Christmas Nonsense Words on TPT...Giveaway is coming!

First off, wow! I'm now at 1005 followers. That's unreal! I hope some of you are finding some useful ideas to use in your classroom or be directed to someone else's blog that's inspiring me! I am planning on a giveaway very soon so keep checking!
I just uploaded my nonsense words for Christmas on Teachers Pay Teachers. Can y'all believe I'm that ahead???? I sure can't! :) Click the pic to check them out.

Author's Purpose Graphic Organizer Freebie!

I'm almost to 1,000 followers (currently @ 999!!) so I figured a freebie was in order! Click here to get a graphic organizer for Author's Purpose. I use this at my comprehension center with my leveled readers, but it can be used with any book.
***I'll do a giveaway when I hit 1,000! :)

Dinosaurs and There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Pie!

To finish up our weekly story The Big Circle, we made these cute little dinos. Aren't they mean looking? :) :) If any Reading Street teachers (or anyone doing a dino unit!) would like a copy of the pattern for these, let me know and I'll post it. 

We also read a funny Thanksgiving story There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Pie. The kids LOVED this one! We identified the rhyming words in this story since that's a skill we need some extra practice with. Of course, the chart is the one thing I forgot to take a pic of! I'm finishing up a literary companion for this fun book on Teachers Pay Teachers and hopefully it will be up this weekend. The patterns for these "old" ladies will be included in it.

Thankful Pilgrim Hats and Dinosaurs!

Today, we made lists about what we were thankful for. Then, we made pilgrim hats to display our thankful lists and thus our new door was created!

We also finished up our schema chart about dinosaurs. 

Tomorrow, we're doing a sequencing activity with one of our favorite Thanksgiving stories There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Pie. This was our skill this week and some of my kids are still having a difficult time with this. I'll share pics tomorrow! :)

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