Showing posts with label literacy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label literacy. Show all posts

Happy January!

Happy January!  Hope your year is off to a great start!
After a very LONG winter break (we've had so many two hour delays and snow days in December and January, I've lost track of the total!) I am finally going back to a full week this next week, and I can't wait for some consistency!
Just stopping by to share a quick little freebie that I made for my first graders this week!  Long i (i_e) is our sound focus of the week, and this will be one of the choices my students have during our intervention time.
Just click on the picture below if you'd like to grab a copy!


I also just finished up this entire set.  I like to incorporate these into my literacy stations during my reading block.  Look for a post next week about how I use these!  If you'd like to check them out, just click the picture below.  You can find the individual sets {HERE}.



If you're following my stations that I incorporate into my reading block,
here's what we're my students are doing next week:


*Spelling Space: Word Search focusing on long i (this is from my reading program), Write it! focusing on our story words for the week which can be found {HERE}  If you'd like to check out the Dolch Set you can go {HERE}, and Word Whiz that are from Learning Resources.  You can check them out {HERE}.

*Sand Writing: My kiddos use craft sticks and write their weekly words in sand.  I bought my sand from Lakeshore, a local teacher store.  It can be found {HERE}.  I put the sand in plastic supply boxes which make it easy for clean up.  I also put a plastic table cloth on the table :)

*Dice Drive: Five in a Row Dolch Phrases from First Grade Factory which can be found {HERE} and roll a word which can be found {HERE}.

*White Boards:
 Kids write spelling words from weekly word list, then write their own words.

*Read and Write the Room: Winter Words from this set {HERE}

*Word Way: Nonsense Word 4 in a Row that can be found {HERE} and word blocks for making sentences.

*Write the Room:  Christmas Write-the-Room which can be found {HERE} and Read and Write the Room: North Pole & Gingerbread words that can be found {HERE}

*Syllable Station: January syllable set that can be found {HERE}.

*Artist's Alley:  Snowman freebie from Funky Fresh Firsties.  The freebie can be found {HERE}.

Click {HERE} if you'd like to see the first week and some info about my station work!
Click {HERE}for other station ideas!
Click {HERE} for other station ideas!
Click {HERE} for other station ideas!
Click {HERE} for other station ideas!

Have a wonderful week!

Looking for syllable activities?

Hope you are all having a fantastic July!  We sure have been enjoying our summer around here!  We’ve got several new products in the works and have just added a few to our store. 
Last year with my first graders I incorporated literacy centers in a whole new way and I absolutely LOVE it!  You can read about that {HERE}.  I often incorporate syllable activities and decided to create some monthly themed activities that my kiddos could easily complete while in their groups.   



Each set includes:       

*Picture/word cards

*Syllable sorting mats/headers  

*Syllable count worksheet

*Cut & glue picture cards & sorting mat worksheet

I love incorporating poly spots at my syllable stations.  These are a great tool to use for counting syllables in words. My first graders use the poly spots to hop/jump to while saying a word.   Typically my syllable sorts contain words with 1-3 syllables, so I place three poly spots at the station.  They place the poly spots in a row on the floor near the station, pick a word, and then hop it!  For example, if the word was pencil, they would say pen as they land on the first spot, and cil as they land on the second spot.   Clapping is also an option, but this is by far their favorite!


If you’d like to check out our monthly sets you can go {HERE}, or click on the pictures above. September and October are currently in our store.  November and December are in the works and should be added soon! 

If you’d like a peek at what’s inside these syllable sets, we’ve added an animal set as a freebie!  This pack contains a few of the items that are in our monthly syllable sets. 
Just click the picture below! 

Hope you all have a wonderful day!

Happy December!

Hi It's Leslie here!  Hope your December is off to a great start!  I've been busy with my kiddos and trying to get all of our December projects complete in only 2 weeks!  YIKES!  The week after next is filled with gingerbread activities from our Gingerbread Galore pack!  My first graders just love when we have a week filled with gingerbread lessons tied into our math and reading.

I wanted to share some information about several new products we've added to or store!   
CVC short vowel cards
Each set contains:
*Lowercase letter cards a-z (use to build CVC words) 
*CVC picture cards 
Word cards that match the picture cards


I like to use these cards with my large hanging pocket chart.  My first graders can easily place them into the pockets and they enjoy matching the words to the correct picture or building the words using the letter cards.  These are put out at my pocket chart station during my Literacy station rotations.  
Erin likes to use these cards with her kindergartners using her Show and Tell Apron.  

If you'd like to check out these cards, plus more, you can find them {HERE} in the pocket chart category in our Teachers Pay Teachers store, or you can find them bundled {HERE}!  


Here's a sight word bingo set that I'll be using in my small reading groups this week and next!  It's a freebie so just click on the picture below or go {HERE}!

