Do you Sub Tub?

Hey friends! It's Erin, making a rare appearance on the blog today! Between raising my four kiddos, and teaching kindergarten, I don't have a lot of spare time to blog these days. But our new unit was just too good not to share. My kindergarten team each spent some time this fall making a new sub tubs. The thought was that if we each made one, we could then share, and we'd each have 5 sub tubs ready to go! These can be so incredibly helpful for those days when you wake up and have a sick kiddo, or you are sick yourself, and you just don't want to plan for a sub. At the end of the year, we thought we'd have some fun sub tub days, doing the activities that we didn't use throughout the year. So, I just had to share with you how we set it up. The sub tub is set up so that with absolutely no planning, any sub can come in and find anything they need for the day. We use only materials that we already have in our classroom (alphabet stamps, pattern blocks, etc.) for our lessons. We also make sure our sub tub is stocked with the following things:

*Student list

*Daily Schedule

*Weekly Schedule

*Students to Note

*School Map

*Bus List

All of these things can be found in the class info section of our Sub Tubs. But, before I get a head of myself... 

First, I like this tub to organize my materials. It's a perfect size for a days worth of activities. They are under $6 each at Walmart, or you can get 6 of them for $30.

I get hanging folders for each subject to hold all of my activities.

 

 

The files are organized in the sequence of how I teach my day, just to keep it simple for any sub. Then each activity is in it's own folder. For instance, 4 reading station and 4 math station activities are included. I also include each of the direction pages in page protectors for easy use. 

Here is an example of one of the lessons included. My sub tub does include all the actual books, but QR codes for each are included with the Sub Tub.

 

Does this sound like something that will make your life easier? (Psst... I promise it will!) Head on over to our TPT store to check it out our Space Day Sub Tub!  It will be on sale through the weekend. 

If you'd like to check out our First Grade Sub Kit, make sure to check it out as well. It will be on sale too!

And if you made it all the way to the end of our post, here's a quick freebie for you. This Space Listening center is included in our Space Day Sub Tub, but you can get it here for free!

Happy Sub Tubbing!

Who loves Jeopardy? {A first grade CCSS math review}

Wait, what? Someone said that it's August??? That is just not possible! Our summer is going by way too quickly! Luckily for us, kids don't come back until after Labor Day so we still have plenty of time. The end of the year was crazy busy like most of ya'll, so we never got to share a fantastic new game we created to review first grade math. Our kids loved it! And who doesn't love to play Jeopardy?!?! 

 

The great thing about this game is that we included SOOO many questions! Honestly, it would be hard to get to them all, but the kids loved having the variety. We also found that it was best to review a few topics at a time. You could print this a variety of ways as well. If you printed them smaller, 2 or 4 to a page it wouldn't take up nearly the amount of room if space is an issue. We just taped up the questions, and then taped up the numbered cards on top. We played in table groups, and tables got the chance to answer each question to get the most out of the review. As long as the table worked together and got the answer correct, they got a point. We just rotated tables as to decide which category they wanted, and for how much ("I'd like addition for 20 please."). It was so much fun to play! And really, now that we have the game made, we can use this for any subject we'd like. It focuses and is aligned perfectly with the CCSS too! We created this for the end of first grade, but would be great for a review at the beginning of 2nd grade as well. We are in the process of working on a smaller kindergarten version that we could play at the beginning of first grade, so watch out for that later.

Check out a preview of what the game looks like!

 If you'd like to check it out, head on over to our STORE and take a look!

If you'd like a chance to get a copy for free, we have a quick little chance for you. Erin is celebrating her 10th anniversary next week, and to celebrate, her husband is whisking her away for a 2nd honeymoon. Be the first to guess where they are going, and you can have your very own copy of our First Grade Common Core Math Jeopardy. 

We've had a ton of questions regarding a freebie we used to have called our First Grade Study Guide. We want you to know it's currently being totally revamped, and updated to make it really user friendly for first graders. So if you've been looking for it, check back. It will be done soon!

We've also had a lot of requests for our monthly math journal prompts to be bundled into one pack, and  we've just added that to our store!  You can find our bundle {HERE}!

We'll be back next week or so with some great new ideas, and some fabulous freebies! We are still on summer mode, so forgive us for our absenteeism. :-) Enjoy your weekend!

Treat yourself!!!

6 kid days left... We think we can, we think we can...

After a fantastic long weekend, we are back and trying to finish up the year. Our little kiddos are assessing our hearts out, and are really trying to keep their heads in the game. We had a fantastic field trip to the zoo last week, and we have a little freebie to share. But first. Don't you think it's time we all give ourselves a little pat on the back? We've (almost) made it through another year. So we have a way for you to do just that. Have you heard of Silpada Jewelry? It's definitely a favorite of ours, and we wanted to make sure to share it with all of you!

