Five For Friday Linky Party

I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for the Five for Friday Linky Party. 

This week was a pretty relaxing week for me. My spring break is ending which makes me pretty sad, but I had a great time with my kids.  Here are 5 things about my week...

1.  I finished my Chick Unit and am pretty excited about that!!  We'll be putting in our eggs when we get back to school.  You can find my unit here...Lifecycles-Chicks-Math-and-Literacy-Unit-2-Common-Core-Aligned

2.  I did a lot of sleeping in!  I think I am officially caught up on sleep.  My sons and I stayed up late almost every night and slept in until past 10:30 A.M.  every day.  We ordered pizza one night at 11:30 p.m.  It arrived shortly after midnight.  The next day we all slept until noon.  It's going to be hard to break our new habits.

3.  I took my boys to see the Easter Bunny at the mall today.  My youngest said he didn't want to go.  When I asked, "Why?", he responded, "Have you seen how big his eyes are?"  This is the closest we got to seeing him!

 

 

4.  I learned a huge lesson today after taking my sons to Perkins for breakfast.  My oldest son, who is 11 asked for 2 waffles with strawberries.  Thinking it would similar to getting 1, 2 or 3 pancakes...I found out differently.  This is what they brought out to him.

 

Ummmmm....TWO PLATES!  When I got my bill it said that his TWO waffles were $18!!!  NEVER.DOING.THAT.AGAIN!!!  If he ever wants to order anything off the menu for that expensive again, it better be a nice steak or shrimp meal!  My meal was cheaper and I ordered the shrimp platter.  Lesson learned.

 

5.  This one is kind of nerdy but...my kids and I play the License Plate game.  Anytime we go anywhere, we keep track of the different states that we have seen.  We have been trying to find Hawaii for the longest time, but have never found it!  Today we were driving home from the mall and this is what we saw!!!

 



They were both so excited and started yelling screaming, "We finally found Hawaii!"  If this is your license plate...you made my sons day!!! 

It's been a great week!  To those of you that have spring break next week, ENJOY!  I know I sure did!  I hope you all have a great Easter!
Sara

Chicks...I am so excited!!!

I hope you are all having a fantastic week!  I am on spring break and it's been so relaxing!!  I think my boys and I have slept until at least 10:30 every morning so far!  I haven't done some of the things that I have planned and I have done more things that I didn't have planned.  I've seen a lot of my friends and have tried new recipes.  Originally I was going to make a new Pinterest recipe every day this week.  On Monday I made one and neither of my boys would eat it.  Today my 9 year old asked me if he could make dinner.  I think he wanted something safe to eat! HAHA!

I am super excited to get back to school.  When we get back I will be preparing our classroom for our chick project.  This is my MOST favorite time of the year. I love waiting and watching the kids faces when they finally hatch.  Last year I created a Chick unit which included activities for math and literacy centers.  Because this project last  3 weeks and I love it so much, I created another Chick Unit.  This one has TONS more and is aligned to the common core standards.  I included mini books, life cycle posters, pictures and more! 

You can find it here....Lifecycles-Chicks-Math-and-Literacy-Unit-2-Common-Core-Aligned

Some things you will find...

 

Past, Present and Future Tense Center

Syllable Center

 

Fraction Center

 

Life Cycle Book in color and black and white...

 

Place Value Center

 

 

 

 

Writing Activity

 

Reading Passages (In Color and Black and White)

 

 

I am sorry for adding so many pictures.  There are tons more activities in my unit.  You can check it out here...Lifecycles-Chicks-Math-and-Literacy-Unit-2-Common-Core-Aligned

I hope you all have a great week!

Sara



 

Peek at My Week - Linky

I hope you are all having a fantastic Sunday night!  I am pretty excited that I don't really have to go to bed at any given time tonight!!!  Spring break is here and I am excccciiiiittteedd!!!!  As I type this we are boiling eggs for dying Easter Eggs.  We probably won't get started until around 9ish...but that's okay.  :) 

This weekend I have been getting ready for our upcoming chick unit at school.  I am working on a new unit to add to my TPT store.  Last year I added this unit...

You can find it here....Chicks-Math-and-Literacy-Centers

This year I wanted to add more centers to my classroom, so I am doing a Chicks Math and Literacy Unit 2.  This one will have more centers aligned with the Common Core.  I am really excited and hope to post it by Friday (hopefully earlier).

Last week at school we found out that we will be adopting this curriculum next year.  Benchmark Literacy is what we will be using for reading!  I have NEVER had worked with a reading curriculum in the 14 years that I have taught...so it will be exciting and weird for me to have a curriculum that is written out for us!  Benchmark Literacy is what we are using.  One of my co-workers already outlined the year for us!  She is amazing.  I am going to take the spelling lists that we will be using and create some centers for guided reading time.  Do any of you use this curriculum?  If you do, I'd love to hear from you and hear what you think! 

