Dr Seuss Apps

Hey Friends! Today we had a ball introducing our kids to the wonderful world of Dr. Seuss! I am fortunate enough to have 10 iPods in the classroom for the kids to use throughout the day. I have 5 Shuffles, and 5 iPod Touches. We mainly use these for Daily 5, although kids can also go to them when they have finished other work. Today I bought a fun App that I wanted to share with you, just incase you have iPods or iPads in your room as well. My babes at home were excited as well. If you haven't tried the apps from Oceanhouse Media, you need to. They are books that are very interactive, that use all of the original artwork and illustrations. What's great for me, is that they are still apps, and not iBooks, so the kids can find them without having to search around. The app I got today was a Dr. Seuss Collection. It was definitely spendier than I usually get, but I wanted to get a few books, and this did save some money. 5 books for a total of $11.99 at the App store.
If that is to much money, you can also get a single book for $2.99.

And then for free, you can also get the lite version of the books, which is the same as a teaser. Honestly, sometimes any "LITE" app annoys me, because it's frustrating to have only a small piece, but definitely a good choice for free.
And this is just a fun little puzzle from the new movie The Lorax. Not really educational, but fun. And best of all, totally free!


There are many more at the App store, but I wanted to share a few I liked. Hope it's helpful for you! I can't wait to ask our PTC for my next iTunes gift card... :)


On another note, our March Math Journal Prompts are up at our TpT store. If you haven't checked these out this year, make sure to head on over. All of our Math Journal Prompts are aligned with the Common Core State Standards, and they've been incredibly useful for our students this year.


One day down... four more to go!

Dr. Seuss's Birthday

This week we'll be celebrating Dr. Seuss' s birthday. We've got lots of activities planned and we thought we'd share what we're doing with you all!

Dr. Seuss Facts Hat

We enlarge and copy our hats (see below for printable) on a white 9x12 piece of construction paper. First our kids cut out the hats. Next they glue four red strips (9 x 2 1/2) onto the hat. Then, once the glue is dry and the red strips are well in place, they flip the hat over, and cut off the extra red pieces.

Finally we write important facts about Dr. Seuss.

Here are some treats we're giving to our first graders. We found some mini stickers perfect for their Dr. Seuss activities that are created throughout the week. The pencils were from the dollar bin at Michael's, great deal! We also made treat toppers to attach to York Peppermint Patties. We sure wish the patties were wrapped like they were in the past,

but they still look cute! If you'd like a copy of the treat toppers, just click {HERE} and download our little freebie! We used a 2 inch scallop punch and they turned out perfect!

We also like to do a cute picture glyph with our first graders every year on March 2nd!

We got the idea from The Virtual Vine. We made our own direction page and it can be found {HERE} along with a few other freebies to share with you all!

Click the picture below for the Virtual Vine's directions and their picture.

We're super excited to announce that Teachers Pay Teachers is having a Leap Day Sale!

On Wednesday only we will be offering 20% off of EVERYTHING in our store! TpT will offer an additional 10% off when you enter L2P9Y at checkout. So if you'd like some items from our store, just click the picture below and start making your wish list!

Hope you all have a fabulous week!

Happy 100th Day!

We had a great time yesterday at our 100th day of school. We did many activities from Michelle's cute little 100th Day Mini-Unit. We didn't get pictures of everything, but here's a sample of our day.

We searched for 100 chicks.

We made a 100 day snack.

We counted groups of 10 and made a 100 day necklace.

We also did several cute 100 day writing activities, including a 100 word writing from Michelle's unit.

At the end of the day the kids all got a cute little certificate. Click on the picture below for a copy.
We've got a few units in the works, as well as Vol. 4 of our word family packs, and our March math journal prompts coming up soon...

Have a great weekend! TGIF!!! (almost...)

Whooo turned 2? {...and some owl freebies}

Hey blogger friends! It's Erin talking to ya today. I can't believe over a month has passed already since my baby girls 2nd birthday! Last month we had an amazing owl themed birthday party for her, and although I realize it has nothing to do with teaching, it was too cute not to share! Now, I am by no means an event planner, or professional, so hang with me. I think it turned out pretty stinking cute! You've got to love Pinterest! The very first thing I did was to buy this adorable owl hat from Naptime Stiches on Etsy, to use on the invitations. Isn't it to die for? Unfortunately this seller is closed briefly, but check back later. Awesome to work with!

