A Random Smattering of Pictures {and a few freebies!}

Here's what we have been up to our first week back to school!

We started our math centres. The kids love them! Some of the ones I thought would be hard (One Less/One More, Snowball Ordering...), my kiddies are just flying through them!

Remember to check out my Winter Math Centers at TpT. Click the picture below to take you there!

Here are some fun snowman themed activities we have done this week. We listed all the parts of the snowman on this brace map.

Here is my mini monthly word wall. It hangs near my large word wall and changes themes monthly. Students can take the cards out during writing time. You can download the cards {here}.

The kids love playing snowman hangman. I use the words from the monthly word wall. The snowman came from Kim Adsit's Snowman Surprise unit.

We read "Snowmen at Night" and wrote about what else we thought snowmen might do at night while we are sleeping! 

We made these cute star snowmen inspired by Mrs. Schmelzer's First Grade. Ignore the flower border. I should probably change that. lol

This was our first time doing a Making Words activity, but they really enjoyed it! We came up with a ton of new words. These letters are from Kathleen at Growing Kinders. Get them here.

We read "Snowmen All Year" and talked about why we don't see snowmen in July. We also read the poem "Why?" by Deanna Jump from her Snowman Unit. They glued the poem in their poetry notebooks and drew a picture of what their snowman would do in the summer.

We also did this little science experiment from Deanna's unit: The Great Melting Race! We had a race to see who could melt an ice cube the fastest. Then we talked about the ways we could generate heat. It was a lot of fun! {Even if our hands got really cold!}

We read the book "The Greatest Snowman in the World" (so cute.... they loved it!) and did some how-to writing.

 

This is the student writing page. Click the picture to download it if you wish.

Lastly, we read "The Mitten". We completed our story map together. Then we acted out the story together using the animal masks from Jan Brett's website. So much fun!

Afterwards, we each took one of our mittens and brainstormed some adjectives to describe them. (Based on Cara Caroll's adejctive lesson seen here.) On the back of the page we did a graph to see how many people wore mittens and how many wore gloves. Click either picture to download these mitten freebies! Clipart is from the adorable KPM Doodles.

A fun week to start off the New Year! Up next week: bears and hibernation! Look forward to a fun and easy Eric Carle inspired art project.

Happy Monday tomorrow!

January Currently and New Year's Resolutions

Here's my link up for Farley's Currently linky party.

 

So Monday was my first day back and I COULD NOT believe it... my normally crazy bunch of coconuts were more quiet and well behaved than they had been any other day of the year! It was such a nice way to start the week! Of course, now they're kind of getting back into routine and the little trouble makers are starting up again, but I'd still say it's a nice change from December! I'm liking it so far!

We started off the week by doing some New Year's activities. We read the book:

Then we wrote our own resolutions and made these cute little party faces! They loved playing with the "blowing things" {is there a real name for these?? They don't make noise, so I can't call them noisemakers... hmmm... } The faces turned out super cute. We used scrapbook paper for the hats and pompoms on top!

My New Year's resolution is to learn how to swim.

My New Year's resolution is getting smarter. *cute*

The weekend is almost here folks -- two more days!! Enjoy! :)

A Very Big {THANK YOU} and Free Literacy Center

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!

I just want to show some appreciation for some lovely ladies who have awarded me some blog awards over the last couple of weeks. I'm not going to follow the award rules {I know, bad me!} but I am going to give each of these blogs a shout out so you can go take a look at some of their fantastic ideas! Thank you again and happy new year!! :) Click on the pictures below to visit their blogs.

First off is Lisa over at A Teacher's Bag of Tricks. If you are already thinking of Valentine's Day (eek, one of my resolutions was to be better at planning... I should be thinking that far ahead!) she has a freebie and cute little activity pack to help get you started!

Next, we have Edana over at Color Me Kinder. She has a cute New Year's sequencing activity (totally doing this on Monday!) and a cute glyph idea too! She is also having a giveaway for a $10 TpT gift certificate! How awesome is that?? It ends Monday, so check it out {here} quickly!

Then is Karen over at Farming the First Grade Crop. Love the new look the blog. So cute!! Check her out!

Also, we have Sheree over at Peterson's Pad. She just started her own Teacher's Notebook store and has some cute packages up for sale! They look great! I will definitely be checking them out.

And last, but not least, Danielle over at LaSota's Little Learners. She's got some great ideas for Writing Workshop and has some great items in her TpT store. Check it out!

Thanks again ladies!

As I am getting ready to go back to school on Monday, I created this "Write the Room" activity for my literacy stations this month. There are five different pages: snowman/January, mittens/snowflake, hot chocolate, penguins/fishing, and brown bear/hibernate. Students take a clipboard and the paper, walk around the room, and write down words that start with the letters on the page. You can download them for free from my TpT store. Click either of the pictures below to take you right there!

That's it for me tonight, folks! Good night! :)

Math Stations 4 - Mittens, Snowmen, and Penguins, Oh My!

Oh holidays, how I love you so! I love sleeping in, playing with Bella all day, going shopping, baking with my new KITCHENAID STAND MIXER (love it!), and just plain relaxing! I still have another 5 days of vacation, but I feel like they are going too fast!! I have been trying to be good and not do much school work over the holidays. The only thing I have been working on is my January math centers. They are finished and all ready to go! I just uploaded my Winter Math Centers to TpT for $6.00. Check them out by clicking the picture below!

Station #1: Hot Chocolate Puzzles

Students match up the numbers to the correct number words (from 1-20). There are two recording sheet options: write the numbers or write the number words.

Station #2: Mitten Counting by 5's

This is a great pocket chart station. Students organize the cards in order from 5-100. There are three different colored sets of cards. There are two recording sheet options: blank and partially filled in.

Station #3: Spin and Graph a Snowman

Students spin the spinner and record the results on a bar graph. Students answer which item was spun the most/least and then can decorate their own snowman on the back!

Station #4: Snowball Measurement

Students measure winter characters using "snowballs". You can use white pompoms, beads, buttons, marshmallows, etc.

Station #5: How Many Fish?

Students pull a domino to see how many fish (dots) the penguin will catch! They write an addition sentence to go with it.

Station #6: Mitten Patterns

Students choose a pattern card and color in the mittens to show that repeating pattern.

Station #7: One Less/One More

Students choose a number card (from 5-40). They write the number in the middle. Then they write the number that is one less and the number that is one more.

Station #8: Penguin Doubles

Students match up the addition double cards with the correct sums. There is a recording sheet to go with it.

Station #9: Snowball Ordering

Students choose three snowball cards (numbers from 0-29) and place them in order from least to greatest. They write the three numbers on their recording sheet and choose three new snowballs!