Halloween Fry Phrases...TPT

I have just uploaded my Halloween Fry Phrases to Teachers Pay Teachers. Click the pic below to get them! :)

Johnny Appleseed week and a few Halloween things..

I must confess...I'm more than ready for Halloween. And so are my kids. I'm trying really hard to wait until this weekend to start decorating the classroom for my favorite holiday, so I decided this week we would learn all about apples and Johnny Appleseed. We're having fun with this, but I may have started sneaking in a couple of witches and black cats :) Here's some apple learning that we've been doing...and a few Halloween things :)

Aren't these caramel apples fun?? We made these and then had real caramel apples for a treat at snack.

Since we were talking a lot about Johnny Appleseed, I used this as an opportunity to introduce the genre of Tall Tales. We used this chart to help remember what tall tales are and what they must have in them. 

We also measured how tall we were in apples and graphed it, but I forgot to take a pic of it!

Switching gears...we started the comprehension skill Cause and Effect this week. This has always been a hard skill for my kids, but this group seems to understand it pretty well. Here's our helper chart we've been using:

Is anyone else having trouble teaching comparing number values?? My kids can order numbers great, but are really struggling with telling me which is greater or less. I made this center game to help. I'm working on a packet of Halloween themed math centers so hopefully it will be ready soon. This will be included in it :)

Oh my goodness gracious! These clip art fry phrases are a HUGE hit in my classroom. So far, we've worked on Aliens and Forest Friends. We've learned around 40 already. Today I introduced Trick or Treaters. They are loving them! We go over each one everyday at small group. Then at the end of the day if we have time, we play "Boys v. Girls" The kids form two lines (boys and girls) and I show a phrase on the Elmo. The first boy and girl compete against each other to see who can say the phrase first. They get so excited playing this and they have no idea they're practicing Fry Phrases. We had to stop the game today because they called for car riders and my kids actually asked to stay and keep the game going instead of leaving. Isn't that nice to hear?? :) :) I love when my kids are loving school! :)

Initial Blends Flash Cards...Freebie!

Here are the initial blends flash cards :)


Initial Blends Flash Cards

My blog is Versatile! :)

Thank you to Janine from Faithful In First, who awarded my blog the Versatile Blog Award. Here are the rules:
Here are the rules for receiving this award:
1) thank the person who gave you the award and link back to them in your post
2) share 7 things about yourself
3) pass this award along to 15 other blogs!


7 Things about myself:
1. I love musicals and secretly wish I lived in one. Wouldn't everyone be in a better mood if we sporadically broke out in song and dance??? :) :) :)
2. I have an unhealthy obsession with Glee. For one hour every week, my world stops. I don't answer the phone, text, or blog. Afterwards, I download the songs from the episode and sing them until the next week's show....Love, love, love Glee!
3. If I didn't teach, I would love to be a stylist.
4. I love clothes. Especially dresses.
5. Favorite designers are Lily Pulitzer and Kate Spade
6. I love, love, love nail polish. Essie and OPI are my favs. 
7. I can recite almost every line from the movie Titanic. And the movie Clueless. Random, I know :) 


I'll be back later with my choices for this award! Thanks again Janine!! :)

Short u Word Sort on TPT!

Click the pic above to get the short 'u' word sort literacy center

I'm having upload problems for the initial blends flash cards, so I'll upload them as a freebie as soon as the problem gets fixed :)

A whole bunch of random classroom happenings

I snapped a few pics over the last couple of days of things we've been doing in our classroom and thought I'd post them all in one random post. :)

We've been talking about realism and fantasy.

We learned the Doubles Rap! Well, the first 6 anyways :)

Some of us have mastered alien fry phrases and moved onto Forest Friends Fry Phrases.

We are learning initial blends this week. I made these flash cards to help learn the sounds the two consonants make, which has really helped with my strugglers.  Let me know if you would like a copy of the initial blends flash cards!

We've been learning how to create lists in Writer's Workshop.

My kids are scarecrow crazy! Aren't these fun? We had a meeting with our reading coach last week so we had aids stay with our classes. My mom works at my school too, so she stayed with my class and whipped up this little craft with them! I'd share the pattern if I had it, but she didn't think about saving it. They had a ball making these and they were so excited to show them to me when I got back. :)

Our Johnny Appleseed door is finished!

I changed the way I did our objectives. I use to do them weekly, but this year we have to have daily objectives displayed, so I decided to do this with a pocket chart. I have to say, I thought I would hate this way, but I really like it. It's really easy to write out all the objectives Friday and then place them in order and flip every day. Working out so far!

Scarecrow patterns...finally!

I am finally getting around to uploading the pattern for the scarecrow that I used. I'm been sick for the past few days and it's also the fall premieres for all my favorite tv shows ( Glee and Dancing With the Stars anyone??) so I've been preoccupied. :) Sorry!

I have no idea how to attach more than one pdf file together so it appears all together instead of having to download each page, which is really annoying! Sorry!