This is the birthday girl making her "whoooo" sound like an owl.

If you need an adorable baby present, they are just precious!

Then I purchased this party set on etsy, and loved everything it made! Somehow I missed taking pictures of what I created with it, but I highly recommend the seller. She has great themed party kits.

Birthday girl wore this owl shirt that was also from Etsy. {Have I mentioned I may be addicted to Etsy as well?} She did a custom girl version that turned out perfectly!


Here are some pictures of a few decorating ideas too.


I had a horrible time trying to find the perfect table runner, so I just got a few super adorable ribbons and made my own. I think it turned out really cute. When I have some time (yeah right) I want to actually sew these together to create a table runner.


The goodie bags were one of my favorite parts. They had a yummy cereal mix, owl cups from dollar bins at Target, owl stickers, owl pencils, owl cookies, a water bottle, and some other fun stuff. If you'd like the owl patterns, {click here}. I thought those could actually work well for when we do our night creatures unit next fall.

I used my Cricut to cut the eye ovals and circles, and the little flowers, but you could use anything for those.


And then the desert table... yum.


Cake Pops from KupcakesAreYummy who is a friend of the family. To. Die. For.

Cookies are from another friend of the family, Cookies by Sarah in Portland.

And then my fabulously talented sister-in-law made these adorable owl cupcakes.

Maybe my very favorite desert was a treat that my neighbor showed up with for birthday girl. They were gone before I could take pictures, but here is a picture of some I made for Super Bowl. Definitely my newest sweets addiction. Rice Crispy Pops. Who knew? Covering rice crispy treats with chocolate makes them even better!

I'm telling ya... BEST THING EVER!

So, hopefully you can use some of these ideas. We had a fabulous party, although I'm still a bit sad my baby girl is already two. I guess it's time for number 4..

And now, for a little piece of actual school news...

With our math program that we are currently piloting, our first graders have math homework every night. We like to show recognition to the kiddos that are always bring back their math homework regularly so we created an award.

We just started this last month and we'll be giving a new one out each month. Typically if a student brings back most of the homework (might have 1-3 missing) they get an award.

If you'd like a copy just click the picture above to download!

Hope you all have a great week! Is is just us, or are 4 day weeks the best?!?!

President Freebies!

Whoa! It's definitely a busy month around our neck of the woods! It's Wednesday, Valentine's Day has now come and gone and Presidents are our focus for the remainder of the month (although we do have our 100th day next week!) Below is a little Presidents Day freebie mini unit that we'd love to share with all of our friends in the blogging world. We've decided to revamp our presidents unit and create some new activities for our classrooms. Just click the picture below to get our Presidents Day Mini Unit!

Here's another little creation our kiddos make:

George Washington & Abraham Lincoln

We however did not create these on our own so we can't take credit for them. We got the idea from THIS BOOK which lists all of the materials and instructions.

The ebook can be found {HERE}

Have a great rest of your week!

We'll be back in a few days with some owl freebies!

Clip art courtesy of Scrappin Doodles

Valentine Sweethearts

We have had such a busy week and we're so glad that tomorrow's Friday! We've finished up our planets unit and now we're getting ready to incorporate several valentine's themed lessons next week. Our math focus for the last few days has been related facts and fact families, so tomorrow we thought we'd create a little heart fact family activity, that correlates with our math program, for our kiddos to do. Just click the picture below and you can get this freebie that we'd love to share with you all!

Here's another freebie that we'd like to share with you as well. We are planning on incorporating this into our schedules next week. We have just began to talk about sorting words in alphabetical order. As an introduction to ABC order, we have our kiddos help us arrange our weekly word wall words in ABC order before we put them up on the word wall. Next week we thought we'd do a little activity that they can start on their own.

We'll probably have them begin by cutting and sorting their words, then we'll all glue them together. Click {HERE} to get your copy of our Valentine's Day ABC Order.

We've also just added a new valentines pack item to our Teachers pay Teachers store, just ion time for Valentine's Day! It's filled with valentine themed math & literacy activities perfect for Valentine's Day! See below for a preview of what we've included. You can also find it {HERE}. Our Valentine Sweethearts Unit is on sale through Friday for 20% off!

