Happy September!

Hi there it's Leslie!  

Happy September!

I just recently returned back to school after summer break, and am on week two with my first graders.   We're having a great time!  If this is one of your first weeks back I hope you are all off to a great start with your kiddos as well!  These last two weeks have been very busy.   I've been busy training my first graders on how to work during reading stations. I'm hoping to have the kiddos using them independently by next week.  You can read about how I incorporate stations {HERE} and you can find lots of station ideas {HERE}!
Last week was full of Pete the Cat activities, and this week we have a few apple life cycle activities planned.  If you'd like to check out our Apple Sort & Label (life cycle & apple parts ) you can stop by {HERE}.  You can also stop {HERE} to check out what's inside this set!  Here's a little apple freebie I made this week.  Just click the picture below for your copy!

Apple Word Search

Here's another word search freebie to celebrate back to school!

Back to School Word Search

Two newest additions to our store are August and September Show and Tell Apron cards.   I am currently working on an October set.  I love to incorporate these at my pocket chart station.  If you'd like to see what's included in these sets, just click on the pictures below!  

August Show and Tell Apron Cards

September Show and Tell Apron Cards

We wanted to give a shout out to Feedspot for recgnizing us as one of their Top 100 Elementary Teacher Blogs and Websites for Elementary School Teachers.  What an honor to be part of this list!  Thank you so much Feedspot! 

If you'd like to check out their list, just click {HERE}.

Hope you all have a wonderful rest of the week!

Transportation & Apple Activities

 Hi everyone it's Leslie!

Hope you all are having a fantastic weekend!  

Well, it's finally October and we're just loving it!  

We've been in or classrooms for about a month now with our kiddos and it finally feels like we're in a solid routine.  Schedules are finalized and our math and reading stations are running smoothly, YAY!

Here are a few things we've been doing along with a few new freebies!

  A few weeks ago I incorporated apples throughout my week.  We read lots of books about apples, used some smart board activities from the smart exchange website, and incorporated these activities below. 

After reading several nonfiction books about apples.  My kiddos retold the apple life cycle by placing picture and word cards into a pocket chart. (Please ignore the picture quality, bad lighting).  

A few days later we completed the worksheet below.

The following week I included an apple label activity in my fine motor station.  This will continue to be at my fine motor station for the next 6 days of literacy stations.

The life cycle cards were also used again 

and were put at my pocket chart station.  

Both were a great reinforcement about a previously learned topic!

These activities can both be found in our 

Apple Sort & Label (life cycle & apple parts )

Look for Erin's apple activities soon!

 Transportation was one of the reading themes in my Treasures reading program last week and I incorporated a transportation sort along with a few transportation books and songs.  

Here's a picture of the sort below.  

When my stations change next week, I will include this picture book in my publishing station.  

There are picture cards that go along with this book.  

The kids can color, cut, and glue their pictures on the appropriate page.  

The picture sort and mini book with pictures can both be found here: 

Transportation Sort & Mini Picture Book 

I am enjoying including activities that relate to previously learned topics at a few of my reading stations.  My kiddos can work independently and feel successful while completing these activities!  Next week one of our reading themes is frogs.  I've got a few things planned that I'll be sure to share with you in a few days!

Lastly, here are a few freebies that we'd love to share with you all!

This little welcome sign is placed in a 5x7 frame on my counter as you enter my classroom.  It's editable and in our TpT store!  It's replacing the September one that was displayed last month.  Just click the picture below to get your copy.  It will print on a standard 8 1/2  x 11 piece of paper.  I just prefer to shrink it down to fit in a small frame.  

I also updated a few posters that I use quite regularly in my classroom when solving addition and subtraction story problems. 

These little gems are hole punched and have a ring through them.  I hang them right above my document camera cart and pull them down when we complete math story problems.  My kiddos get used to this, and hearing these words repeated over and over help when they complete story problems independently.  Just click the pictures below and you can get these little freebies as well!

Hope you all have a wonderful week!  

Is September over yet?

