Synonym and Antonym Memory Game

Y'all... I am tired of this rainy, gloomy, windy, cloudy weather in North Texas. I have one fear - lightning. I realize the chances of being struck by lightning are slim, but there's still a chance! I had to run to my car one afternoon last week through rain with thunder and lightning, and I can only imagine how funny I looked running in my boot, with a look of terror on my face!. Anyway, this is what I'd like to say to the weather around here:

How cute is that?! It's from the adorable April Showers kit I bought from Just So Scrappy!

We are working on synonyms and antonyms this week and I made these memory games to go over both. There's a recording sheet to use after the students play. Click the graphic below to download from google docs.



How does your garden grow?

This week we're working with r-controlled a, so I created a little game to use in centers this week. We've just wrapped up our plants unit and of course have been enjoying the beautiful spring weather here so it's all about growing a garden. Click on the graphic below to download it from google docs. I had a great time playing around with my new purchases from Just So Scrappy. That was the first time I'd been to the site and I know now that it won't be the last! Her stuff is super adorable and VERY affordable! Happy gardening!

What We Love Wednesday - Wish Lists!

Hi there! Just making up another missed post, this one is from last Wednesday, April 6th. Last week all of the teachers/teams at school got the chance to make "wish lists" for the PTA Disbursement Committee. 1st grade was super lucky last year and our awesome PTA was able to get one of these (with a cd player) for each of us and we are SO loving them!

So after making our lists this week, Mrs. Claborn and I decided our posts would be about what we're wishing for this year. These 3 items are on my PTA wish list and they're all from... you guessed it- Lakeshore!

Fill in the Blank Phonics Stamps - Set 1

I think these would be such a great center, especially in the beginning of the year. I know I have some strugglers right now who could really benefit from and enjoy an activity like this!

Fill in the Blank Phonics Stamps - Set 2

Same as above, with more advanced phonics skills.

Sound it Out Phonics Puzzles Set

Do you see a pattern here? I really felt like I was lacking in my phonics centers. Since my first three years of teaching were in 2nd grade, I have lots of literacy centers for the second half of the year or for those advanced firsties. Of course, I have so many games that I've created or downloaded that target specific skills, and I love them, but I wanted some "insta-centers" that target several skills, benefit kids at different levels and abilities and can be used over and over again. And most importantly, I wanted activities that I could use in the beginning of the year when the kids are traning for independent centers. These skill building activities with short, simple instructions would be awesome to have and I'm crossing my fingers, hoping that I get them!

If you haven't yet, head on over and visit Mrs. Claborn at Burst of First and check out her wish list. She included some multicolored drawers that we're both eyeing and hoping to find on sale somewhere soon!

What's on your classroom wish list?

What We Love Wednesday - Writing

I'm doing a little make up work this morning and catching up on my "What We Love Wednesday" posts. Wednesday, March 30, Mrs. Claborn and I decided to write about writing. I left my computer at school that night and wasn't able to finish my post. Since then I've just been too busy and too exhausted to do anything but school and sleep. I am really missing my blogworld though so here I am.

What We Love Wednesday - Writing

(Wednesday, March 30)

I L-O-V-E STICKER STORIES. That is hands-down my most favorite writing activity. I love how this activity is multilevel, open ended and gives the students so much ownership and choice. I have a confession though... I spend a fortune on stickers. You see, I have an incredibly hard time making decisions. Of any kind. So when I see a wall of stickers at the teacher store, I am completely paralyzed - how can I choose between pandas or woodland animals? Or space aliens and transportation? Farm animals or zoo animals? Ok, I'll take them all! Sometimes I give the students parameters - for example, last time we'd been focusing on stories so they really had to make sure they included characters, and some kind of beginning, middle, end story. In the beginning of the year, they simply wrote about what was happening in the picture. As the year went on, they got more descriptive and we'd work on adding in our reading, writitng and grammar skills - using action words, characters, setting, using was/were, is/are, has/have appropriately... you get the idea! The only constant is that they can only choose two stickers. That way, they really have to visualize a scene and create it. In the first half of the year, I give the students a sticker story paper - it has a box at the top for their pictures and then lines on the bottom half for writing. Now that they're writing a little straighter, I just give them manila or white paper (not gonna lie, this started as a way to conserve copies).

