A few things we've learned...

As many of you know, one of the most amazing things about this blogging world, is how much is out there to learn. New lessons, new ideas, new projects, new classroom decor, new recipes, new eye shadows (Thank you Cara!)... the possibilities are endless! From all of this new learning comes a new found drive to really make our teaching better. We've gained so much from this, and it really has helped us focus our teaching, and to create explicit, meaningful lessons. We do our best to make miracles, with very little sometimes. Today we wanted to share just a few favorites that we've been using, that were definitely inspired from the blogging world.

In these uncertain financial times, districts have had to tighten their budgets. You cut a bit here, a little there, and the next thing you know, you are currently using (or not using) an adopted reading curriculum that is... (gasp) 17 YEARS OLD! Yes, it may still have some good pieces here and there, but it's 17 years old. Which means we were never trained on it, we don't have all of it, and it's so outdated it's often painful to use. So although we dabble in it, mostly we create our own stuff. This year we created a new Word Family Structure, to make sure that we are hitting all of the important word famillies that our first graders need to know, while keeping it fun, and functional in other areas of the classroom. We've created these sets to include a sweet little story about a unique character for each sound we learn. There is a blackline master, and worksheet for each as well. When we introduce the word family to the first graders, we build the words using the letter cards that we made and this table top pocket chart.

If you'd like to take a peak at a sample word family lesson, click on the picture below. You'll get the King set for free! If you like it, make sure to take a look at the others we have at on our store.

Our kiddos have loved using these. They are also great to have out for word work during Daily 5. Check out a few pictures of our kids using them.

Make sure to check out our Word Family packs at Teachers Pay Teachers!
Word Family Pack Volume 1: at, op, an & it
Word Family Pack Volume 2: ed, ig, on & in
Word Family Pack Volume 3: am, at, op & ug

Be sure to keep your eye out for Volume 4, coming soon!

The other big activity that we've implemented after following all of your fabulous blogs is math journals. We use these as a way to reinforce the concepts taught during our lessons, and our kids can't get enough of these! We've made sure they are aligned with the Common Core State Standards, and get harder as the year goes on. We get lots of comments and questions about these at our store, so we wanted to let you know that February is now up!
Our focus for February is Subtraction to 20, and place value. March will be up in the next week or so, so make sure to check it out. Click on the picture to head on over and take a look!

We also have these at our store for September -January, so take a look.

We know we haven't been blogging as much lately, but the families have needed some attention. We are still working on some exciting things that will be ready soon, so stay tuned. We have a fabulous space unit that should be up by the weekend, and of course we'll have to have a giveaway! And hopefully soon we can share our 2 year old Owl party that Erin did for her little girl. Such good ideas (LOVE Pinterest), and some fun printables. One of these days...

Have a good rest of the week!

We're Back & Having a Sale

Well we know it's been a while but we have REALLY been enjoying our time with our families. Winter break has been full of family time and we have been busy playing with our kids and enjoying every single minute of it!

And now we're back and ready to share a few new products that we have just finished working on.

Our January Math Journal Prompts can be found {HERE}

Our math journal prompts for January focus on: subtraction (using fewer & more/less), understanding the meaning of the equal sign, beginning fact families, & place value (1's, 10's, & 100's).

We've also just added a set of subtraction worksheets and they can be found {HERE}!

This set of subtraction worksheets contains 6 different worksheets. Each worksheet has 4 different versions so you can use the version that works best for you and your students.

And finally, to celebrate the upcoming new year, we've decided to throw a sale at our Teachers pay Teachers store. Everything in our store is 20% off through January 2nd.

We're both wishing you a great start in the new year and when we return to work next week, we'll be back with more freebies and ideas from our classrooms to share with you all!

December Math Problems & We've Got a Math Freebie!

Our December Math Journal Questions are now available in our Teachers Pay Teachers Store!
December Math Questions include:

*Addition (2&3 addends with sums to 20 and adding while counting by 10's)
*Subtraction
*Greater than/less than
*Place value (tens & ones)
*Ordering numbers
Just click the picture below and head on over and take a look.

Don't forget to check out our November Math Questions which can be found {Here}.

And now for our math freebie! Last week we reviewed counting by 10's with our kiddos. students are pretty familiar with counting by 10's to 100, so we created a counting by 10's to 120 activity. Click the picture below for directions and free activity printables!

Also we thought we'd call upon on blogging friends for a little advice on reading programs that you are currently using. Our district is currently going through the adoption process, and we have to make a decision by mid-November. Erin is on the committee, so she'd love any help you can offer! Are any of you using Journey's, Imagine It!, or Treasures? These are the three it's been narrowed down to. If you are using one of these programs, we'd love to hear what you think! Leave us a comment with your thoughts/advice/info on these programs and we will enter you into our drawing. One lucky comment will win any fall item in our TpT store. We'd really appreciate the help! We will pick a winner next Friday night (November 4th). Have a great Sunday!

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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