Let me know if you have download problems! :) :)

Head

Boys Shirt

Boys Pants

Crow

Girls Flower

Girls Hat

Boys Hat

Girls Dress

Pattern for the Fox...scarecrows coming soon!

Here's the pattern for the fox from yesterday's post. I'm working on the pattern for the scarecrow, so hopefully it'll be up tonight, although it's the Emmy's tonight, so I'm not promising anything!! :) :)

Fox Pattern 1

Fox Pattern 2

Smelly Spelling! Freebie!

Here's a center I came up with to use next week at my word work center. I call it Smelly Spelling! The kids will write their spelling words with scented markers. Here's the recording sheet if anyone would like it! :)

Smelly Spelling

A Fox and a Kit, Scarecrows, and Johnny Appleseed door

How's that for a random title! We have just finished up our reading story A Fox and a Kit. To wrap it up, we made our own foxes and completed an anchor chart about the weekly comprehension skill, which 

was main idea.

. 

We also made scarecrows to get ready for fall!

My door is a work in progress...I haven't put the title up yet, but Johnny Appleseed is finished, so I thought I'd share...

Not exactly like I had pictured in my head, but it'll do! I'm so ready for Halloween, which is my most favorite time of year! I'm just wanting to hurry up and by pass the month of September so I can decorate with witches boots, black cats, and ghosts!! 

How we use our word wall

Doesn't it make you feel so good to see your kids looking around the room and using the boards that you worked so hard on?? I've been seeing my kids use our word wall more and more each day and it makes my heart happy! Here's our word wall as of two weeks ago:

I color coordinate our words. The dark pink are words that we covered during the first week of ABC review. The lighter pink ones were covered during the second week. The orange words are Unit One words. I typed them this year and found that this worked much better than writing them on sentence stripes like last year for some reason. I have since moved that small blue easel because it was blocking the U box and the V box. I used a large font size because I wanted to make sure the kids to could see it from multiple angles and I love the way it turned out, but I'm going to have to downsize on some boxes like 'Tt" because hardly any more words will fit. :) 

We're starting initial blends next week, which is one of my most favorite phonics skill to teach! That opens up so many more words that my kids can sound out and spell. If anyone has any ideas, center activities,  strategies or charts, please comment below or email me! :)

One last thing...if you've emailed me, I promise I will eventually get back with ya! I've been super busy with a RTI workshop, a mini field trip and technology meetings this week. I would love to say that next week will be a calm week, but it's homecoming, which means crazy fun dress up days!! Maybe we'll get back to normal one of these days!

Changing Endings Center Activity Revised

#3 had a mistake...Thanks to Pam for catching it and letting me know! :) It's now fixed and can be uploaded below! 

Changing Endings Revised

Changing Endings Center Activity...Freebie!!

Here's a center that I'm using next week. 

Download if you can use it! :)

Changing Endings

Alien Fry Phrases Flash Cards...TPT

Click the pic or here to get Alien Fry Phrases Flash Cards

Top Ten! :)

Thank you so much to Ms. Elisabeth Delk! She awarded my blog the top 10 award. Go check out her great blog here!! She has lots of good ideas! :)

The Big Blue Ox and more Reading Center Pics

Our reading story this week is The Big Blue Ox. I had never heard of this story until I started teaching with Scott Foresman Reading Street, so if you don't use this series, you might not be familiar with it either. It's about an ox that acts like a human and helps Mom and Pop go to town. Can you tell that our sound skill is short 'o' this week ??? :) Here's our Big Blue Oxen (sidenote: do not go into the plural form of 'ox'...wayyyy tooo difficult for a first grader to understand! :D)

I also did a new center today called Silly Pens Center. I found four pens at the Dollar Tree that had different color balls on the end and we used these to write spelling words at our word work center. I usually don't let my kids use pens, but I thought this would be a good motivator to write spelling words nice and neatly and it worked like a charm. I had some of the best handwriting today. Go figure! :)

Our comprehension skill this week is setting. My kids get that this is where and when the story takes place, but I'm having a hard time getting them to tell me where specifically. All of their answers are either outside or inside, so we created a helper chart (this is what I call anchor charts in my classroom) to help with this. It helped a ton at the reading center when they had to name the setting. 

Reading/Math Centers and Chocolate Chip Cookie Halves

I just have to brag on my sweet boys and girls. They are doing so great in reading centers. Last week I thought and took a few pics of them working on their work. Aren't they doing such a good job?

They are doing a wonderful job with the sound sorting packets. Visit my TPT to get the ones for short a and short i. I just uploaded Short 'o'

Click the pic or here to get it!

Today in math, we did our first lesson on fractions. It was only on halves, so we made a chocolate chip cookie, divided it in half by drawing a line down the middle and writing which classmate we would share our half with. They love this activity!

We also did the Counting Cupcakes math center today and it was a huge hit! My darlings did sooo great with it! I'll try and take pictures tomorrow to share with y'all. You can find this activity here

How Much Is That Cupcake in the Window?...TPT

Click here to get this money math center activity!