Sunday Safari and Sales!

Today's the day of the big sale! Hop on over to my TPT store to check out all the products on sale and save 28% today and tomorrow!



Also, I'm the guest blogger for Sunday Safari at Queen of the First Grade Jungle. I'm super excited!


I hope everyone who has started school is having a smooth start!

A "Beary" Good First Week! Lots of Freebies!

My first week starts Wednesday!This year my teammate and I decided to change up the start of our year. We always usually start with insects because it goes with our Bridges math program but since our Kinder spent so much time on insects we're going with bears instead. I'm excited! It's going to be so fun!
We have a 3 day week to start so we felt they should have a fun first few days! I wanted to share some of what we will be doing and give some freebies too! I might put them into a unit on TPT soon so grab them for free while you can.

First we are going to play "Mystery Bag" with the students. This is a game where the kids take turns asking yes or no questions and try to figure out what is in the bag. A teddy bear will be hiding and ready to engage them in the unit. Then we will read "We're Going on a Bear Hunt" and actually go on a "bear hunt" around the school to show students the basic locations ( office, restrooms, nurse, cafeteria etc). We made our signs using a printed blank bear outline, copied the outline on brown construction, labeled the locations and hung around the school. Easy Peezy!

Then, we will be playing 4 corners with bears. The students will have to decide which bear ( Panda, Polar, Brown or Black) they like the best and discuss the reason for their choice with a partner. The student will then write why they like that type of bear. We will use the sentence frame I like ____________ because.
We are going to graph these results as well during math.

Over the next two days we will be completing
many more bear related math activities. Here a few below:

I will be playing a one more/ one less bear hunt with numbers to 20. Each student will get a bear number card. I will call out clues like one more than 6 or 1 less than 11. The student(s) with the number card will stand up.

After the whole group practice, I will assess this skill with this one more/ one less bear worksheet.

We will also be estimating how many bear counters in a jar, brainstorming strategies for counting and then counting them as a class.

                                We will of course be using gummy bears to count and sort...

                        
              ... and teddy grahams to make combinations of 5.

 On Friday, we are letting the students bring their Teddy Bear from home so we can describe our bear with our partners and then use them for math! We will be working in partners to measure our bears with unifix cubes. After measuring, we will come together as a group and order our bears from shortest to tallest using our unifix cube measuring towers. We will then think of ways to sort our bears!


        To end the week, we will complete my "Beary" Good Week Writing Craftivity.

 These are only a few of the activities; there are actually more! I will post pictures of the other activities after this week. If you want any of these printables, just click a picture to get all the freebies in one file. I hope this post gave you some ideas and saved you some work if you are going to start with bears. Please leave me a comment if you download anything! I'd love to hear any ideas you have about bears!

I am also having a 20% off sale to celebrate going back to school. My most expensive items are now an even better deal!

Magical Product Swap with Dana from Fun in 1st Grade

When I heard about the product swap at Mrs. Stanford's Class, I knew I had to join!

I was paired up with Dana from Fun in 1st Grade.

I went to Dana's store and couldn't decide between her Place Value Puzzles and her Out of this World Real and Nonsense Word Sort. So... she let me have both! So sweet! I loved both but decided to review the Out of This World Word Sort. My little guys still need so much practice with CVC words at the beginning of school so I thought this would be perfect.







What I noticed first about this product was the amount of CVC word cards. There are 14 pages of CVC words with 8 per page. Since it's summer I'll do the math for you...112 word cards!

          ( I guess a page was hiding! I thought there were 13 but there really are 14...even better!)

I loved that like vowels are listed together and the nonsense words in alphabetical order so there are cards for each beginning sound.  I am going to make the sort but also an extra set for my lower guided reading groups to practice decoding.

The Out of this World Real and Nonsense Word Sort also comes with sorting mats and a record sheet.

If you are needing more activities that focus on decoding CVC words, I would highly recommend Dana's Out of This World Word Sort. Click the picture to grab you own copy!

Two Back to School freebies!

Hi everyone! I've been a bad blogger the last week or so because I am starting to get a little stressed about going back this week. It's too early!!!!! Anyway, I had to start working on projects I need done for my classroom. I have a few freebies I wanted to share as well! I hope it will save you some time before school starts!

I saw this adorable "Where are we" sign on Pinterest and wanted to make my own version.

 I haven't actually finished it with ribbon and all but wanted to post the link to Google Docs in case you want to download this sign for yourself.  Click here for the sign.

I also made new CAFE signs to match the black and white polka dot theme. I'm late to jump on the polka dot bandwagon but I really do like it! Click here for these signs.

I just finished my bulletin board for student work. The black spots on the fabric are mini paper clips already hanging on a thumb tack.( you can't tell but I actually found pink, purple and turquoise tacks and paper clips at Office Max!) I thought this was genius so you can just hang other papers over each other and have a mini portfolio until you are ready to hand back or file.