There are 10 individual cards so you can have up to 10 players, or have your kiddos share :) 

Enjoy!
Have a great week friends!


Happy Fall

Happy fall! It's definitely fall in our neck of the woods and we've been talking about the seasons with our kiddos. We've read several non fiction books about the season and have a little fiction favorite we'd like to tell you about.
This is such an adorable book about two squirrels who are experiencing their first fall and wonder why the leaves are falling from their tree they call home.  It's one of our favorites that we've read for the last couple of years and our first graders just LOVE it!

And speaking of seasons, we just love this YouTube video!  It has such a catchy tune!

All of Harry Kindergarten's videos are WONDERFUL!

Here's a fall freebie in our TpT store!
 Our kiddos just love these books!  
Just click {HERE} for a copy!

Our phonics focus for the week is the short a sound. So we thought we'd share another fall freebie with you!  This word sort contains four short a word sort cards and 20 words to sort.  There are also several recording sheet options that we've included.  Just click below for your copy!



We will be putting this out at one of our literacy centers next week as a review.  

Hope your fall is off to a great start! 
Have a wonderful week!



We're all about treasures around here

Hope you are all having a fabulous start to December!  We just absolutely LOVE this time of year!  We  have just finished trimester one with our kiddos and are ready to start trimester two! We've got a busy 3 weeks ahead of us before winter break.  Creating games for our school's first winter carnival, helping our kiddos create gifts for  their families on Christmas, and incorporating our Gingerbread Math & Literacy Unit {you can check it out here} into our plans, are just a few of the many items on our LONG to do lists!  We'll share more about these later this month!  
Now on to our literacy block, and if you teach reading using Treasures, then you'll definitely want to keep reading this post!  Since our kiddos go to literacy centers everyday (click here to see how we do literacy centers) while we meet with small groups, we decided we'd create a center called "Paper Practice".  This center often contains practice book pages and grammar worksheets.  We've also created our own practice sheets based on the weekly sight words found in Treasures.  This center contains at least 3 different "worksheet" type activities.  Our students visit this center twice throughout the week, so we like to have a variety of "paper" activities for them to choose from.  We also have a word work center where our students practice their weekly treasures spelling words using magnets, play-dough, scrabble tiles, Wikki Stix, etc...  This center is mostly hands on and contains weekly spelling word lists for our kiddos to read while creating words.  We also have 4 other centers: listening (with ipods), computers, writing, and reading.     
If you're looking for paper practice activities for your first graders, then you'll definitely want to check out our latest addition to our store. 

   This set of First Grade Paper Practice Activities contains:

•Letter Cards (capital, lowercase, & 6 beginning and final blends)

•Spelling List Template

•Spelling Lists (on level words for each week)

•Read, Write, Make worksheet using High Frequency Words
(for each week)

•Roll a Sight Word worksheet using High Frequency Words
(for each week)

•Rainbow Words worksheet using High Frequency Words
(for each week)

•Two Beginning Blend Worksheets (week 4)

•Two Final Blend Worksheets (week 4)

•End of Unit Memory Cards
(all high frequency words and on level spelling words from unit 1)

•3 End of Unit Word Searches
(all high frequency words and on level spelling words from unit 1)

Stop on by our TpT store and you can check it out {HERE}!

We've also got a few freebies for you as well!  We are just loving the Treasures teaching charts and definitely love to display them on our SMART boards and make the lessons more interactive.  We've made cards to match some of the phonics/fluency teaching charts.  We use these cards when we meet with our small groups.  Our kids sort the words, practice reading them, and rebuild the sentences.  We have made teaching chart word cards for each week in unit 1.  Just click the links below!  







We're always looking for new ideas and we'd love to hear what you do for word work and/or paper practice types of centers.  If you'd like to share, please comment below!  
Hope you all have a great week!  
  
  

Spring Cleaning


Hope you are all having a great week! We've been so busy with our families, but its been so nice to have the week off and actually RELAX!
Our first graders just LOVE math and literacy games and storage and organization have been an ongoing issue for us, until recently. Its taken a few months, but after some spring cleaning and organizing, we FINALLY feel that we are organized and have a system that works for our game storage.

We store all of our games in labels storage boxes. Our seasonal math and literacy game packs and our other math and literacy packs can be found in our TpT store.
We found some great storage boxes that hold our games perfectly. We've organized our games by month and have them
easily accessible with our other manipulatives.
We print our games on 8 1/2 X 11 cardstock and tuck the game boards and playing cards right inside storage baggies.
The little ones pieces that came with our place value manipulatives
work perfectly for playing pieces.

Our daily lessons in our new math program pretty much follow the same format everyday. After our students finish the "on my own" pieces, they can choose a math game, math flash cards, or go to a laptop and play one of the math games (our new math program has a FANTASTIC online component with games and virtual manipulatives).

