First Grade Fanatics

It's back to school for us this Tuesday,well actually we've been back since last week, but this week will be our first week with our new kiddos and we're so excited to meet them! We've got lots of Pete the Cat activities scheduled for our first week back. Pinterest has sooooo many wonderful ideas! To go along with our Pete the Cat themed week, we created a little award that we're sending home with out kiddos on the first day of school. It's an editable version too! Just click the picture below to grab your copy!

Cat Award

This little award has been on our blog since we first started blogging. It works well after reading The Kissing Hand books with Chester the Raccoon. Since we added our cat version and made it editable, we updated our raccoon one as well! You can click the picture below to download this recently updated freebie!

Raccoon Award

Our next resources tie in nicely with our First Grade Treasures reading program. Leslie uses this program with her first graders and has mapped out the themes for the entire year! If you use First Grade Treasures and would like a copy of our map, just email us! She plans on sharing freebies and book titles that tie in nicely with the weekly themes! So check back often for updates!

Smart Start will begin next week and will run for three weeks. After that, Unit One Week One will begin.

The themes that we've connected to Unit One Week One in our series are:

My Home

My Senses

School Rules

If you don't use Treasures, we're sure these freebies will still work for you at some point throughout the year!

Here are a few books that we've checked out through our local library network and plan on incorporating in our themed book display.

And here are two freebies that we'd love to share with you!

Five Senses Label

This simple book provides easy patterned text for your kiddos to read to someone,

and includes two printing options.

All About Me Book

We hope you all have a wonderful week!
We'll be back later this week with classroom pictures!

New Reading Friends Poster Pack

Happy Thursday!

Hope you've all had a great week whether it be with your family, friends, or students! We go back in two weeks and our students return in three! We've definitely been trying to accomplish A LOT and have been super busy creating new products, updating a few oldies, and working in our classrooms! Look for classroom pictures soon! Erin is in a new classroom this year and is setting up for her new kindergartners, and Leslie has been unpacking all of her things since new carpet has been installed in her first grade classroom!

Here's a new addition we've just added to our store,
and it's on sale through tomorrow!

This is a very simple version of our recently updated
Reading Strategies Poster Pack.

This pack includes 8 decoding strategy posters, a student bookmark, parent page,
and cards to use during small group.

The strategies included are:

*Eagle Eye
*Lips the Fish
*Stretchy Snake
*Chunky Monkey
*Skippy Frog
*Tryin Lion
*Flippy Dolphin
*Helpful Kangaroo

You can check them out {HERE}!

Here is a sample of what's inside:

Decoding Strategy Poster

Small Group Cards

We're using these little cards during our small group reading instruction and plan on laminating them and attaching them to craft sticks.

Student Bookmark

Parent Page

These can be sent home for parents to use while reading to/with their child.

Or while they're listening to their child read.

Here's a freebie set that we created to go with our Reading Friends Poster Pack. This little poster pack contains coloring sheets for all eight strategies and can be found {HERE}.

Thanks for stopping by!

Editable Welcome Sign!

Happy Saturday friends!

Hope you're all enjoying your weekend!

We've got about 4 weeks left of summer vacation and while we're trying to soak in every last minute of it with friends and family, we're also prepping for the upcoming school year!

We've added lots of new products to our store and are now adding some editable items as well.

One of our newest products, Pocket Chart Schedule Cards, is now editable! So of you've purchased it please re download for the editable version.

You can find it {HERE} or by clicking on the picture below!

And here's a little freebie that we made for our classrooms & we'd LOVE to share with you!

It's an editable sign that includes three versions. You could print, frame, and place on a shelf in your classroom. You could also use it as part of a bulletin board display.

The possibilities are endless!

You can find this little freebie {HERE} or just click the pic below!

Enjoy your weekend!

Alphabet Link Up

Happy Saturday friends! Since the fabulous Abby is having her Alpha-BOOM week, we thought we'd link up and share a new idea for introducing the alphabet to your kiddos! Since Erin is now going to be teaching kindergarten, this will be the first thing she does in her new classroom. We've spent the last few weeks creating our biggest product yet, our new ABC Bootcamp pack! It's 200 pages full of activities and resources to help you introduce the letters to your students, in the first 26 days of school.