 

Erin is hosting a catalog party right now, and we knew you'd want in on the action! So click on over {HERE} and shop away. The fantastic thing about this jewelry is that it's all sterling silver, and life time guaranteed, and it's all FABULOUS!  And don't forget to put it Erin's name  (Erin Scott) when you place an order. Then, send us an email and we will send you our amazing new First Grade Common Core Math Assessment for free! It's quickly turning into one of our best sellers, and we'd love to help you get it for free! Make sure to take a minute and treat yourself, but hurry up, the party is closing at the end of the week.

We also mentioned that we went to the zoo last week, and we have a quick activity to share with you if you're still looking for some last minute classroom ideas. We started with the book One Night in the Zoo. 

We read this sweet story, and then the kids did a piece of writing on their own. We had them imagine what they thought happens at the zoo at night. They had the cutest ideas, but dang it! We forgot to pull out the camera!  So go ahead and do this in your class, and see what great ideas your students have. 

 Click {HERE} for your copy.

Need more zoo activities? Make sure to check out our Zoo Map Pack and our It's a Zoo Day Game pack.

We have a few more freebies to share during this crazy busy week, so check back later. Happy Tuesday!

Dr Seuss Apps

Hey Friends! Today we had a ball introducing our kids to the wonderful world of Dr. Seuss! I am fortunate enough to have 10 iPods in the classroom for the kids to use throughout the day. I have 5 Shuffles, and 5 iPod Touches. We mainly use these for Daily 5, although kids can also go to them when they have finished other work. Today I bought a fun App that I wanted to share with you, just incase you have iPods or iPads in your room as well. My babes at home were excited as well. If you haven't tried the apps from Oceanhouse Media, you need to. They are books that are very interactive, that use all of the original artwork and illustrations. What's great for me, is that they are still apps, and not iBooks, so the kids can find them without having to search around. The app I got today was a Dr. Seuss Collection. It was definitely spendier than I usually get, but I wanted to get a few books, and this did save some money. 5 books for a total of $11.99 at the App store.
If that is to much money, you can also get a single book for $2.99.

And then for free, you can also get the lite version of the books, which is the same as a teaser. Honestly, sometimes any "LITE" app annoys me, because it's frustrating to have only a small piece, but definitely a good choice for free.
And this is just a fun little puzzle from the new movie The Lorax. Not really educational, but fun. And best of all, totally free!


There are many more at the App store, but I wanted to share a few I liked. Hope it's helpful for you! I can't wait to ask our PTC for my next iTunes gift card... :)


On another note, our March Math Journal Prompts are up at our TpT store. If you haven't checked these out this year, make sure to head on over. All of our Math Journal Prompts are aligned with the Common Core State Standards, and they've been incredibly useful for our students this year.


One day down... four more to go!

Valentine Sweethearts

We have had such a busy week and we're so glad that tomorrow's Friday! We've finished up our planets unit and now we're getting ready to incorporate several valentine's themed lessons next week. Our math focus for the last few days has been related facts and fact families, so tomorrow we thought we'd create a little heart fact family activity, that correlates with our math program, for our kiddos to do. Just click the picture below and you can get this freebie that we'd love to share with you all!

Here's another freebie that we'd like to share with you as well. We are planning on incorporating this into our schedules next week. We have just began to talk about sorting words in alphabetical order. As an introduction to ABC order, we have our kiddos help us arrange our weekly word wall words in ABC order before we put them up on the word wall. Next week we thought we'd do a little activity that they can start on their own.

We'll probably have them begin by cutting and sorting their words, then we'll all glue them together. Click {HERE} to get your copy of our Valentine's Day ABC Order.

We've also just added a new valentines pack item to our Teachers pay Teachers store, just ion time for Valentine's Day! It's filled with valentine themed math & literacy activities perfect for Valentine's Day! See below for a preview of what we've included. You can also find it {HERE}. Our Valentine Sweethearts Unit is on sale through Friday for 20% off!

Valentine Sweethearts Unit

Have a great rest of your week & weekend!

Planets, Stars and Space... Oh My! (giveaway and freebies)

We made it through another week! Man these kiddos have been all sorts of crazy! We've spent the last few weeks learning all about the solar system and snowmen. Quite the combination, right? This year our school has gone to a school-wide science theme schedule. Each month we have a focus, which is taught K-5. There is a list of vocabulary words for each focus, and the thought is that by 5th grade, the kids will have a strong grasp on all of the words. Of course, each grade has their own twist on the theme, and we only teach what is grade appropriate. To be honest, so months have been more fun than others, but it seems to be working well so far.

