First Grade Fanatics

Happy Summer!

WOW, we've had a busy yet fun 2012-2013 school year and

We are just thrilled that we have a few months off for some much needed rest and family time!

We hope you're all enjoying your summer as well, and we've got lots to share with you. Plus, as a kick off to summer, we're giving one lucky follower a $30 shopping spree in our Teachers Pay Teachers Store! But first before we fill you in on this giveaway, we'd like to show you some of our newest products that we've added to our store!

We've added six different paper practice/word work activities that can easily be incorporated into your literacy centers. Each set contains 30+ worksheets! These worksheets work well with Treasures, our newest reading program, but if you teach first grade high frequency words then you will love these practice pages for your students. They give great practice and are perfect for students to work independently in centers. Just click the title above each pic below and you can head over to our store and check them out!

Spin a Sight Word
Students use a plastic spinner (or pencil and paper clip), and write the word they land on.

Rainbow Words
Students simply read, trace, and write the words in rainbow color in order to help them memorize these words

Write a Rainbow
Students practice writing the words in different rainbow colors in
order to help them memorize the words.

Roll a Sight Word
Students roll a dice, and write the corresponding word.

Word Boxes
Students use the letter boxes to write the words.

Read Write Build
Students use the letters to cut and paste while creating their words.

At the end of each set is a list of high frequency words that are incorporated into each word work set.

Another newest addition to out TpT store is our

Common Core Math Vocabulary Cards.

Included are 100 math vocabulary word cards, with both definition and pictures. These cards are great for focus walls, vocab and word walls, and reinforcement of those concepts that our first graders must know. Just click the pic below and you can check this handy little set out!

Now onto our little giveaway!

You've got 5 ways to enter. Please comment separately for each entry you complete.

1. Leave a comment below about any tips/activities you've tried and/or used during literacy centers

2. Follow our blog {If you're on bloglovin' you can follow us HERE we'll give you more info about bloglovin' in our July 1st post}

3. Follow our TpT store

4. Blog about our new products and leave the link in your comment

5. Pin one of our newest products from this post and leave the link to your pin in your comment

Our giveaway ends on Monday, July 1st at 5:00 (PST).

We will choose one winner who will choose $30 total in free products from our store.

Winner will be chosen using RANDOM.org and the winner will be announced shortly after the giveaway ends!

Thanks for stopping by!

Fraction Freebie

We just ended our math unit on fractions and found an activity that's all over Pinterest, Pizza Fractions! Our kiddos had a blast creating their pizzas. Our kids colored their paper plates brown (crust), added some red (sauce) and some orange and yellow (cheese). Next they decided if they wanted their pizzas divided into halves or fourths. Then they chose their toppings. We had a chart posted (see pic below) of the toppings they could choose from. We also had scrap paper available for the students to cut out their toppings from.

Here are a few!

After they created their pizzas, they wrote about their Pizza Fractions and glued their papers on the back of their black construction paper.

If their pizza was divided into fourths, they used the paper that had four fraction/topping lines. If it was divided into halves, they used the paper that had two fraction/topping lines.

If you'd like a copy of the paper our first graders wrote on, just click the picture below!

Hope you all have a wonderful week!

Rainbow Fun

We've just ended our weather unit and thought we'd share our rainbow activity we did!

We began by reading a few books about rainbows.

Here's a cute Sid the Science Kid Rainbow Song that helps kids remember the colors of the rainbow and gives a brief explanation on how rainbows are formed.

After reading about rainbows, we had our first graders complete a shared writing with us.

Next we really wanted our kiddos to understand the sequence of how rainbows are formed. We divided our kids into groups of three and gave them sentence strips with the words first, next, and finally written on them. We also gave each group a card with a picture of rain, the sun, and a rainbow. Each child in the group chose a picture card. Next, the groups put their words in order and each took a turn telling a part of the sequence. We had the kids switch picture cards and say the sequence two more times so they each got a turn with all three picture cards. If you'd like a copy of the sequencing cards just click below!