Valentine Sweethearts Unit

Have a great rest of your week & weekend!

Oops, forgot a second winner!

Oops! Forgive us, we forgot to pick a second winner. So congratulations Lori! We will send it off after school. Have a great day!

Planet Pack Winner

Chrissy, send us an email and we'll get you our Planets, Stars and Space... Oh My! set. If you haven't had a chance to check it out, please do! Our little firsties have had SUCH a great time with it. Have a good rest of the week! Our Valentine set will hopefully be up tomorrow, so watch for that and some fun freebies!

Planets, Stars and Space... Oh My! (giveaway and freebies)

We made it through another week! Man these kiddos have been all sorts of crazy! We've spent the last few weeks learning all about the solar system and snowmen. Quite the combination, right? This year our school has gone to a school-wide science theme schedule. Each month we have a focus, which is taught K-5. There is a list of vocabulary words for each focus, and the thought is that by 5th grade, the kids will have a strong grasp on all of the words. Of course, each grade has their own twist on the theme, and we only teach what is grade appropriate. To be honest, so months have been more fun than others, but it seems to be working well so far.

This month our focus has been the solar system. I haven't taught this since my very first year teaching, so it was so fun to revisit! Our goal was to introduce the kids to the concept of the solar system, but to mostly just focus on the 8 planets. We want them to know their names, the order of the planets, and a few facts about each. We've also introduces the earth's orbits, and rotations. The kids have had a blast, and we have as well. Here are a few activities that we've done with them.
Click {HERE} to get a copy of our planet book.
The first graders water colored the planets, and then made a poster out of them.
We made a few posters of all of the planet facts we've learned.
This next week our school is having a door decorating contest to celebrate Love of Reading Month. Since we were on a space kick, we kept the theme going with STAR: Sit, Think and Read. Each rocket shows a picture of a student reading, and we included another set of water colored planets to really make it look like space.
This isn't ours, but had to share. One of our 5th grade students made this INCREDIBLE model of the solar system. This picture really doesn't do it justice. (*I apologize for the photo quality btw, I left my camera at home and had to use my phone for many pics.) The bright stars are actually Christmas lights. Isn't it cool?

And of course this isn't all we've done. We loved this theme so much that we had to create a fun unit to go along with it! Introducing our newest baby, Planets, Stars and Space... Oh My! She is a 70 page unit packed with planet-themed activities, and lessons for teaching your first graders all about the planets. Included in this unit:

*planet posters

*planet game board & cards

*”BLAST” sight word game

*fact family activities (3)

-including worksheets

*addition/subtraction game

*mnemonic device poster

*original mini-book

*Planet report

*Planet riddles

*planet cards

*inner & outer planet activities

*sentence builders

*Word sort

*color & b/w printable planets

Here's a little preview of what you'll get!

Click {HERE} or on the picture below to head on over to our store to check out our Planet Pack.

Need some Solar System vocabulary cards? Check these out!
Make sure to grab these for free too!
Vocab Cards

We ended our week by incorporating one of our Snowman Fun Pack math activities into our day today, and boy was it fun! We began by retelling Sneezy the Snowman and then we conducted our own data experiment by tasting one of Sneezy's favorite foods, ICE CREAM! We brought in four flavors and each of our students had a sample.

Next our kiddos colored an ice cream scoop that represented their favorite flavor out of the four flavors that we tried. Then we grouped the scoops to view our data.

You can definitely see that each of our classes had completely different data! Our kids were surprised to find out that the other classes most favorite was different than their own.

Finally we recorded our data, answered questions, and created a bar graph that was attached to their packets (sorry we didn't get any graph pics).

This was such a fun math activity and our kids really had fun. They couldn't believe we could complete a math lesson and eat ice cream too! We can't wait to do this again next year! Interested in checking this unit out, you can look {HERE} and read all about it!

Before we head off to bed, we'd love to host a quick giveaway! We'd love to give a lucky follower a copy of our Planets, Stars and Space Unit. So leave a comment with your favorite science theme to teach, and we will draw 2 lucky winners on Monday night, February 6th. Good luck!

We hope you all have a great weekend! We'll be back soon...