Happy Veteran's Day!

Aren't these precious? I used Deanna Jump's Veteran's Day unit to create these TLC style soldiers and then I found this adorable chart on Cara's First Grade Parade blog, which should be renamed The Fabulous First Grade Parade, in my opinion. Isn't that just the best site?? Love it! 

Our reading story this week is about dinosaurs (The Big Circle) so we are learning lots about these interesting animals. Here's our schema chart that we started today. I'll share pics after we chart our new learning too :)

How I package my centers

Several of you have asked how I store and organize my centers so I thought I would do a post about it to show y'all. This is what I do with the centers I get on Teachers Pay Teachers and also mine that I create. This is what works best for me so maybe it will help some of you!

I buy these white envelopes at Walmart. You can get the ones that have the metal prongs that close them, but I have found that these are quickly torn off! So I get the ones with the sticky back. To solve the problem of the kids tearing off the paper and forever sealing in the contents of the center, I tape the flap down with clear packing tape. 

I tape ( I use a lot of clear packing tape in my classroom!) the cover sheet for each center on the front, make copies of any recording sheets that go along with the center, include the rest of the materials and you're done! 

The finished product!

Super simple, but neatly organized and it works! :)

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

Thanksgiving Math and Literacy Centers...TPT

I just uploaded by biggest packet yet (83 pages!) to Teachers Pay Teachers. :) Click here to get it! :)

Thanksgiving Fry Phrases...TPT!

Is anyone else getting a little tired of Halloween? It's my favorite holiday, but I've gotta say, I'm kinda ready to move onto Thanksgiving. Maybe it's because I've been working on Thanksgiving themed centers...:) I just posted Thanksgiving Fry Phrases, but please note: these are the same phrases used in the Halloween Fry Phrases packet. I've had a lot of requests to theme these for Thanksgiving since a lot of you are still using them in your classroom and the students are still learning them. I can do another Thanksgiving packet for new phrases if you would like. Just let me know! I've also been working on my Thanksgiving Math and Literacy centers and hopefully they will be posted by tonight so be sure and look for those. Click the pic below to see the Thanksgiving Fry Phrases.

Turkey Time! A Telling Time Math Center...TPT!

Click the pic to get my telling time math centers. It includes time to the hour and half hour. :)

Two New Centers on TPT

I have just uploaded two new centers to my Teachers Pay Teachers store. Click each pic below to see the center.

This math center focuses on beginning addition facts like the doubles facts, adding 1 facts, and adding 0

This sound sorting center is centered around the long a sound. Students will sort word cards with long a, short a, and words that have the vowel sound /all/. 

***I don't know about y'all but I'm running into to some major ink problems! It seems like I'm always out of color ink! I made this sound sorting center in all black and white and printed it onto colored paper to save ink, so hopefully that'll help for y'all too!