My sticker collection - there's something for everyone! The space, kids, pandas and penguins are the favorites.



Here are my little authors working on their pictures and stories. These were all on the same day - I love how different they all are!

Some samples of the final products! I had to do a little editing to remove their names.



What's your favorite writing activity? 

What We Love Wednesday - Word Work!

Word work is such a HUGE part of my classroom, and if you're a primary teacher, probably yours too. We do word work a hundred different ways, several times throughout our day - we do word work in our fluency stations, centers, and of course the ELAR block. My most favorite word work activity has to be making words. I love it because it's multilevel, hands-on, and meaningful. What's even better? The kiddos love it too! 4 years ago I made a class set of letter cards and believe it or not - they've survived!

My tower of making words supplies 

 Each student has a baggie with his/her number on it. They use the same set all year and at the end of the year, they do an inventory so I can replace any missing letters. All vowels are copied on hot pink cardstock while consonants are on white. Having the vowels easily distinguishable really helps them sort through the letters and find what they need quickly, plus they know that every word they make will have to have a pink letter. Of course, it also reinforces the concept of vowels and consonants.  

These are another key piece to making words in my classroom. My kiddos LOVE using these letter trays. It also helps them keep the letters organized as they work. They place the given letters for the activity in the tray, and then have their desk work space to make words. All you need to make these is a handful of laminated file folders and a stapler!

And of course, I have something to share with you! Click the picture below to download the making words recording sheet I'm using this week. My mystery word this week is flowers, and the students are sorting for long o words. I also created it in in SMART so that after the students have worked on it independently we can meet together and share our words, or I can use it in small groups with some of my strugglers. I use the SMART version in split screen view so that page 1 with the letters is on the left and the students can manipulate the letters and make words, then the recording sheet is on the right. I use it with my laptop and Air Slate, but I'm sure you lucky ladies with SMARTBoards can use it too! I still haven't worked out posting a SMART file, so please click here to download it for free from TpT. If you can offer any help as to how I can post SMART files in the future without going through TpT, please let me know! I'd greatly appreciate it! Right now I work with Google Docs, and I don't think I can share the file that way.

Our Open House is tomorrow night and you know there are still TONS of things I want to do before then, so I'm off to bed! Goodnight Blog World!

Great Finds at the Dollar Tree!

How much do you love the Dollar Tree? I always come out of there with bags of random loot, but hey, they're only $1, right? Check out what I grabbed yesterday - I CANNOT wait to use these! (Please ignore the ugly carpet in the background...I'm renting!)

I hope you can read what's on them. These are going to be so great in my enrichment tubs, centers, small group... the list goes on! I'm actually thinking about making some of my own for their take home fluency folders as well.  The 4th pic is a pack of 4 blank spinners. Not sure what I'm going to use those for yet but the possibilities are endless! I also stocked up on more clothespins (you can never have too many!), more plastic tubs (again... never too many!), and Easter/Spring pencils. Have you found anything great at Dollar Tree lately?

