Jan's New Home...Character Spotlight

We've been snowed in! We haven't had school since last Friday and I'm lovin' it! I've planned all sorts of things to go along with our story next week, Jan's New Home. The story is about a little girl that has to move to another house. At first, she is very nervous and sad about leaving, but at the end, she starts to feel excited about all the new changes. This story goes along perfectly with the unit theme of Changes. Here is a character spotlight on Jan that I am going to have my kids make. I used the Paper Dolls cartridge on my Cricut to make Jan. My plan is to go ahead and cut all the pieces and let my kids make their own Jan doll to display with their character map.

I also found a neat idea in the Teacher's Edition of Reading Street. Since the characters in the story move to a new city, I'm going to use this time to incorprate some social studies and talk about different parts of the country. Each student will pick a place to live if they could live anyway in our country. We are going to use magazines to cut out pictures that go along with the area that the student picks. Here is my example to show the kids:

Any Scott Foresman teachers out there with any ideas for Jan's New Home? I'd love to hear them!! :)

Ruby in Her Own Time: Plot

"Plot has three parts: Beginning, Middle, and End!"

I have said this over and over and over!

I have drilled this into my kids heads all week long and I think they finally get it! We did this plot activity Wednesday and made ducks today. I love the anchor chart that the kids filled out. I found it on teacherspayteachers. Kim Adsit created it and she has an entire packet of comprehension anchor charts for students to fill out. They are great! There are charts for plot, character maps, story maps, setting, all kinds of skills! Check it out!

Nouns

I found this great idea on First Grader at Last. Sarah Cooley created "Noun Town", which I thought was adorable. I told my kids to draw either a person, place, thing, or animal. We did this the last week of school and I'm just now getting the board done and I think the kids will be excited to see it up. The man at the top is the Mayor of Noun Town.

Ruby Helpers: Compound Words

Our reading story next week is Ruby In Her Own Time and part of the phonics skill is compound words. To help my kids understand this concept, I made Ruby Helpers. I'm going to display these on the white board while we talk about compound words.

New Concept Question Board

Black Friday, my mom and I were one of those crazy people who were at Walmart at midnight. I returned home with a Cricut....love, love love it! I've found so many ways to use it in my classroom. I decided to spruce up my concept question board for our reading series.

I also made new months and other calendar pieces for our math board.

Does anyone else use a Cricut to make things for their classroom?

Google Earth

Has anyone used Google Earth in their classroom to create a virtual field trip? I've been reading about teachers that have done this and it sounds really neat. I've downloaded the program onto my computer but I'm having a really hard time understanding it all.
My plan is to create a tour about dinosaurs that will go along with our lesson in reading in a couple of months when we talk about Barnum Brown and the discovery of the first T-Rex.
Any helpful info would be GREATLY appreciated! Leave a comment or email me :)

Christmas Fun!

Wow! It's been a looong time since my last post. I am revamping my classroom, so I've been busy with that. I hope to post some pics of my new boards once I get them finished. I bought a Cricut on Black Friday, so I've been making lots of things for my classroom and my new boards. I'm happy with them so far! :)
The last week of school we had a few snow days so my class didn't get to do a lot of the Christmas activities that I had planned. We were able to have Gingerbread Day and we stayed at school long enough one day to watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas (school let out 1/2 day on Grinch day so we weren't able to make the cute Grinches that I found on Deanna Jump's website!)but our Polar Express day didn't happen. :(
I finally finished the Christmas glogs for our class wiki. Check them out! They are on the Ho, Ho, Ho! page or you can click this link which will directly take you there. (I think!)
Ms. Leslie Ann's Class Wiki: Ho, Ho, Ho!