Rainbow Sequence Cards

Here's a cute rainbow art project our kids completed after learning about rainbows. We gave them pre-cut tissue paper squares. Since our rainbow had six sections we encouraged them to make a tiny row of blue and then a tiny row of indigo in the fifth section (see in the picture on the top right below).

Just click below if you'd like a copy of the rainbow we used. We enlarged it to fit a 9x12.

Rainbow Art

We also thought we'd share a fun cloud lesson we recently found! If you are learning about clouds in your classroom, have a SMART Board, and are familiar with the SMART Exchange website, below is a fun interactive cloud lesson focusing on the three main types of clouds. Our kids just LOVED the lesson!

SMART Board Cloud lesson from SAMRT Exchange

Wishing you all a FABULOUS rest of the week!

Earth Day Unit Update

We just wanted to let you all know that we've updated our Earth Day Unit! If you've already purchased this unit, please re-download so you can get our pack with all our new updates! We've updated the fonts and clipart, and changed the format to many if the activities.

Here's a peek at some of the changes:

If you'd like to take a peek at our Earth Day Unit, you can check it out {HERE}

We'll be back tomorrow with some rainbow freebies!

Catchin' up with some freebies!

So who's ready for Spring Break? We definitely are, and it's starting to finally feel a little like Spring around here! We're looking forward to some much needed family time.
We've been busy in our neck of the woods and we thought we'd share a few freebies that you might be able to still use, or tuck away for next year.

Even though you're all probably all done with your 100th day celebrations, we thought we'd give you a little freebie that you can tuck away for next year. Here's a mini 100th day pack:

Our kiddos had so much ful making the poster that's in this pack. We enlarged it to 8 1/2 x 14 (legal). Here's a picture of an (almost) completed poster:

Download our 100th Day Mini Unit {HERE} in our TpT store!

We just finished our graphing unit in math and created a few extras to go with it.
If you'd like some extra picture and bar graph practice worksheets, you can download them {HERE}

Here's a few Easter themed addition worksheets that you might be able to use next week.

We created the Easter Egg double digit worksheet because we just can't find many worksheets that help our first graders add double digit numbers without regrouping.

With the Easter Egg Fact Family worksheet just have your kiddos roll two dice, add the numbers together, and then finish the fact family using the two addends and sum. We used Dice in Dice, which our kiddos just love! Here's a little close up of the Easter Egg Fact Family worksheet:

Both worksheets can be downloaded {HERE}

Have a wonderful week!

Plenty of president fun!

Well, after last week, we're definitely looking forward to this week! Two sick teachers + sick husbands + sick kiddos doesn't equal fun! With both households on the mend, we're back and ready to blog!

American presidents has been a main focus in our classrooms this month. We began this month by introducing George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. We read several books about both presidents, incorporated activities from our FREE President's Day Mini Unit, and each of our first graders made their own George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

You can read more about this art project {HERE}

This week and next we'll focus on Presidents' Day and other important presidents. Presidents' Day and Celebrating Presidents' Day (see below) are two WONDERFUL books that introduce the holiday and introduce other important presidents as well.

Our kiddos will also put together our Pocket Guide to Presidents which can also be found in our President's Day Mini Unit . We like to print this with two pages per sheet, which actually prints four booklet pages on one sheet. It makes it more "pocket sized" plus we save a little paper too!

Need help printing more than one page per sheet? If you're using a Mac, just go to layout and select two pages per sheet.

We also love to take our first graders on a little tour of the White House by visiting the White House website and taking an interactive tour!

The White House Interactive Tour

Finally, one of our favorite ways to end this unit is to have our first graders complete a "When I Become President" writing activity. This can also be found in our FREE President's Day Mini Unit. We just love their cute little drawings of themselves as a president!

We'd love to hear how you celebrate Presidents' Day in your classrooms!

Have a fantastic week!

Snowmen and a FREE President's Day Mini-Unit!

Happy Monday! Or in our case, we survived our Monday! Man, it was a rough one! Here's to hoping that the week gets a little less chaotic...