Finally, I am linking up with mrswillskindergarten at am posting my calendar for the week!  It's very loosely planned right now. I have tentative dates with girlfriends set, and movie dates that are tentative.  I love that about spring break.  We are just going with flow. 

If you'd like to link up your schedule, visit Mrs. Wills Kindergarten
Have a great week everyone!!!
Sara

Compound Word Freebie

Only 3 more days until Spring Break and I am E.X.C.I.T.E.D!!!!!!  I can't even tell you how much I look forward to this!  The weather has been sooo yucky!  I think it was colder yesterday than ANY day in January.  I was ready to pack my bags and go somewhere warm.  We have been talking about spring weather in our classroom.  I am going to do this compound word activity with my kids tomorrow.

 

Compound-Words-Spring-Freebie (TeachersPayTeachers Store)

or download here...

 Compound Words Freebie

 

Enjoy!

Sara

Telling Time Story Problems

We are working on telling time to the hour and half hour in my first grade classroom.  Some of my first graders have mastered this concept quickly.  In order to challenge them, I am using telling time story problems with them.  My third grader even is challenged with these cards.  I first had my kids match the digital clocks with the analog clocks.  I then gave them each a clock.  Each one had either the analog time or digital time.  They had to find their partner.  I had them moving around the room with their clock while singing a time song.  When the music stopped, they had to find their partner and share their time.  Finally we started going through the story problems.  I read some to them and they had to find the clock with the correct time on it.  These will now go into my centers.  I have 4 worksheets that kids will complete too.

My time pack is in my TpT store. 

You can find it here....Telling-Time-Story-Problems-Half-Hour-and-Hour-Common-Core-Aligned
Thanks for checking it out.
Sara

St. Patrick's Day Doubles Addition Equations *Freebie*

This will be my last post tonight...I promise!  We have been working on addition with doubles in math.  I created these cards for a center activity so that students can practice adding doubles together.  They will look at the doubles addition equations and they will find the matching card to go with it.  They will complete the worksheet after they are done.

You can download your freebie by clicking here....
Doubles Addition

Leapin' Leprechauns

My kids are so excited that they will be setting up their Leprechaun Traps on Friday and that they may actually catch a Leprechaun over the weekend.  Our PTO is having a school dance this week and the theme is St. Patrick's Day.  Excitement is in the air!!!  Today we talked about how we would catch a Leprechaun.  We will be writing the steps on how to catch one this afternoon.  We made these cute decorations to hang in the hallway!  They turned out adorable!!!

 

I am attaching the pattern that I made to make the Leprechauns.  For the faces, I took each child's picture and used photoshop and changed their hair to a dark orange color.  I printed them in an 8X10 size and trimmed out their faces.  They colored their eyes green and eyebrows orange.  I found a glittery, orange string on clearance at JoAnn Fabrics that they glued on for their beards or hair.  You can get the pattern by clicking below.

Pattern for Leprechauns

Contractions Game

One of the things my kids love to do in my class is sing songs and dance to music.   I really believe that kids learn in different ways and kids need to move and they need to move a lot.  Especially in first grade. 

One of our favorite songs we sing is this one:

That Magic E

 

We have been singing it a lot in our classroom.  I will put the words up on my smart board and the kids will dance around with the card that has a word without the Magic E or one with the Magic E.  When the song stops they have to find their partner.   Each partner will share their words with the class.

 

I LOVE all the Miss Jenny books.  She has so many skills that first graders need to know in songs that she wrote and sings.  You can find her CD's here.  I think I have all of them.  I love them that much and so do my kids.  You can find them by clicking below.

 

Miss Jenny CD's

 

 In this picture, my kids are sharing their puzzle that they made after sing the song A Contraction Has an Apostrophe.  One student had two words and the other had the contraction that the two words made.  When they put their words together they had a complete puzzle.

 Two students sharing their puzzle.

 

 

 The music stopped so they are trying to find the matching piece to their puzzle.

 

Each student had a puzzle and was singing/dancing to the song that we were playing.

 

You can use any song that you want.  We did this activity with these puzzles that are in my St. Patrick's day unit.

 

You can find it here.  We also sing and dance to the Compound Word Whiz song and do these puzzles from my St. Patrick's Day Unit.

The whole background is blue...I am not sure why I can't get it to upload in fun color. 

 

You can find these in my St. Patrick's Day unit that is listed below.

St-Patricks-Day-Literacy-and-Math-Centers-More