New Word Work Packs

I am *loving* being on maternity leave. The weather is finally warming up, we're starting to settle into our daily routines, and I get to spend all day with my sweet little muffin! I can't believe she is 7 weeks already. Wow, time flies!

I also love finding bits of time to work on some new products to use in my class when I go back and of course to share with you on TpT. I finally finished my word work centre packs. I just uploaded two new packs--Halloween Word Work and Fall Word Work. Each pack contains five different centres.

Halloween Word Work Centres focus on stamping Halloween words, putting Halloween words into alphabetical order, sorting short "e" word families, making words out of "Happy Halloween", and creating real or nonsense CVC/CCVC words.

Fall Word Work Centres focus on stamping fall words, sorting short "o" word families, unscrambling sentences, rhyming words, and a simple fall poem to practice colour words.

Here's a peak of all the available word work packs in my store. Click the links below to check them out at TpT.

Back 2 School Word Work Centres

Halloween Word Work Centres

Fall Word Work Centres

Christmas Word Work Centres

Winter Word Work Centres

Valentine Word Work Centres

Lucky Word Work Centres

Easter Word Work Centres

Spring Word Work Centres

Summer Word Work Centres

Camping Word Work Centres

I will be back soon with some new math centre packs!

Five for Friday! {thank goodness... and freebies!}

Hey everyone! Did you survive Halloween and the day after Halloween? I really think November 1st should be declared a holiday. Nobody (including myself) has the ability to concentrate on school after a night full of candy! It was our first Halloween in our new place, so I wasn't sure if we would get any trick-or-treaters seeing as we live in the boonies. So I went out and bought some candy just in case. Well, of course, no trick-or-treaters showed up... so that bowl of candy is all for me and the baby. We definitely aren't complaining! ;)

I am finally getting around to join in Doodle Bugs Five for Friday weekly linky party. I have some fun freebies for you, so stick around!! Some are Halloween related, so you might have to save those for next year! :)

We did some practicing with 2D shapes... One day I read the book "The Shape of Things" by Dayle Ann Dodds and had students complete their own shape pictures. They turned out pretty cute! I just photocopied some blank shapes onto some bright coloured paper and had them turn the shape into a picture. 

I enlarged the sheet onto large 11x17" paper so they had a large space to draw their picture. You can download the recording sheet and shapes {here}.

This next freebie is for one of my co-workers from last year. She mentioned liking my "Turkey Trouble" math game (seen here), so I made a new version called "Pumpkin Patch". Students roll 2 dice, count the dots, and find the pumpkin with the matching tally marks on it. My kiddos had fun with this game today! I made two versions--a coloured game board that you can laminate and use with cubes or a black/white version that students can colour. I like the black/white ones--easier to prep and takes longer to play! ;) You can download this game from {here}. Clipart is from KPM Doodles.

I teach in a community that does not celebrate Halloween.... they don't do trick-or-treating in the town and they don't celebrate Halloween at the school. Lots of my class still go trick-or-treating though... they just drive five minutes to the bigger city next door. I don't get the big deal, but to each their own, right? Well, last week our juniour high student council decided to plan a spirit week for this week. So we had pajama day Monday, opposite day on Tuesday, grade colour day on Wednesday, costume day on Thursday (Halloween = no, costume day = ok), and wacky hair day today. So we didn't have one day of craziness, but we had five!! It felt like a VERY long week. But costume day was a lot of fun. I only had three that did not dress up. I decided to make my costume match our author of the month.

I had them do a little writing about their costumes. They all had lots to write about for this!! For my students that did not dress up, I had them write about what they had learned about pumpkins so far. This pleased them too. You can download the writing page {here}. We called our day Costume Day, but I made one that said Halloween too. Clipart is from KPM Doodles.

On the back of this writing page, we did a little candy graphing activity. This is probably a Canadian activity because you don't have chocolate Smarties in the States. So crazy!! They're like M&Ms, but a bit larger and flatter. Anywho, they made a Halloween version of this candy called "Scaries" that were only brown and orange coloured (as opposed to the original rainbow ones). I gave each kiddo a treat-size pack and had them graph their candy. They did a great job with this activity! You can download the graph {here}. The border is from Pink Cat Studio.

After our little study of pumpkins, we did some investigating of our classroom pumpkin (using Cara Carroll's The Great Pumpkin Investigation journal). We measured it, counted the lines, weighed it, described it, saw if it sank or floated, and counted the seeds. Then we voted on how we should carve it. He turned out pretty cute!

