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!

Happy Wednesday!

Hi there!  Hope you're all having a great summer!  School starts for us in just a few days and it definitely feels like it's crunch time around here!  We wanted to let you know that we've updated one of our bestsellers!  Our First Grade Common Core Math Vocabulary Cards  now come in two font choices and we just added 8 new words!  If you have already purchased them, go to your downloads folder and re-download for the newest update.

If you'd like to check them out just click on the picture below!

Syllable sets now include September-January and currently working on February!  We should have February-June added within the next few months.  I love to use these with my first graders during literacy stations.  If you'd like to read more about that you can go {HERE}.

If you'd like to check out the syllable sets, just click the picture below!

And here are a few freebies!  I just updated the cover page for my lesson plan binder and created a few additional cover pages.  You can grab these HERE or by clicking on the pages below.  

This is an editable PDF so you can change name at the top or delete the text box if you'd prefer to not have a name at the top.  All examples are in color and B & W :)

I’ve recently started to work on my lesson plans for the first few weeks of school and thought I’d share my master template with you all.  It is in Powerpoint, and can easily be edited.  Just move/delete the text boxes and lines and you can customize them however you’d like.  I like to add monthly themed clipart in the above left corner J

You can grab this freebie HERE, or click on the picture below!

The fonts I used are:

KGPrimary Penmanship

KGSecond Chances Solid

KGThe Last Time

Hope you all have a wonderful day! 

Friday is almost here! 

YAY!

Back to School Read Alouds & A Freebie!

Happy Sunday!  Hope you are all having a wonderful weekend!  A few weeks ago we had a contest and had our participants list their favorite back to school read alouds.  There were so many wonderful suggestions!  Thank you to everyone who participated!  Below are pictures along with a title list below each picture.  

We also created our own little picture and list of a few of our faves!  

Here are some of our favorites:

If You Take a Mouse to School

Froggy Goes to School

Have You Filled a Bucket Today?

First Grade, Here I come!

Look Out Kindergarten, Here I Come!

The Night Before First Grade

There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Books!

A Fine, Fine School

The Recess Queen

How Do Dinosaurs Go To School

And here are some favorites mentioned by our followers!

Officer Buckle and Gloria Too

Alphabet  Adventure

No David!

You Are My Wonders

The Dot

Ish

Me First!

Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten

Weslandia

First Day Jitters

Chrysanthemum

Oh The Places You’ll Go

Third Grade Angels

Do Unto Otters

This School Year Will Be the Best!

First Grade Jitters

Pete The Cat Rockin’ in My School Shoes

Lily’s Plastic Purple Purse

Voices in The Park

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Brown Bear, Brow Bear, What Do You See?

The Kissing hand


And here's a little freebie!
I plan on putting this color by number worksheet in my first day coloring packs.  I have several coloring/counting/ABC worksheets that I copy for my first graders to work on while they get settled in on the first day of school.  If you'd like a copy, just click any of the pics below!  This freebie contains kindergarten through third grade and one that could be used at any grade level!

Here's one my daughter colored for an example!  

There are a couple of objects without numbers (apples on the tree, the boy's shirt, dots on the girl's dress)  These objects can be colored any color!

Have a great week!  

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!

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!  

Catching kindness Freebies and a Giveaway!

TGIF!!! After sitting in inservice for 3 days and then working in our classrooms, we are ready for a long weekend before the kiddos walk through the door on Wednesday. But before we both head off in different directions to camp over the long weekend with our families, we wanted to share a few things with you!

We just love this book as a great introduction to bucket filling! It's perfect for first grade and will help our kiddos understand the importance if showing kindness to others.

Have You Filled a Bucket Today?

After reading this book to our first graders, we are going to brainstorm ways we can be kind to help them better understand what kindness looks like and how they can show kindness toward others.

We also are incorporating this cute little chart into our classroom as well.

Pocket Chart

Each of our kiddo's names will be on a bucket.  When we've got a few minutes here and there between activities our first graders will have an opportunity to share about another child they might have noticed showing kindness. We then will fill out a kindness note and put it in the pocket of the child who was showing kindness. We did this last year, just slightly different (used a bulletin board instead) and the kids enjoyed it and it worked! We're thinking we'll have the kids take their kindness notes home weekly.  We made several different kindness notes and thought you might like them too!  You can find them {HERE}!

Kindness Notes

And to go along with our kindness activities, were going to incorporate Brag Tags! Boost Promotions contacted us and offered free tags for us to try out. We definitely said YES!  We are going to make sure that in the first few weeks of school each one of our students earns their kindness tag.  Each day we'll select a few students who have shown kindness and we'll explain what that student had done. By the end of the first few weeks, all of our kiddos will have earned their tags.  We're going to pass out the other tags as well throughout the year.  Boost Promotions has so many to choose from, and you can customize them.  We added our school name on the tags and they turned out ADORABLE!

Brag Tags

If you'd love some of these yourself, Boost Promotions has offered to give one one of our followers 100 tags and one set of small chains! The winner will also be able to choose up to four different types of tags (they come in sets of 25).  If you'd like to enter this giveaway simply comment below and if you have a blog and/or Facebook page, Boost Promotions would also LOVE for share about this giveaway.  Simply leave a link in your comment.  You can also follow them through their newsletter, Pinterest, and Facebook.  Links are below. Make sure to enter by Monday night so we can choose a winner.