Just click the pics below or go {HERE} to check it out!

Here's a little preview of what's inside!

We've also added a little freebie of a few items that can be found in our ABC Bootcamp pack.

If you'd like to check out our Bootcamp freebie, stop by {HERE} to download!

We are currently LOVING Show and Tell Aprons! If you're not sure what they are just look on Pinterest or Google. Since we'll be using them in our classrooms next year, we're creating card sets that can easily fit the aprons. If you don't have an apron, these can easily work with pocket charts too, or can be used at a table for a center activity!

Here's our first set!

You can check out our Alphabet Show and Tell Apron Cards {HERE}

And here's our numbers 1-20 set! You can go {HERE} to check it out!

Another new item added to our store is our

Read the Rainbow Sight Word Pack.

This is a unit to help teach and master the first 220 sight words based on the Dolch Word List. Each list has a color, and as the students master reading their list, they move through the colors of the rainbow. This is set up so that you can easily make this work for you! We created it in March, and used it toward the end of last school year.

Our kids just loved it!

Look for a post in September about how we incorporate this into our reading instruction.

Just click the title or picture below to check it out!

Read the Rainbow Sight Words

Here's a freebie to use with our Rainbow Sight Words pack. This sheet could be used for kiddos to track the list that they are currently on. You could use this sheet several ways. One idea would be to place a sticker on the number of the corresponding list that they've mastered.

Read the Rainbow Freebie can be found {HERE}!

And since we're on the topic of Dolch words, below is a preview of some new Dolch sight word worksheet sets that we've recently added to our store. These worksheets incorporate the first 220 Dolch sight words. We use these during our morning literacy centers and our kiddos an easily complete them independently.

You can find these {HERE}

You can also click below for separate links:

Two more sets are in the works and we'll be adding them to our store soon!

We're updating our numbers, colors, and shapes posters in our classrooms so we added our new designs to our store! They are full size, but can easily be printed 2 or even 4 to a sheet if you want to make them into flash cards. On a mac when you select print, just go to layout and change how many pages per sheet.

Numbers, Colors, and Shapes Poster Pack can be found {HERE}

Here's a little preview of what's inside!

Numbers, Colors, & Shapes Poster Pack

We've also created a few worksheets for

number, shape, and color recognition.

Just stop by {HERE} to get your Numbers, Colors, and Shapes Freebie!

And here's who we're linking up with!

Babbling Abby from The Inspired Apple!

One of our favorite blogs!

Check it out {HERE}:

Hope you all have a FANTASTIC weekend!

Coming Soon...

Happy Hump Day, Friends! We are busy working like crazy over here! We've got some big things coming, but we wanted ya'll to know we're still here thinking about all of ya. As Erin gets ready to move schools and grades, we are working on all sorts of stuff for her new Kinder classroom. We are working on a new ABC Bootcamp set to help teach all 26 letters in the first 26 days of school. It's one of the biggest units we've ever done, and so far we are in LOVE! We can't WAIT to share it with you!

We've also gotten to take a little peak at our new blog design, and it's AMAZING! Be watching soon!

And if you haven't found us on Facebook or Instagram yet, make sure to check us out! You'll want to search for

First Grade Fanatics and K Too!

We've also got a big giveaway coming soon...

Have a great week!

Sunday Sharings

Happy Sunday! Hope you're all having a great day!

Summer vacation is in full swing for us and we're really enjoying our time with our kiddos and family!

We're also creating lots of new products and can't wait to share them with you in the next few months!

A new blog design is scheduled for the end of this month, plus we're now on Facebook, Instagram, & Pinterest! If you'd like to follow us just click on our Facebook, Instagram, & Pinterest icons in our sidebars located to the left and right of this post!

This summer we're also catching up on a few books! The First Six Weeks of School & The Morning Meeting Book are both WONDERFUL books and great for reading before the school year starts. We've had these books for several years and refer to them often! They both offer great tips and ideas on building a classroom community that can be incorporated into ANY classroom. Both books really give great ideas to help start a successful school year!