If our first graders choose to
play a math game when they are done, they grab a game
(out if the choices that we've provided) off of the table along with a bowl of cubes. Then they find a place to play their game
with 2-3 others.
They take the cubes out of the bowls
and place the playing cards inside the bowls,
then grab a card (or 2 cards depending on the game)
from the bowl.

This routine works well for us and also allows us time to meet with small groups of students for extra math practice if needed.

Our first graders play our literacy games during Daily 5 as part of word work. The games are placed with our other word work materials and our kiddos can easily access them as well.

We just love how these games fit so nicely with all of our other
tubs & totes!
These labels that we've sized and outlined
to fit these boxes can be found {HERE}
Our April math journal prompts are up in our TpT store! Just click the picture below if you'd like to check them out!

We'll be back in a few days with an April word sort freebie!
Have a great rest of your week!

Clipart courtesy of Scrappin' Doodles




St. Patty's Day Unit & Some Freebies


Well we're done with conferences and boy are we tired. Two 12 hour days can really leave you EXHAUSTED!!! And that's just about how we're both feeling right now.
We're done with our assessments, ready to start the next trimester,
and looking forward to two full weeks with our students before spring break!
One of the units we will be incorporating throughout the next few week is our



We've just updated it and added a few new literacy activities. So if you've already purchased it, just re-download to get our update!
Click {HERE} to stop by our store and check out our newest addition!

Here's a peek at what's inside this unit:


This unit is full of St. Patrick's Day themed math and literacy activities. Several activities go along with the following books:


And now for a few freebies!
Here are some cute St. Patty's Day bag toppers.
Simply cut on the dotted lines, fold, and staple over treat bags!
Click {HERE} for bag toppers


And here are some St. Patrick's Day circle tags. These cute little tags can be cut with a 2in. circle or scalloped punch.
Click {HERE} for circle tags

Enjoy the weekend!
Stay tuned next week for updates and ideas
surrounding our newest science focus this month!



It's a little late, but... {update}


Ever feel like there just isn't enough time in the day? We apologize that this post wasn't up earlier, but it was a crazy 3 day weekend. One of our mini-fanatics had a 2nd birthday party this weekend (which we will post about later with some fun ideas and stuff to share) and it took up the whole weekend. But, we are focusing on Martin Luther King this week, so we thought better late than never. Use it now, or save it for next year. We begin by reading several books, but these are our a few of our favorites.
Our school district belongs to a database of educational movies called Learn 360, where we found a video version of Martin's Big Words made by Scholastic, which was incredibly powerful to watch. Michael Clark Duncan narrates it, and his voice does such an amazing job recreating this story. We also found it on You Tube, although the quality isn't quite as good, but still worth watching. Find the video {HERE}.

After reading about the March on Washington, and the "I have a dream" speech, we like to show a little clip of the speech, so that the kids can hear how powerful Martin's voice was. Here's a few links to watch.


We then do this great activity with our firsties. We found this somewhere last year, and couldn't find it again this year, so if you know where it came from, please let us know, and we can give credit and include a link to it. This is great for reinforcing positive behaviors that we'd like to see in our students.
Next we talk about Martin's dreams, and have the kids tell us MLK's dream in their own words, which is always so sweet. We haven't done it yet, so don't have any to share. The kids also write a dream that they have for the world, and every year these are just priceless! We mount these to a 12x18 piece of construction paper, and include the craftivity from TLC Lessons.


Next we do this reading, and fill in the missing words to really see if the kids have understood the basics of Martin Luther King. We then finish up by having the kiddos fill out the MLK 4-square sheet.


Click {HERE} to download these activities.
Update: Oops! There was an error in the first pack. Re-download to get the correct version!

We also thought that now would be a great time to do one of our favorite writing activities. We begin by reading this fabulous book, The Colors of Us.
We then go to Home Depot, or Lowes or any paint store, and collect a bunch of those paint sample cards, mostly in browns, oranges, and whites. You want to get the ones that have several shades on each card. We then cut those up, so that each rectangle is one color. You know how paint colors have the most incredible names? Like indian summer, or paradise island. We have the kids do this writing activity where they pick a shade that they think is closest to their skin color (which is often hilarious seeing what their version of the color of their skin is), and then write it. For instance, "I am the color of cornsilk. It makes me feel ________." The kids draw a self portrait using the multi-cultural crayons, and glue on their paint sample. We then put them all together to create a class book called "The Colors of Us." It always turns out so cute! We can't wait to post pictures after we've done it, hopefully later this week.

Thanks for sticking with us, we know it was a long post tonight! We are busy working on our next units {snowmen and space} which hopefully will be done by the weekend. Hope ya'll have a great rest of the week!


“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
Martin Luther King Jr.