 

 



Merry CHRISTmas!

Merry Christmas! You know what they say...better late than never, right!?

My husband and I traveled with my family to Branson, Missouri for a Christmas getaway, our first time to ever go somewhere for the holidays since all our family lives within an hour of each other.

I can't believe Christmas comes and goes so quickly every year. I hope yours was filled with just as much joy and cherished moments as mine!

All Aboard the Polar Express

We are so lucky to get to devote a whole day out of our last week before the break to The Polar Express! We all dress in our jammies, watch the movie, eat donuts and drink hot chocolate, and do fun activities and even get a special surprise!
**By far my most favorite day of the year.**

At the beginning of December, I had each student write a letter to Santa.  We mailed them off in an envelope mailed to the North Pole and sent it to the office to be picked up by the mailman.

 

 

After watching The Polar Express, our Principal's delivered a special package (still cold I might add) that was from the North Pole! Who could it be other than Santa himself!!

 

{Early that morning, we spray it with glitter, sprinkle water on the package, and stick it in the freezer!} 

 

Inside was a personalized letter addressed to each child, and a bell just like the bells the kids riding The Polar Express in the movie received. Pure madness broke out in my classroom. Kids were cheering, smiles aglow, nothing less than *true magic*!  They were most taken back by the fact that both their letters and bells were still cold!!!

 

Making this HUGE secret happen is pure teacher magic!

 Our entire 1st grade team writes and personalizes letters to each child in our class, types them up and prints them out on cute Christmas themed paper. Again, we spray them with glitter, sprinkle water, and freeze. With the help of our administrator's we pull off a little bit of, as the kids say, the BEST. DAY. EVER!

 

I have bundeled together the 21 letters I wrote to my firsties.  They are editable and can be customized to fit each and every one of your students. It's up for sale in my  TPT store.  All you have to do is add your child's name and there you have it!

 

{Click on the picture below.}

 

 

 A little "Christmas magic" is always fun!

 

 

Christmas hodge-podge and a FREEBIE!

Christmas, Christmas time is here. Time for joy and time for cheer. (Sung in my best Alvin and the Chipmunk voice...I know you were singing along with me!!).  Last week was our last week for fun Christmas activities. We are off this week for our 2 week Christmas vacation {Praise the Lord}! Here is a look back at all the fun we had!

 

We started off each morning by adding a cotton ball on Santa's beard for our Christmas countdown and writing a note full of Christmas cheer to put in a friend's stocking. This is a great community building activity.

My kids absolutely loved this activity, hands down! The were so excited to write their friends a positive letter of encouragement each day. We took down our stockings and got to read the notes our friends wrote us during out Christmas party.

 

This activity comes from the great Susan Moran over at T.G.I.F.  Her stocking stuffer unit is nothing short of GREAT! Head on over to her blog and check it out!

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One of my favorite Christmas books is Merry Christmas, Splat!

 

 My firsties love all Splat books and this one is just as funny as all the others.  After reading the book, I had my students sequence what happened first, next, then, and last in the story using this present template. I have put this together for you and it is available in my TPT store as a FREEBIE! My gift to you...literally!

 

Later that day, I demonstrated how to wrap a present and had the kiddos write a how-to using step-by-step instructions. This came from Katie King's WONDERFUL Busy Teacher's Best Friend: Christmas Edition.  Definitely worth investing in!

 

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If you missed my post about all my reindeer activities, check it out {here}.  We made a little reindeer/Rudolph art one day this week. A cute and very easy activity to pull off.  Have students cut out 1 rectangle and 2 triangles(no template needed), glue the pieces along with the poem on a piece of construction paper and there you have it folks!
 

That is our Christmas week in a nut shell (apart from our party). It was wild, it was crazy, it was fun and memorable! Hoping yours is nothing short of the same!

Merry Christmas!