With everything going on in October, I also had to have my first formal evaluation by the vice-principal! I read on someone's blog that they always tell the kids before hand that the principal is coming in to observe the students (not the teacher), so they are on their best behaviour! I tried this and it worked pretty good. As soon as the VP walked in, they all sat up a bit straighter and were trying their best.

For my lesson, I decided to do a writing lesson on creating proper sentences. If you downloaded my weekend journals or some of my other writing pages, you might have noticed I have a little check list on the bottom. I try and put this check list on the bottom of all my writing pages. The check list is capitals, punctuation, spaces, and sight words. We go over this list all the time and the students are getting pretty good at checking over the list themselves and making sure their sentences are correct. For this lesson I had them remind me of the four things we look for. Then I introduced them to Mr. Fix-It. Yes, he looks a lot like Felix Fix-It from the movie "Wreck-It Ralph" (which got them excited and engaged right away), but this is actually Ernie Fix-It and he helps us fix sentences!

I wrote an incorrect sentence on the board and had the students help me identify the errors and explain why each thing was a mistake. Then I rewrote the sentence correctly underneath.

Then I gave each pair of students a re-writable sentence strip with a different sentence on it (I used sharpie, but that can always be erased after). I also gave them a dry erase marker and a blank strip. Each group had to circle four errors in their sentence and then rewrite the sentence on the blank strip. Then I had each group read their sentence and explain why they circled each mistake. The lesson went really well and the VP seemed impressed with the students' presentations. Success! :)

Well that's it for me. I've got two puppies who need some cuddling on the couch, a fiance I haven't seen all week, and a movie waiting to be watched. Have a great weekend everyone!!

Math Stations - Set 2

Here is my next set of math stations, ready to go tomorrow! I only have 8 stations this time. I also changed my groups around so students get the chance to work with different students. The stations are Halloween/October themed, but we will keep doing them the first bit of November (because I am a bit late getting them all ready to go). I found some awesome Halloween goodies at the dollar store (Canadian teachers... how much do you LOVE Dollarama? American friends, I know your Dollar Tree is just as good!) I bought some Halloween rings for counters, small pumpkin erasers for counting, and pumpkin ice cube trays that make perfect ten frames! Here is how I used them and more!

Station #1: How Many Spiders?

Students roll two dice and place that number of spiders on each web. They write a number sentence on their recording sheet. Notice my colour matching foam dice and spider counters? I'm a nerd like that. :)

Click here for label, recording sheet, and spider web mat.

Station #2: October Graphing (totally inspired by Doodle Bugs Teaching fall graphing centre)

Students each get a picture collage sheet and count the number of each picture. They colour in the bar graph and answer the questions. Click to download here.

{Download US spelling version here.}

Station #3: Pumpkin Guess & Count (this one was inspired by Erica Bohrer's freebie Candy Corn Estimation and Counting)

I filled up four little containers with small pumpkin erasers. Students make a guess and then count how many pumpkins there really are. Click here to download.

Station #4: Spooky Bingo

I made three different bingo cards with numbers from 1-10. The goal is to get four in a row any which way. I used ten frame cards as the bingo cards, but you can use a regular deck of cards with the face cards removed or a 10-sided die if you have. I also used unifix cubes as the bingo chips, but you can use anything--Halloween counters, actual bingo chips, or even Halloween foam shapes. Click here to download the bingo cards and directions.

Station #5: Bat Patterns

I got these bats from Dollarama. They were actually in a pack of Halloween rings, but the ring part actually snaps off so I can use them as counters. Students make patterns with the counters first with two colours, then with three. They colour in their patterns on the recording sheet. Click here to download this station.

Station #6: Pumpkin Sums of 10

When I saw these silicone pumpkin ice cube trays with TEN spots in them, I knew I had to find someway to use them as a math station. So I used some colourful pumpkins (from the same set of rings the bats came from) as counters to help students discover all the ways to make ten. They fill in each spot on the pumpkin tray and then colour in the ten frame on the recording sheet and write a number sentence to make 10. Click here to download the label and recording sheet.

Station #7: Yummy! Candy!

I tell students that the dominoes are like two bags of candy. They need to find out how many candy are in both bags. They pull a domino out of the tub and draw the same dots on their recording sheet. They write a number sentence to go with it. Click here to download this station.