Myyyyyyyyy Goodness!  We feel like we haven't yet come up for air much since this school year started. We have just started our 4th week with kids, and MAN we are EX-HAU-STED!  For any of you that use Treasures, if you can remember what it was like at the beginning, that's what we're going through right now. Our schedules are so incredibly tight, that we are just trying to keep up. We do basically 2 hours of straight reading, and are still struggling to get into everything in. We just started our small groups this week, and it's intense! We have been doing Daily 5 for the last few years, so we are sort-of used to the centers and all, but this is at a whole new level. If you're interested on how we've meshed Treasures and Daily 5, stay tuned! We will be sharing some ideas and freebies shortly. And we do apologize for neglecting our blog, but at this time we are really spending every waking second on our classrooms. But don't leave us! We'll be back to our normal selves shortly, fingers crossed.

So, for today, we have several random freebies for ya that we've been wanting to share. A week or so ago we did a few activities about apples. We read stories, did apple-themed word work, studies the life cycle of an apple seed, and all sorts of fun stuff. We ended the week by tasting apples, and graphing our favorite kinds.

On top of learning our THREE new adoptions this year, we have been having a ball getting to know our Smart Boards. We are using them all day long, and aren't quite sure what we ever did without them. This year on our blog, we will be giving away lots of free smartboard lessons. For now, we are just using office clipart so that we can share them with you. Feel free to change to make cuter or to fit your needs.  This little gem we used as a fun way to get our kids used to the smart board, and to create our class graph. To use, all you do is copy an apple from the bottom, and drag it to the correct column on the graph. And don't forget to add your tallies. Grab this fun activity {here}. Just make sure you have the Notebook software that comes with your Smartboard.

After we created our class graphs, the kids made their own graphs. These can be found in our Apples, Apples Everywhere math and literacy unit at our TpT store.

We also came up with this great little apple craftivity. We looked on Pinterest but didn't find much, so this is what we created. We made mosaic apple letters, and each of our firsties made one for the letter of their name. They turned out just adorable!

If you'd like to make these (they could easily be made into pumpkins for October) you can find the letter patterns {here}.

Last year Abby from the Inspired Apple did this great little lesson on labeling, and we thought it was a great way to start out our writing workshop. This is definitely an area that are kids aren't very strong in, so many of the kids really benefiting from teaching this so explicitly. We started out by created an anchor chart for our writing center wall. We had kiddos come up to help up label all of the parts of the dog. 

We then wanted to make sure that each child got the chance to label their own, so we created this worksheet for the kids to complete.

We were able to label it with the kids on the smartboard. {Seriously, aren't these things the coolest things ever?!}

 

If you'd like the dog worksheet, you can find it {here}.

And last, as I've been spending several hours either on a Friday night, or during the weekend at school, I've found another great use for our smartboards. My own little munchkins think it's just like the movie theater!

Check back soon, and we promise to share some new literacy center ideas, as well as pictures of our classrooms. One step at a time, right? Have a great rest of the week! Off to enjoy some more premier week on tv! Night night.

A Week of Apples

Hello friends! Hope everyone is having a fabulous Saturday. As September came to an end, we finally finished up our apple activities. Much of what we did can be found in our Apples, Apples Everywhere unit, but of course we also had to use some great ideas we found from our blogger friends. But don't worry, we're also going to include some freebies for ya'll today.

Our students have had some fun with our apple word work activities. They had fun building words, sorting our word families, and working on sequencing.

We also found this great apple addition math game on Pinterest from First Grade Friends. We actually loved it so much we've made a pumpkin version which we'll share soon.


We also tasted apples this week, and graphed our favorite apples. We began by tasting, and then each colored an apple for our favorite apple. We made a quick data table, tallied our results, and then made our graphs. Our graph can be found in our Apple unit.


We then did a 5 senses writing piece about apples, and made some great charts with the funniest adjectives. Of course I forgot to take pictures of those.

We ended up the week with some apple sequencing activities. We really talked about what comes first, next, last, etc with apples. We started by making our apple tree book about how an apple comes from a seed.


We then did Cara's great apple pie activity, and extended it a bit further.

