Little Red Riding Hood

Wow!  I cannot believe it is December already!   I LOVE this month!  I have gotten almost all of my Christmas shopping done and can really concentrate on the fun at school now without being stressed at home about trying to get  it all done. 

This past weekend was a busy one for me!  My good camera broke so I ended up getting an early birthday and Christmas present for myself!  This is what I got for me!

It's a step up from my old camera and I can use all the same lens that I used before!  I am back in business of taking pictures in my classroom and at home.  I am excited about it!!!

This week is my birthday.  I will be saying good-bye to my 30's and hello to my 40's.  I hope my 40's are as much fun as my 30's were.  I was told I needed to wear cheaters last week, so I am not sure how to feel about all the new health ailments I will be experiencing!  I started my birthday week by eating at the Cheesecake Factory.  On Wednesday I will be going to Benihana's, Thursday I will be celebrating with friends and on Saturday my twin sister and I will be having a family birthday party!  Bring on the fun! :)

Over the weekend I also spent some time at a benefit for a little girl that goes to my school.  She is in 3rd grade and has  Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML).   I was amazed at the turnout.  Not only were there tons of people there to support the family, but I got to have my picture taken with this guy!

Mike Delfino from Desperate Housewives was there and auctioned a lunch date with himself off.  They also raised money by having pictures taken with him.  It's a pretty crappy picture of me...but he looks amazing!!  :) 

On to our week at school....
This week we are going to be taking our First Graders to go see the play Little Red Riding Hood at Old Log Theater.  To prepare for seeing the play, we have been reading lots of different versions of Little Red Riding Hood.  Thank goodness I read ahead.  I had to change the words to this version...
Litte Red Riding Hood.  I am not sure I wanted to explain to my kiddos what wine was why she was bringing wine to her granny.  I just changed it to apple cider.  :)

We will be talking about characters in the story, the setting, events in the story, the problem and solution.  We will be reading each story and recording all of these things on a big grid.  We will talk about all the differences in each story.  Below you will find some freebies that you can use in your classroom if you would like.  Have a great week!

We will be reading several different versions of the book Little Red Riding Hood and then filling out this form.  We will talk about different story elements. 

 

You can get it here....Little Red Riding Hood 1

 

Little Red Riding Hood 2

 

 I cut these pictures apart.  We then looked at the pictures and matched them with the words. 

You can get it here...

Little Red Riding Hood 3

 

 

Finally, at the end of the week, I will be giving them this worksheet to see if they can match the picture/sentence with the story element.

 

You can get it here...

Little Red Riding Hood 4

 

Have a great week!!!

 

 

Number Sense: Christmas Candy

We've had a pretty busy month at school.  We started the month off by talking about Veterans Day.  We made some cute art projects from Deanna Jump.  You can check out her Veterans Day activities packet here.  We made the cute soldiers and sent them off to an Army National Guard base for Veterans to see.  We also celebrated the 50th day of school.  We got all dressed up in poodle skirts and rolled jeans.  We made root beer floats to end the day.  We finished the month by talking about what we were thankful for.  It seem like Thanksgiving got here super quickly this year.  During the month we also had some guest readers.  My kids were so excited when 2 Minnesota Viking Cheerleaders came to our classroom to read. 

 

 

We also had our Superindendent read in our class.  The kids were so excited, they thought the President of the United States was visiting. 

 

We are going to be super busy from now until Christmas Break.  We will be going to a play, Little Red Riding Hood, so I plan on reading several different versions of this story.  We will talk about who the characters are in the story, some of the events in the story, when the story is taking place and what the problem in the story was.  We will also be celebrating, Holidays Around the World and we will be making Gingerbread Houses and a Gingerbread Man that runs away.  During our math time I have created some math activities that kids will do when they are done with their work. 

 Students will look at the numbers on the candies and put them in the correct numerical order on the mats.  They will record the numbers on the recording sheets.

 

 In the following activities students will look a the numbers on gumdrops and they will put them into the jars.  Even numbers will go in the even jar and odd numbers in the odd jar. 

Students will look at the numbers on the cards and will sort them into the correct piles.  4 cards will go together.  They will look at the numbers on the red card  and find the yellow, blue and green match.

Finally kids will look at the green card and find the blue and yellow card that is the same. 

 

You can find these below by clicking on the words Number Sense.  I will be throwing a sale on Monday for Cyber Monday!  Happy Shopping!  I plan on getting lots of good deals! :)

 

Number Sense

Coffee and the Newspaper

This week was a busy week and I survived it!  Who else thinks Halloween should be on a Saturday?  We don't celebrate Halloween at our school.  So, I typically do a fun project that takes a longer amount of time on that day!  This year I did my Coffee and the Newspaper activity.  I start out by asking my first graders how long they have been reading.  I then tell them that reading is a skill that they will be using for the rest of their life.  I ask them when they see their parents reading.  They give me all the times they see them reading.  We then focus on reading the newspaper.  I tell them words that they are learning now can be found in the newspaper.  I ask them how many people see their parents drinking coffee.  Many of them raise their hands.  I then tell them that they will be pretending they are adults and they will be reading the paper.  I also tell them that we will be reading the newspaper and drinking coffee.  Many of them say they don't like coffee but I tell them that they will like "my" coffee.  I put a pot on to brew so that it smells good and they can see it. 

 

We then get our newpapers out and I tell them that they need to look for words that they know.  They can only cut out words that they know and glue them to their piece of paper.

 



As they are working, I take the pot of coffee to my desk and secretively pour chocolate milk into coffeee cups (that I purchased from Target).  The last glass I pour is real coffee so they can see me pouring it.  I then pass out the "coffee" to the kids.  They think they are drinking real coffee and get excited with how good it tastes.  I also pass out donuts.

At the end, we share the words that we found!  I have so many kids that say this is their best day ever!

Number Sense: 10 More, 10 Less

Whew!  It's been a crazy, busy week.  We had conferences last Thursday night & this Monday and Tuesday night.  On Wednesday we had a professional development day.  We got to choose the morning sessions that we went to.  At 7:30 a.m.  my class was on learning how to use Excel spreadsheets!  I am soooo excited to make graphs with all the data I have collected so far.  My next class was learning how to use Google Forms for Assessments.  This was another great class.  I have a survey done that I am going to send to my parents.  Finally, in the afternoon we discussed PLC's.  Our school is doing them this year.  We met to learn what they were and then our team met and decided on a goal that we want all of our first graders to know.  We discussed how many of the kids have a difficult time looking at a given number and telling us what number is 10 more or 10 less than that number.  We are going to assess all of our kids on this, practice the skill with them and then assess them again.   I created some fun game sets that we are going to practice.  They will take the piece with the number in the middle and place the four cards onto the proper squares.  We will also play the game, I have...Who has...looking at different numbers. 

You can find them by clicking here....

10-more-10-less-1-more-1-less

Rhyming Words Freebie

I am absolutely LOVING fall!  I love the colors, the crisper weather, picking pumpkins and going on fall walks with my kids.  At school we do not celebrate Halloween because of our diverse population.  We have a Harvest party and do lots of Harvest Day activities.  I love making my pumpkin playdough for our carnival style party.  I will be playing this rhyming game with my kiddos.  You can download your freebie below. 

Rhyming Words

Columbus Day

We are going to be learning about Christopher Columbus this week.  I have created a Literacy Center packet loaded with activities that the students will be doing as I start up my guided reading groups.  I am hoping our first week of working independently will work out.  Here are some examples of things that we will be doing this week.  You can find them at my TPT store by clicking on the words below:

Christopher Columbus Literacy Activities