Dinosaur Patterns Freebie, Counting Turkeys, and Ed and Edie!

I have finally uploaded the dinosaurs patterns! Sorry it took a little while! Click the pic to get them. I've uploaded them onto my teachers pay teachers store, but they're free. I've found it's easier to download from TPT instead of Scribd. 

I found this gem of a book today in our classroom library. So wish I would have discovered it last week. It would have been oh so helpful!

If you haven't yet gotten to the Big Circle in Reading Street, be sure and pick this book up! My kids loved it and it would have been wonderful to use at a poetry center during this story. I may even extend our dino study into this week so we can use it :)

Need a quick activity? A handprint turkey is always a hit! We made these while we counted by 5's and 10's.

And lastly, one of our phonics skills this week is ending -ed, so I created Ed and Edie. I made the married couple "ai" and "ay" via the fabulous Abby's blog last year and it helped my kids understand that sound so much better! 

********Don't forget to enter my 1000 followers giveaway! I'll pick the winner tonight, so there's still time to enter!

Getting back in the swing of things!

Goodness gracious! I had forgotten how much work the beginning of the year is!! So much paperwork, so many things to go over. Needless to say, it has been a crazy past couple of days. Slowly but surely my new sweet kids are learning the ends and outs of 1st grade. For the first two weeks, we do an ABC review, so we won't get into a story until the third week of school. I spend these two weeks doing lots of 'getting to know you' activities. One of my favorite crafts for the kids are self portraits and what better time to create these than now? Here are few. To see the complete slideshow, check out our class wiki (link is to the left!)

Aren't they cute? We also started math centers today which went really well considering it was the first time. I plan on doing mine like the workstations in Debbie Diller's book Creating Math Workstations, which is a must read for those of you who haven't read it...along with Reading With Meaning by Debbie Miller. :) I'm using Cara's (from The First Grade Parade) assessment from her new TPT packet to group my math groups and once I have those figured out, the math workstations will begin, so check back for that! Anyone who would be willing to share their tips on making math workstations work, please feel free to share!!! :) Also, any ideas for activities at these workstations would be greatly appreciated! 

I hope everyone else is either enjoying their last carefree days of summer or having a great start to the new school year!! :) :)

Math Message and Peter's Suitcase

Thank you to those of you who shared their morning message ideas. My kids are becoming familiar with our new routine in the mornings and it's going great. I had mentioned before that I wanted to start doing something similar for math. I was a copycat again and used Deanna Jump's title "Think Math". Love that title! We did a money story problem today and I have this one ready for tomorrow. We've been doing problems like this for awhile now, so I don't think my kids will have a problem coming up with the correct answer. I hope not anyways!

We also made suitcases to go along with our reading story this week, which was Peter's Chair. In the story, Peter decides to run away from home because of his new baby sister. He takes with him his toy alligator, a baby picture of himself, and his chair. We did a writing activity that named the things we would have taken if we were Peter. Afterwards, we decided if our choices were smart ones. We learned that taking a playstation, DS, and Wii wasn't all that wise! :) Some of my sweet kids wrote that they would have taken a book....I love that they are developing a love of reading! :) :)