A Whole Bunch of Classroom Pictures

I've been awful lazy here lately and haven't taken pictures of our classroom happenings, so be warned: there's a lot of pictures coming up! :)

Suffixes

We've been learning about the suffixes -ly and -ful this week. I made these cards for reference

Poetry

When I saw Cara's "Poet-tree", I knew I had to recreate it. It is the perfect way to introduce poetry, which I'm doing this week. I'm also using the fabulous Poetry packet from Amanda @ One Extra Degree. If you're planning on teaching poetry, you seriously need to check out her unit. Fab-u-lous!

Daily Objectives

Last year, I did my daily objectives using this chart and started off every lesson by going over this chart. That way, the kids knew exactly what we were going to do and we were able to check off each item at the end of the lesson. They had to show me "evidence" that we did that topic. For example, for "comprehension skill", we completed a graphic organizer and for "words to know" we did our sight word cheer. Just little things like that that refreshed their memory at the end of the lesson and bought it all back home. I don't know why I stopped doing this because it worked really well and helped me stay on task and organized. I started doing it again this week and *love it*.

(ignore my little girl with entirely too big a head)

Vocabulary

I've been struggling with finding good vocabulary activities for my kids. They haven't been too excited about our new vocabulary center until I put this activity in it this week. Who knew putting a colored sentence strip on a piece of paper would bring such excitement :) If you want the sheet that goes along with this, let me know and I'll post! 

This is the chart they used at the center to find the definitions.

Earth Day 

We started talking about Earth Day today. Here's a couple of our crafts we did.

I found these little cuties on Pinterest. Aren't they cute??

Cause and Effect Activity

We did this for our comprehension skill this week. The read aloud was called "The Cat Chase". We identified the cause and effect in the story and illustrated below. I am using this graphic organizer in our comprehension center with the leveled reader next week since they know what to do now.  If you want a copy, let me know and I'll post! :)

If you've kept reading this loooonnnng post, sorry for the picture overload :) I'll do better about taking pictures and posting regularly next week!

Update: The cause and effect graphic organizer and vocabulary sheet freebies are uploaded and can be found at my TpT store. :)

Last Week in Pictures (Plus Pirate /ar/ activities!)

First off, sorry to everyone who has emailed or commented here lately. My week was beyond crazy so I didn't have a lot of time for blogging. I've also become addicted to a new TV show that I've been trying to pull myself away from. :) Did anyone else see the new Revenge episode Wednesday night where we finally got to see who was shot at the White Party???

 To the first three who commented on my Math Madness post, I promise I'll email them to you today! To those who have commented or emailed to ask about a Dr. Seuss unit, I'm working on it now and *hope* to have it up by Monday. I didn't realize Dr. Seuss week was week after next. Can y'all believe that?? My kids are starting to get his books for AR and they are getting sooo excited about Read Across America Week. 

This week, we talked a lot of presidents. I wasn't sure how much this would interest my kids, but they loved it! I think it was one of their favorite topics so far. 

We made hats for our door:

Side note: I did the same thing with Cat in the Hat hats for my door last year and thought it turned out really cute.  Check it out here.

We also made George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. I had planned on making a President Obama, but we ran out of time. 

You can find the facts sheet and bubble maps in my President's Day here.

 I also started doing something different for our  "A to Z sounds" board. I use to just put the name of the sounds we had covered like Long a or /th/, but I realized that was just a waste of space since it didn't have any words that contained those sounds. Everyday, we make charts for our weekly sounds on our smartboard, so I started copying those charts onto paper and displaying them on this board. It has worked out sooo much better and now the kids can actually look to the board to see examples of those words. Here's a few of the charts:

And lastly (sorry, I know this is a really long post!) my kids need a little extra help with the /ar/ sound. I've created a ARRR!!! Pirate mini unit that we will be doing next week at Word Work. You can get it here. It's a short packet, so it's cheap! :) 

Reading Street Teachers- we've been busy with so much other stuff in my classroom, that we haven't had much time for extra stuff in our reading series. So if you've noticed a lack of "extras" for the last few stories in Unit 3, that's why. Plus, Unit 3 is my least favorite unit. The good news is Unit 4 is my favorite, so I'll start posting more fun things for each story. We're on Mama's Birthday Present next week, complete with a fiesta on Friday! :)

Unit 4 Questions of the day will be uploaded soon!