Boost Promotions Blog

Boost Promotions Newsletter

Boost Promotions FaceBook Page

Boost Promotions Pinterest Page



Winner will be announced Tuesday, September 3rd!

Have a WONDERFUL weekend!

Alphabet Freebie

Well, we've finally gotten into the swing of things and have ventured back into our classrooms. We don't officially go back until Monday, but we just had to get started on our rooms. They are coming along, and we are looking forward to sharing pics with ya'll next week. But for now... One (of the MANY) major changes to our curriculum this year is in handwriting. For the past 10 years that we've been in the building, we have taught with D'Nealian handwriting. But now it's time for a change. Our building has gone to Handwriting Without Tears, school-wide. We've heard good things, so our fingers are crossed! We know that just about everyone out there has their own alphabet, but we haven't found one that is really perfect for us. So of course, we had to create our own. We included both long and short vowel sounds, as well as digraphs. We may add to it as the year goes on, adding some other vowel sounds, but we'll see. This is as close as we could come to fitting with our new handwriting program. We both have several alphabets up in our room, so although we are keeping up one D'Nealian, we are replacing our others. But, the best thing is... it's FREE!!! So, click on the picture below and grab yourself a copy!

Here's a preview of our alphabet.

If you are looking for more alphabet activities, make sure to check out our All About the Alphabet Pack in our store.

 

Everyone have a great weekend! We will be busy working on getting things ready to go back to school.

HUGE Back To School Giveaway!!!

It's so close we can smell it! Alarm clocks, pencils and crayons, teacher voices... the time to go back to school. But before we do, we're going to have a little fun with our blogger friends! We've got some great things planned for the last two weeks of our summer. Starting Tuesday, we begin our 14 Days of Summer! We'll be sharing at least one freebie everyday, and we've teamed up with some great bloggers to help up out!

Before we begin, we'd like to kick off our last two weeks of summer with a FAB-U-LOUS Back to School Giveaway! The winner will get our back to school items in our TpT store for free! Here's what you'll win:

Pocket Chart Calendar Cards
Pocket Chart Daily Schedule Cards
All About the Alphabet
All About Numbers
Word Wall Words
First Grade Math Assessment
Reading Strategies Poster Pack
Apples, Apples Everywhere
September Math Journal Prompts
and our new Math Journal Buddy

All that for just being our blogger friend!

So from now until Saturday, enter to win and we'll post a winner (or two...) Saturday night, August 13th. Here's how to enter:
1. Follow our blog, and leave a comment
2. Follow our TpT Store, and leave a comment
3. Blog about our 14 days of Summer, and leave a link
4. Blog about our giveaway, and leave a link

So there you go. Four ways to enter! Good luck! And make sure to watch tomorrow for our first freebie!

THE GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED STAY TUNED TOMORROW, AUGUST 14th , FOR OUR WINNERS!

The Three Little Pigs

Well it's definitely back to school mode around here lately (we go back in 19 days) and we have already been thinking about reading and literacy activities during our first couple of weeks of school. Reading groups will not begin until the third week, or until all of our students have been assessed. Along with Daily 5, whole group literacy activities will also be incorporated throughout our day. We will be reading some familiar books to our students during these few weeks and also introduce some newer versions to compare them with. There are so many versions of the The Three Little pigs out there and we found a few and created a little freebie to share with you all. First we'll read an original version of The Three Little Pigs. Here are two examples:

In the first book written by Betty Miles, all of the pigs remain alive at the end of the story and the wolf ends up falling into their soup, but just gets burned, and makes a quick exit out the door. The first pig, second pig, and the wolf have worse luck in the second version above illustrated by Marie-Louise Gay. The first and second pig both get eaten by the wolf, but the third pig tricks the wolf and eats him for dinner. I am sure there are several others, but these were the first two I found at my libaray that were similar to the original story.

This fabulous book, The 3 Little Dassies written by Jan Brett, is version similar to The Three Little Pigs, but the characters are different and the the houses that they build are also different. Jan Brett tells about how she got the idea for this story HERE. I won't giveaway any details about this story, but let me tell you after reading it, I am definitely going to buy a copy for my classroom, so darn cute!

These two books below are also other versions of The Three Little Pigs, and are very cute as well. A few of the houses are built from the same materials as in the original version, but the characters are different. The Three Little Gators is written by Helen Ketteman and The Three Little Javalinas is written by Susan Lowell.

And now for the freebie.

We wanted to do a book comparison with one of the original versions and a version similar to the original, and since we'll be doing this during the first week of school, it also has to be easily completed by our new first graders. So here is a worksheet comparing the houses in an original version of The 3 Little Pigs and a version that you choose. We'll be choosing The 3 Little Dassies because the houses are completely different. Click the worksheet below to download your copy

Watch for more book comparisons as we get closer to school!

Pin It

And speaking of school, don't forget about our TpT Sale going on at our store through the 6th. All of our items are 20% off and TpT is offering you 10% off of your total with the code B1T1S when you checkout! We have lots of items that are great for the beginning of the year: Pocket Chart Calendar Cards, Pocket Chart Daily Schedule Cards, September Math Journal Prompts, All About the Alphabet, All About Numbers, and many more. Come on by and take a peek!