Filling Buckets and a Long E ee/ea Game

I've been looking forward to starting up "bucket filling" in my classroom since December. I've seen lots of blog posts about it so I know I'm not the only one using this. My school didn't have the book so I had to wait and get it from another school, AND THEN we had snow and ice, AND THEN I had to wait until a day when FINALLY no one was absent. That day finally came on Monday. I had a small bulletin board that I was using for our focus wall/anchor wall (reading/la skills for the week are posted here), so I moved that over to a corner of my whiteboard and took over this space for our buckets. I plan on putting up pictures of our class to fill the empty space, but for their privacy I took this picture first. I used small library pockets and made a label with each student's name and clipart of a bucket. I couldn't find clipart that I liked for the sign so I drew that myself... I'd be lying if I said it took any less than 45 minutes for me to make that. I'm not much of an artist! I stapled an actual bucket to the board and it holds the notepaper and some pencils. I snagged that bucket (actually more like 5 of them) in the Target dollar spot last summer and I knew I'd find a use for it! We'll get notes out on Fridays only, and they can write notes for bucket filling when they finish morning routines, when they finish work early, after lunch when we're taking our bathroom/water breaks, or at the end of the day when they're all packed up. It's only been 2 days and those buckets are getting pretty full!

Our bulletin board

Our bucket filling notes

Here's something I've been working on for next week. It's an ee/ea long e game called "Read the Street". Students read the ee/ea words on the car cards and try to move their cars through each stop light. Watch out for yellow lights (lose a turn) and red lights (start over)! Every thing you need for the game is in the download and there are a few blank cars in case you want to add your own words. You might also want to draw arrows on your game boards to guide players through the lights. I'd love for some of you to use it and let me know what you think! Click on any of the preview pics below to download.

President's Day Part 2

Here is the word sort I was mentioning on Friday. It's somewhat presidentally themed, but I had some writer's block when brainstorming president-related words, and I wanted the kiddos to be able to read them independently and have enough understanding of the word to sort it. The result is a handful of themed words, some long vowel words, and some of our word wall words. My munchkins L-O-V-E sorting things, especially in the pocket charts so I know they will really enjoy this center. I also included a recording sheet that has a challenge for them to add their own words. Hopefully it's not too late for some of you to use this too!

My team mate Mrs. Claborn (check her out at A Burst of First) and I came up with an idea that we're going to try out in the morning and I'm SUPER excited to see how it goes. Our best ideas are when we're bouncing things around in our grade level meetings and this one was no exception. We're going to trace the profiles of the students onto paper plates, and then have the kids create their own coins! How fun does that sound? We've been studying coins and thought this would be a creative way to bring that in to our President's Day activities. Check back soon to see how they turned out! 

Saturday, is that you?

After being out of school for 4 days (snow and ice), it doesn't really feel like it's the weekend. But the sun is out for the first time all week and that's definitely a good thing. I'm really looking forward to getting back into my classroom and doing all the things I had planned for last week. I'm disappointed that we missed Groundhog Day and Chinese New Year though :(. We will finally celebrate our 100th day, REALLY begin our coin unit (I don't count last Monday as beginning the unit), and the kiddos have some cute centers in store for them.

One of the centers I was excited about last week, that we will now definitely be doing this week, is my "Contraction Cones" activity. My teammate, Mrs. Claborn made some contraction cupcakes that are way cute (check out her blog here), and then I saw this post on Once Upon a Time in First Grade, and I was inspired to make my own. Now, I KNOW what you're thinking - I could have made these myself. Here's the deal. It was one of those weeks when there was something going on every night. Then it got to Thursday (crunch time) and I stayed at school really late, then had to run an errand at a teacher store and when I saw them, all I could think was how much I didn't want to cut out my own over the weekend. Sometimes, it's totally worth a few bucks to save yourself some time and a hand cramp from too much cutting. So, I bought these:

They're made by Carson Dellosa and you can get them here, or at your fave teacher shop. We're only working with contractions with not, so I made a list of 10 contractions with not, and had exactly enough to make 2 sets. The students will match the ice cream containing the two words with the cone that has the newly formed contraction. I'll add a picture of the final product once I'm finally back in my classroom. To avoid having to sort through two mixed up sets later, I put a silver star sticker on all of the pieces of one set, and a gold star on all of the pieces of the second set. I'm sure they'll still end up jumbled all together, but I had to try! The kiddos will record the contractions on this recording sheet. You can see it below.I know it's totally lacking cute clipart, but I think I'm way more concerned about it looking cute than my kiddos are!