To end our week we made applesauce. Each child brought in an apple, and before the kids came we cut them up and threw them in the crockpot. We did the cutest sequencing activity about who to make applesauce.
We then turned it into a First, Next, Then Last flip book that turned out so darn cute. It also REALLY helped reinforce this concept. This seems to be one thing that our kids struggle with, so we're starting on it early. Aren't these great?


And voila! Here's the finished product!

We like to send home a recipe for applesauce with the kids, so we added it to the back.


Before we actually ate our applesauce, we did Cara's labeling chart, and talked about and looked at everything we used to make the applesauce.


It turned out pretty yummy!

Here's our graph that we made for our class. Click on the links below to get your copy of our applesauce activities.


Applesauce Sequence
Applesauce Class Graph
Applesauce Recipe

And don't forget to check out our Apples, Apples Everywhere Unit at our TpT store.

We're working on our fall and pumpkin units, so keep an eye out for those, as well as for some great freebies early next week.
Happy Saturday!

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Clipart Courtesy of Scrappin' Doodles.

Apples, Apples Everywhere and November Math Journal

They are finally up! Our Apples, Apples Everywhere Unit and November Math Journal Prompts are on TpT! So head on over to our STORE to check them out!


And don't forget, as the year goes on we will be adding more Math Journal prompts each month that will continue to get more difficult. Make sure to keep your eye out for them!

Everything in our store is still on sale, so grab your goodies now!

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So much to share... and give!

Hello friends! Bare with us today, because we've got a whole lot of lovin' to share!! We hope everyone had a FANTASTIC weekend, because we sure did. Summer weather has FINALLY arrived in our beautiful state of Oregon, and fingers are crossed that it will stick around for awhile. What a busy week coming up! We're sure you all know about the Back to School Sale at Teachers Pay Teachers, and don't forget that everything in our store is 20% off as well! Make sure to check out our store, and get yourself some goodies!

We had hoped to get a few more things up before the sale starts tomorrow, but UGHHH, the site won't let us upload anything until Tuesday! Bummer, but we are just so dang excited that we had give you a peak at what's coming.


We have finished our Apples, Apples Everywhere unit that is a great addition to your back to school tool kit. It's filled with 67 pages of apple themed math and literacy fun! Here's a preview of what's included, but don't worry. It has much, much more! Check back on Tuesday, and we'll have some links all ready to go.

We have a few great freebies to share with all of our lovely followers too, because we just can't wait to get back to teach with all of this stuff! This fun apple is one that we use every year to help the kids introduce themselves to each other, and to share with parents at Open House. Now there are about a hundred different ways to use this, but this is what we do. We first enlarge them big enough to fit on an 11x17 piece of paper on the copy machine. We help the kids fill in the information with a sharpie. We then have them paint the apples, and we add a wallet-sized picture from the first day of school in the middle. We cut them out, mount them to a 12x12 piece of construction paper, laminate, and done! They turn out super cute! They make a great bulletin board, and then later we collect them, and turn them into a class book called "The Apples of My Eye." The kids love looking back at the books from previous years, and see who's been in our classes. Click on the picture below for your copy!

If you like these apples, we'd love to hear how you use them in your own classes.

One thing that we are going to be implementing this year are math journals. We've decided to do these as a part of calendar time, all together on the carpet. This is a first for us, so cross your fingers for us that it goes smoothly! The plan is to have a basket of notebooks, and a basket of glue sticks, so that as the kids join us for calendar they can just get their slip with the question on it, and stick it on. One other trick that we've decided to use, is to go with composition notebooks, rather than spiral bound notebooks. These always seem to get trashed when they kids use them daily, and we've found that composition books last longer. So all of our math journal prompts will fit in these perfectly. However, you can really use them with any notebooks you'd like. On TpT we so far have September Math Journal Prompts and October Math Journals Prompts. On Tuesday we will be adding November Math Journal Prompts. Be watching later on for the rest of our monthly themed math journal questions to come.




Since we're loving apples today, here are some apple themed math journal prompts for our blogger friends. Click on the picture for your copy!

Thanks for sticking with us until the end of this post! We love our followers! We've got a big giveaway planned in the next week or 2, so make sure to stay tuned. And as we head back to school, check out our blog for more fun ideas, recipes, freebies, and teacher tips. Have a great week!

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