Station #8: Count the Spiders

Students choose one of the cards, count the number of spiders on it, and write the number on the recording sheet. Click here to download.

Well that is it for my Halloween math stations. Hopefully you can use some of these before Halloween, or tuck it in your back pocket for next year! Happy haunting everyone!

Aaaaargh! Spiders!

First off I want to say, "Wow!" I can't believe I have over a hundred followers. I was shocked when I checked in tonight! Thank you to everyone and I hope you all find something useful here!

So I teach in a "Halloween sensitive" area and although we are allowed to celebrate Halloween, we are encouraged to be sensitive to the families who don't celebrate it. I haven't gone full swing into the Halloween craziness like I normally would have... Instead we have focused on studying spiders for the last week and a bit and next week I hope to do some fun pumpkin activities. So we can be Halloweeny without saying Halloween ;) We are still having a costume party on the 31st which should be fun. Although Halloween on a Monday = Ick! I do have a P. D. session to go to on November 1st though, so I guess a sub gets to deal with the sugar-high kids. :)

Well, here are some of the interesting spider activities we have done this week. We started off with a KWL of what the students knew and wanted to know about spiders.

Here are some of the fun spider books I like to use. I have the book and movie version of Diary of a Spider. Today I showed the movie to my class and they thought it was super cute. Interesting fact of the day: The spider is voiced by the kid from "Two and a Half Men".
 

We talked about what a spider looks like and I drew (poorly) a spider on the easel. We labeled six main parts together: the head, the abdomen, the legs, the eyes, the feelers, and the spinnerets. My kids loved that word and they use it all the time! We also sang this spider body part song (to the tune of "Head and Shoulders"):

Head, eight legs, ab-do-men,

Ab-do-men, ab-do-men.

Head, eight legs, ab-do-men,

Eyes, feelers, spin-ner-ets.

Then students then labeled their own spider diagram. Click on the picture to download.

Next we talked about what spiders eat. My little bunnies couldn't believe that there are some spiders out there that eat things like fish and birds! That was pretty gross to learn! I also used Deanna Jump's science experiment "How do spiders eat their prey?" We did a little sort with things a spider eats and things we eat. Click the picture to download.

We did a little sequencing activity with the spider's life cycle. I made large cards to use all together on the easel and a small half sheet for students to cut out and glue in order. We glued these into our theme journals. The graphics on the cards are used with permission from www.sedl.org. You can download them for free by clicking on the picture.

Seeing as we were learning some new big words like spinnerets and abdomen, I thought I would throw in arachnophobia! We did a class graph to see who in our class had arachnophobia. There is an individual student sheet to go with it. I made another sheet to ask who in our class had ever caught a spider before.

 

One of my favourite spider stories is "The Very Busy Spider" by Eric Carle. It's a cute little repetitive story. After I read it once, I ask my students to be "actors" and assign each an animal from the story. I had my spider "making" her web on the white board at the front as the fly buzzed around her. When I got to each animal in the story they stood up and made their animal sound. It was cute and they all had fun being a part of the story. I made these little cards for each animal so the students knew who they were. You could also use it as a pocket chart sequencing activity. I just loved the farm animal clipart from Stockberry Studio. Super cute! Click to download your own cards.

 We also used this book in a Venn Diagram comparison. We looked at two different spider books: "The Very Busy Spider" and "National Geographic Readers: Spiders". We talked about the similarities and differences between the two books. I made a little Venn Diagram activity with fact cards to cut and glue into the appropriate spaces. I also made a blank Venn Diagram to compare two different books of your choice. Feel free to download it if you can use it!

Lastly, we took all of the information we had learned about spiders and completed a tree map.

You can download the tree map labels and a student tree map here.

We used the facts from our tree maps to do some spider writing. I was very pleased with their work. We have been practicing using capitals and periods in our writing and they did a good job on this. We also made colourful spiderwebs and spiders using Sharpies and oil pastels. I totally stole this idea from Reagan over at Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits. I loved it! We mounted our writing and spider webs on a large piece of construction paper. They turned out very cute.

I love the last line there... Spiders ar kol. (Spiders are cool.) So cute! You can download my spider writing paper here.

I also have a few spider math stations that I will be posting this weekend when I post Math Stations - Set 2. They are mostly spider and pumpkin related, so hopefully you can use them next week before Halloween! 

Have a great Friday tomorrow! Woo! :)