This month our focus has been the solar system. I haven't taught this since my very first year teaching, so it was so fun to revisit! Our goal was to introduce the kids to the concept of the solar system, but to mostly just focus on the 8 planets. We want them to know their names, the order of the planets, and a few facts about each. We've also introduces the earth's orbits, and rotations. The kids have had a blast, and we have as well. Here are a few activities that we've done with them.
Click {HERE} to get a copy of our planet book.
The first graders water colored the planets, and then made a poster out of them.
We made a few posters of all of the planet facts we've learned.
This next week our school is having a door decorating contest to celebrate Love of Reading Month. Since we were on a space kick, we kept the theme going with STAR: Sit, Think and Read. Each rocket shows a picture of a student reading, and we included another set of water colored planets to really make it look like space.
This isn't ours, but had to share. One of our 5th grade students made this INCREDIBLE model of the solar system. This picture really doesn't do it justice. (*I apologize for the photo quality btw, I left my camera at home and had to use my phone for many pics.) The bright stars are actually Christmas lights. Isn't it cool?

And of course this isn't all we've done. We loved this theme so much that we had to create a fun unit to go along with it! Introducing our newest baby, Planets, Stars and Space... Oh My! She is a 70 page unit packed with planet-themed activities, and lessons for teaching your first graders all about the planets. Included in this unit:

*planet posters

*planet game board & cards

*”BLAST” sight word game

*fact family activities (3)

-including worksheets

*addition/subtraction game

*mnemonic device poster

*original mini-book

*Planet report

*Planet riddles

*planet cards

*inner & outer planet activities

*sentence builders

*Word sort

*color & b/w printable planets

Here's a little preview of what you'll get!

Click {HERE} or on the picture below to head on over to our store to check out our Planet Pack.

Need some Solar System vocabulary cards? Check these out!
Make sure to grab these for free too!
Vocab Cards

We ended our week by incorporating one of our Snowman Fun Pack math activities into our day today, and boy was it fun! We began by retelling Sneezy the Snowman and then we conducted our own data experiment by tasting one of Sneezy's favorite foods, ICE CREAM! We brought in four flavors and each of our students had a sample.

Next our kiddos colored an ice cream scoop that represented their favorite flavor out of the four flavors that we tried. Then we grouped the scoops to view our data.

You can definitely see that each of our classes had completely different data! Our kids were surprised to find out that the other classes most favorite was different than their own.

Finally we recorded our data, answered questions, and created a bar graph that was attached to their packets (sorry we didn't get any graph pics).

This was such a fun math activity and our kids really had fun. They couldn't believe we could complete a math lesson and eat ice cream too! We can't wait to do this again next year! Interested in checking this unit out, you can look {HERE} and read all about it!

Before we head off to bed, we'd love to host a quick giveaway! We'd love to give a lucky follower a copy of our Planets, Stars and Space Unit. So leave a comment with your favorite science theme to teach, and we will draw 2 lucky winners on Monday night, February 6th. Good luck!

We hope you all have a great weekend! We'll be back soon...

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!

It's Time For a Sale!

We hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

To kick off the holiday shopping season we are having a 20% off sale at our Teachers pay Teachers Store through Monday the 28th.

On Monday TpT is offering an additional 10% off!

Use the code CMS28 when you checkout!

Happy Shopping!

And the winner is...

Congratulations Kelly Bee aka Queen Bee! You've won our

Gingerbread Galore {book based math and literacy activities} unit.

Send us an email and we'll send it off to you!

Thanks everyone for all of your great gingerbread activities, we're

definitely going to have to try them out!

If you'd like to see a preview of our Gingerbread Galore unit you

can head on over to the post {Here}.

It's available in our TpT store and can be found {Here}.

Wishing you all a very

Happy Thanksgiving!

Clipart Courtesy of Scrappin' Doodles.

Gingerbread Galore (and a giveaway)

Hello friends! We are busy in the midst of conferences today and tomorrow, but we wanted to pop in with a quick hello! We know there is a great linky party going on over at What the Teacher Wants, but it will have to wait until tomorrow. We wanted to quickly share our newest unit at TpT with you. Are you looking for some fun Gingerbread activities to do with your firsties? Then this will be perfect for you! This is our newest baby Gingerbread Galore.


She's packed full of all sorts of fun inspired by 3 Gingerbread books. Head on over to our store, and have a little peek! For now, here's a quick preview.

Are you a follower? Comment on our post with your favorite gingerbread activity and we will give away our unit to a lucky winner. But hurry, we'll chose a winner at the end of conferences tomorrow night. Send good thoughts our way... 17 hours left. :)

Didn't Scrappin' Doodles do a fantastic job on this set? We've emailed them a few times lately asking for a clipart set, and they have worked magic! (Pinktastic anyone?)

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