The last few weeks we've tried to fit in any snowman activities possible. Our schedules are so tight this year, that we really feel like we don't have time for anything other than what we are being required to do, but we do the best we can. We tried to incorporate some activities from our Snowman Fun unit from our store. It's a great little unit based on our some our favorite snowman stories. Even when you don't have a lot of time, the activities are easy to do after just reading the book. If you haven't checked it out, you should pop on by and take a look.

Several weeks ago we had our school's winter carnival, so we had to create our cute little snowman wall for some fun winter decor. These snowmen were sooo easy and the kids just loved them! We used a little glitter on the hats to brighten them up, and they were just to die for! If you'd like the patterns, click {here}.

We try to get in a least one little craftivity each month, so for January we made these adorable little snow globes. Didn't they turn our cute?

Click {here} for the pattern for the snow globe.

We wrapped up our activities with one of our favorite activities from our unit that goes along with Sneezy the Snowman. After reading the story, and completing a writing activity, we did our ice cream tasting.

We started by tasting all four kinds of ice cream. If you plan on doing this activity, you need just 1 carton of each type of ice cream. We actually each buy two different kinds, and share. So we actually only use about half a carton for each class. We just give each child a spoonful, and it works out great!

After the taste test we created our large class graph on the smart board.

After the class graph, each child made their own graph, and then completed the rest of the graph activities. If you'd like more info about this activity, check out the Snowman Fun unit.

President's Day is coming up, so make sure you check our our *FREE* President's Day Mini-Unit! You can find it at our TpT store.

Hope you stop by again really soon! We have a really fun Rainbow Birthday party to share with you, and some fun space activities. Happy Monday!

Super Bowl Weekend Sale! (and a printable Super Bowl Game)

Make sure to stop by our Teachers Pay Teachers Store and pick up some great treats! Everything is on sale all weekend for 20% off. On Sunday there is an additional 10% off using the promo code: Super.

Here's a fun little game to keep you busy during the super bowl!
Click on the picture to get your copy.

Need some fun things for the rest of the winter or spring? Make sure to check out these fun units!

Planets, Stars and Space... Oh My!

Valentine Sweethearts

St Patrick's Pack o' Fun

Earth Day Mini Unit

First Grade Sub Kit

First Grade Memory Book

First Grade Common Core Math Assessment

Need some fun things for the rest of the winter or spring? Make sure to check out these fun units! Happy Shopping!

New Years Randomness

Well we're back and it's definitely been awhile! We're just back to work with our first graders after a much needed break. We spent time traveling with our families and enjoying extra cuddle time with our own kids. It was so nice to see our first graders today, but boy are we TIRED! We've got a few websites that we've recently discovered and we thought we'd share them with you.
We also thought we'd share a few resources from SMART Exchange for those of you that have SMART Boards. One new website that has a free trial is Speakaboos. We've just discovered it and are liking the stories that we've listened to so far. We're thinking this would be perfect as an addition to our listening centers.

Another new favorite that is free is an AOL kids site that has over 30 stories to listen to and 15 of them are Arthur stories which our first graders just love!

SMART Exchange is a wonderful resource for SMART Board users. Just before vacation our kiddos were learning about fact families and we found this AWESOME fact family resource on SMART Exchange. We were able to set it up as a center for students when they finished their daily math work. They just loved the fact family houses!

Here's a place value SMART Board activity that we're going to show our kiddos within the next few weeks. It fits perfectly with our place value lessons and uses tens and ones sticks and cubes.

Our last little website that we just found is an online number line creator. Well, it actually creates worksheets with number lines, but we used it to create number lines for name tags. Since it's a new year we decided to give our kiddos new name tags and let them take their old ones home. The first name tags our students had included the alphabet, color and shape names, and a number line. We surprised our kiddos with the cute monkey name tags shown below, but wanted to add a number line as well since many of our students use a number line as a resource while adding and subtracting. We have the long number lines that come on a roll, but those are just too big to attach under name tags. We decided to create a worksheet with number lines 0-20, copied them on card stock, cut, and added them below each name tag.

Voila!