Finally...back on the blog!

Sorry, we have been slacking in the post department.  We have been busy preparing for our school's trivia night.  You would never guess how time consuming that can be!  Well worth it though...we helped the school raise money and had a blast at the trivia/silent auction.  Now that it is over, we can relax.  LOL!

We want to send a shout out to The Kindergarten Chick for giving us our 1st award!!!  We are so excited!

After much training and building my confidence, I accomplished my first, true, guided reading group.  The kids loved it, I loved it, and will continue with it.  Too bad we only have about 33 days of school left, but who is counting!

We have been talking about main ideas and details in 1st grade so I wanted to share the anchor chart we made.  We read a big book about the life cycle of a butterfly and created this main idea/detail anchor chart.  The kids even helped me design it!  You can find the main idea in the body of the butterfly and the details in the wings.

I'm sure most of you are coming off a Spring Break...lucky!  We are just counting down the days till our Easter Break.  Happy Monday and may this week fly by with tons of fun and learning!

Happy Heart Day!

Well I hope everyone's day was filled with love and laughter!  My kiddos sure did put a huge smile on my face today.  It was so sweet to watch them pass out their valentines and be so kind to one another.  Reminded me why I wanted to be a teacher in the first place, even with all the other drama that can come with being a teacher.

Thank you Pinterest for feeding my addiction once again!  Here are the cute valentines I made for my lovely kiddos!  Click HERE for the Pinterest link.

Another wonderful idea from Pinterest...I made these for our 4th grade buddy class and for the kids to take home to their parents.  Click HERE for the Pinterest link.  I cut a slit above and below the hand and stick a sucker in the slot so it looks like the student is really holding the sucker.  The kids loved them and couldn't wait to give them to their buddies and parents.  Obviously I didn't actually put the heart on the faces.  ;)

We also used conversation hearts to create "Sweet Sentences."  I will have to take a picture on Thursday when I'm back to school since I forgot to do it today before I left.  I think they turned out really cute and funny.

Here is our Valentine's Day bulletin board .  You can find the heart template in our Valentine Freebies.  You can also download it from our Teachers Pay Teachers Store.

Yesterday we were anticipating our first BIG snow storm of the year, no snow day as a result.  It really wasn't anything to write home about.  It was a great learning opportunity though.  We were discussing cause and effect.  Below is a picture of the anchor chart we made.  I have to say that I know one kid understood the concept.  Today a student was warned many times about talking and continued to keep at it.  So I talked to the student and said he needed to move his behavior card.  He looked me in the face and said, "Well the effect was me moving my card and the cause was me talking."  LOVE IT!

Have a great Valentine's Day!  :)

ai and ay anchor chart

We made an ai and ay anchor chart today in 1st grade.  The kiddos had a blast!  They helped me pick the main words to draw a picture of at the top of the chart.  We practiced looking for these types of words today in the stories we read, I called it a scavenger hunt to really get them excited.  Sometimes we make a competition out of it by seeing which group can find the most words.  When we got back to the anchor chart, I called on students to share a word with the class.  I asked them if it should go under mail or say depending on what pair it would use. Then the student had to spell the word for the class.  Finally I let the student come up and write the word on the chart.  The students loved getting to write on our anchor chart!  It is amazing to see how one little change to our routine can get them more excited about learning.  Check out the chart below!  :)

More Anchor Charts

I am now addicted to making anchor charts for things we are learning in class.  I posted our action word poster earlier this week, so sticking with the same story we discussed naming words too.  We were still on the story,  The Sleeping Pig.  We went through the story and picked out words that named people, places or things.  We added those words to the watermelon.  After we found the words in the story, the students brainstormed other naming words.  Those words went around the watermelon.  We then posted the action word chart and naming word chart by one another on the wall.  We discussed how in good sentences we need a naming word and an action word.  The students picked a naming and action word off our charts and created a sentence with them.  They thought it was so fun because they could make up silly sentences.

Polar Animals Anchor Chart

We have been learning like CRAZY about different polar animals these past couple weeks.  Here is an anchor chart we created after Reading the story, "Polar Animals" by Wade Cooper.  Of course I pre made the chart with all the cutsie little polar animals.  When we finished reading the story, we worked on summarizing and remembering different facts from the story about each animal.  I already had the blue rectangles pre-cut and just filled them out with the different facts they told me.  They had a BLAST with this activity! (of course, this is something wonderful Christie, from LEARNING ROCKS, has been working with us on)

       

Anchor Chart

We created a new anchor chart today to go along with our reading series story, The Sleeping Pig.  We use the Houghton Mifflin series.  We were finding verbs in the story as we were recalling how the different animals tried waking the pig.  Once we found the verbs in the story, the students gave me more examples of verbs.  Check out the pick of our anchor chart.  Now don't laugh, my kids told me that I was best artist they had ever seen.  LOL!