You can find them both on the Responsive Classroom website and also at Amazon.

And speaking of the Responsive Classroom website, they have a blog that has WONDERFUL articles that offer great ideas and teaching strategies. We also follow them on Facebook and subscribe to their YouTube videos :) If you'd like to check them out, links are below!

Responsive Classroom Blog

Responsive Classroom Facebook

Responsive Classroom YouTube

Here are a few freebies that we'd like to share with you! We incorporated these into out last few weeks of school and hadn't got a chance to put them on the blog yet!

One of our last weeks in our Treasures reading program had a strong focus on number and color words. We created this little color by number worksheet and added it to the back of a Treasures grammar/spelling worksheet. It was one of the worksheets at our paper practice center.

Color by Number Worksheet

To continue the focus on color and number words, we incorporated these I Have Who Has cards during our small group reading instruction. If you have less than 10 kids in a group (teacher reads one card) You could read the extras, or give a few students more than one card. Our students absolutely enjoy this game!

I Have Who Has Colors & Numbers

Since our last chapter in math focused heavily on 3-dimensional shapes, we created a worksheet, and a math game for extra practice. Both are pictured below just click the pictures and you'll be able to get your freebies!

3-D Shape Worksheet

Roll a 3-D Shape Bingo

Wishing you all a WONDERFUL week!

Plant Life Cycles

Well Hello Summertime! We had a crazy busy end of school year this year. After 12 years teaching first grade, Erin is moving schools, and will be teaching kindergarten next year, closer to home. We've got some big changes coming up on the blog this summer, so make sure to keep checking in on us! Don't worry, we'll still keep the first grade ideas coming, but we're excited to start to share all sorts of new kinder ideas with you as well. And be sure to be looking for our new blog design. We've just started the process of looking for a great design, so if you have any recommendations, we'd love to hear about them. But for now...

Here are some plant activities that we incorporated throughout May and into June:

We made anchor charts labeling a plant and about how plants grow.

Then our kiddos each labeled a worksheet about the parts of a flower.

Next we planted Lima Bean and Sunflower seeds in our seed viewer.

You can check out this seed viewer {HERE}!

Our kids recorded their observations on these pages:

After our seeds had gown into plants, we transplanted them to larger pots,
so our kiddos could continue to see them grow.

We also planted individual mammoth sunflower seeds for our kiddos. About mid-late May when our sunflower seeds had grown into seedlings, we attached this cute little sign to craft sticks and tucked them into each pot before they went home.

Here are some great books that we read to our students while learning about plants:

We also incorporated several activities from our latest addition to our TpT store!

You can check it out {HERE}

This pack is a great introduction for teaching your students about plant,

bean and/or sunflower life cycles.

Included in this mini unit:

-Life cycle of a plant mini book

-Life cycle of a plant mini book answer pages

-Life cycle of a plant mini book with blank lines

-Cut and glue retell cards for plant life cycle

-Cards to make your own plant life cycle anchor chart

-Plant vocabulary cards

-Life cycle of a bean mini book

-Life cycle of a bean mini book answer pages

-Life cycle of a bean mini book with blank lines

-Cut and glue retell cards for bean life cycle

-Cards to make your own bean life cycle anchor chart

-Bean plant vocabulary cards

-Life cycle of a sunflower mini book

-Life cycle of a sunflower mini book answer pages

-Life cycle of a sunflower mini book with blank lines

-Cut and glue retell cards for sunflower life cycle

-Cards to make your own sunflower
life cycle anchor

chart

-Sunflower vocabulary cards.

If you'd like a copy of our Parts of a Flower worksheet,

you can find it {HERE}

Our Bean & Sunflower Plant Observation sheets can be found {HERE}

Our sunflower poem printables can be found {HERE}

We're also excited to announce that we are now being featured on Elementary School Blogs, a daily "blog newspaper" of the best elementary school blogs! Stop by and check them out!

Thanks so much for stopping by!