The Bandit 'Y', Number Words, and Greater Than Less Than Alligator

I had started this post the week we got out for Christmas break but then realized it had never posted. Our last story was An Egg is An Egg (not a fav of mine) and our phonics skill was y as 'e' and 'i'. There are many ways of teaching this but I have found the "Bandit Y" to be the most helpful. We created a wanted poster for this guy, who is known for stealing e and i and acting like them. My kids LOVED this and it helped so much to those who were struggling.

We also did number words to 10. This was the lesson in Saxon, but I felt like my kids were ready to learn this a long time ago, so I started making center activities for this skill back in October. Needless to say, this lesson was a breeze at this point. Since we had extra time, we made a chart using this now familiar number words.

I also wanted to share my great find at Pier One Imports (love that store!) How perfect is this as the greater than less than alligator??? We haven't gotten to that in our math yet, but when I bought this into the classroom my kids were so excited about it and wanted to learn the skill that goes with him. I love when they get so excited about learning!

Don't forget- it's the last day of my sale at Teachers Pay Teacher. Visit my store!

Honey Bees

We just finished up the story Honey Bees in our reading story, so we made these cute little bees to go along with a chart we made. Aren't they cute?

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We drew names to see who got to be the queen bee and they got to make their bee out of scrapbook paper. 

I also made this helper chart for one of our phonics skill this week. Making this helped so much! I felt like my kids understood this skill so much better than the way I taught it last year. 

*****Be sure to head over to Amy's blog The Land of 2nd Grade. She was kind enough to send me some of her centers and she's having a giveaway for a chance to win them! Go enter now!!!

Some new anchor charts and a CHEAP center idea!

After being sick the week before Thanksgiving week and then being out all last week for Thanksgiving, I'm missing my kids and classroom very much! And to matters worse, I haven't been in a creative mood at all these past two weeks, which would have been the perfect time to make some great centers. But no ideas would come to me....until today. Wouldn't you know? The very last day and I'm finally in the mood to create! haha :) I've made a couple of anchor charts to introduce this week's skills. I also make charts with my kids so they understand them more, but these are just reference charts that I thought I'd share.

This idea is not mine! But isn't it great?? I had this saved on my old computer, so I don't know where the original idea came from. If you know, let me know and I'll credit them :) 

Is she scary?? My mom cannot look at this one without laughing. She says she looks scary. Maybe the hair is a bit much? I tend to go overboard on drawing hair HAHA :)

I'm determined to start poetry! I've been wanting to for the longest, so I'm hoping it goes well.

And now for the cheap center idea. I found these Christmas trays at the Dollar Tree for (of course) $1. I created a label and word cards and made this cute, inexpensive sound sorting center. There's a recording sheet to go along with this activity after they sort the sound. The labels and cards are included in my Christmas center packet, which hopefully will be on TPT later this week.

Close up of the tray with labels

Community Workers, Sneaky e, and Nonsense Words on TPT

Here's a couple of our charts that we have made this week. We started learning long vowel words last week so I introduced the sneaky, silent "e" and he has given quite a few of us some problems. We decided to make a helper chart to help us remember what he does.

Our story this week is Who Works Here? and it's all about community workers. I would love to do a big unit on this with some fun activities, but due to a really busy week with a field trip Friday we are limited on time. So we just made do with making this pinterest inspired helper chart.

And we are officially over with Halloween in my classroom. We put up the Halloween nonsense word flash cards and my sweeties informed me that I needed to get us some Thanksgiving ones! :) Who knew putting these words on a cute background and clipart would make it that more exciting?? Click the pic to get the nonsense words flash cards:Thanksgiving Edition