I also just finished revamping my math tubs. I really like how they turned out. I will post soon about how I manage them. I am trying something new this year and am determined to make it work. :)

When do you go back? I hope you are still able to relax and enjoy your summer for a few more weeks!

Erin

I am Unique! Back to School Unit

Hi everyone! This is a long post but hopefully worth it! Especially the last activity...
I know most of you have your ideas already for back to school but I wanted to share some of the ideas in my "I am Unique" Back to School unit. There are great activities that involve using Art in the classroom in order to promote uniqueness and individuality among your students. The directons for the activities below are included as well as some others!

 The first lesson is based on an all time favorite read aloud that celebrates uniqueness: Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes. I added a twist to the standard name sorting by letter and syllables by including an activity that adds more active engagement. The students sort and graph their names but with their bodies! It's called a Human Bar Graph! Much more engaging and concrete for our young students. I included the category labels for the Human Bar Graph that you would hang on a wall or a board so your students know where to stand in columns for the human graph. Just laminate, cut and use!

 After the Human Bar Graph, students make a class name necklace with everyone's names on triangles. They cut out the triangles, punch a hole and string the names. The master is included in the unit.  I wish I had a pic of the finished product. I'll snap one this year!

Another lesson in this pack is inspired by the book It's Okay to be Different. The students brainstorm ways in which they are unique and create a class anchor chart to record their thinking. Each student then chooses a way they are different or unique and creates a page of a class book.

The best part of the class book is the Fingerprint Mystery activity to be completed at home. It's a great way for students to see just how unique they are!

I also share a great idea on creating a Bulletin Board inspired by the book The Colors of Us. I love this book; it really celebrates all types of skin colors. The students have a blast mixing paint to find their skin color and making their face on the paper plate.

I also included everything you would need to make these cute All About Me people. They are great for an open house! Each shirt is a "page" of the book.

  Now to the best part of the whole pack! This is my favorite all time back to school activity! Share Kandinsky's Squares with Concentric Circles with your students and then make an artwork glyph! Put all the glyphs together to make a class masterpiece you can keep up all year!

 Not only will this be beautiful, it will really emphasize the goal of this unit: celebrating uniqueness and differences among students. Each student will get a square and the rings of color will represent information about the student. I included everything you would need to complete this activity... pages to print or project to make this manageable for kinder or first grade and a key so when others look at your class artwork they will understand what each color represents.
Here's an example of one of the pages you would use during the painting of the glyphs to keep students on track.

By the end, everyone will have a completely different square with stunning, colorful rings to be put together into the class masterpiece!
If you liked some of these ideas and would like more ideas and the resources to these lessons, click here to head to my TPT store to see all that's included!

Drama Queen Linky

I found a Linky Party for Drama ideas! Join in with Barbara at Grade Onederful. Thanks, Jessica @ Tales of a First Grade Teacher for recommending it!


My favorite drama strategy is called Tableau. Tableau is just a french word used in Drama that means "frozen picture". I first teach my students how to express objects, actions or feelings with their bodies individually. So we would stand in a circle and I would call out objects such as "tree" or "chair". The students would use their bodies to become the tree or chair. Once they can do this, we move through feelings and actions such as "happy", "scared", "running", "surfing" etc. When they can do all three with their bodies individually, I teach them how to work in groups to create a frozen picture or Tableau. After these initial lessons teaching them about Tableau, I use this strategy all year. Tableau works great for vocabulary words, stopping to check for understanding during a read aloud, or using a series of Tableaus for retelling a sequence. The uses are endless!

I know that noise can be a deterrent for using Drama in the classroom. That's why Tableau is so great; once the initial group planning of the Tableau is over, the students are quiet and frozen.
You can extend from the frozen picture to have students explain their thinking and what was going on in their scene either orally or in writing. In first grade, we mostly discuss orally but by the end of the year they write as well.
When students are creating Tableaus, they are working collaboratively, employing higher level thinking skills and engaging in learning conversations ( insert other education buzz words here). This strategy also fits in so well with the new Common Core expectations.
Here are a few pictures of my students in Tableaus.

These two students are working together to make a question mark.







These next two tableaus are during our learning about the jobs of bees. The girls to the left are a nectar flower and the group below are showing the Queen Bee along with her guard bees.

I also wanted to share a video of my students performing Stellaluna in October for another first grade class on our school stage. Notice their concentration while performing; it's amazing!

I've found that my students have a deeper understanding of sequence and characters when acting them out in this way. They have to think about what the characters were doing/ feeling in each scene when they create a tableau.

I hope you can use this strategy in your own classroom! I will be posting more about it throughout the year.