Our Writing Notebooks

This year we have implemented writing binders into our kiddos took kits. We've had writing folders in the past that the kids have used for writers workshop, and we've used a variety of personal dictionaries, both purchased and created. This year our school has gone to a school-wide science focus, where each month we are all focused on the same theme, with the same set of vocabulary words. You might go more in depth, or just introduce them, according to to your grade. We've previously posted our habitat vocabulary words HERE. If you like our vocabulary sheets, keep watching. (We will be posting them as we do them.) So this year we thought we would try to combine their vocab with their writing folders. Take a look at our writing notebooks!

The cover of our notebooks. Like the cover? Click HERE to get your own, as well as b/w versions for your students.

On the inside pocket of their notebooks the kids have these fabulous personal word walls to use for words they need help with. We don't use these for word wall words, since they already have those (later on), but just for any other words they want spelled. These were pretty cheap and should hold up pretty well.

Next we've put their plastic folders that they use for writers workshop. The go side is for work they are still working on, and the stop side is for work that they've finished. Once a week or so we share our writing, they turn in their best piece, and take the rest home. Click HERE for our stop labels and HERE for our go labels, which fit Avery Labels 8160.


Next is our first grade study guide. This has their word wall, letters and sounds, color words, months, days, and even some math words. You can find these HERE if you'd like your own copy. We keep these in page protectors to really protect them all year.

We have included our writing reminders in a page protector as well. We also have these as smaller book marks that the kids can keep in the back pocket, or take home for extra help. Find our writing reminders HERE.

Last is where our firsties keep their vocab pages. (I apologize that this picture won't turn. It's refusing, and and is driving me CRAZY!!!) We'll continue to add these throughout the year.

Thanks for taking our tour of our writing notebooks. How do you handle writing in your classroom?

If you haven't already been over to visit Anna at Crazy for First Grade, head on over. We were guest bloggers today, and we have some great freebies for greater than and less than.



Have a great weekend! We have a day off tomorrow so we get a 3 day weekend!!!


Some clipart courtesy of Scrappin Doodles

Coming soon...


Pinkalicious

National Fire Prevention Week


Did you know that this week is National Fire Prevention Week? Yesterday our local fire department came and did a great assembly for our students on fire safety. As a follow-up we sent home this Fire Escape Plan for the kiddos to complete with their families. Grab a copy for you!


Fire Escape Plan

Clipart courtesy of Scrappin' Doodles

Halloween Freebie!


Happy Monday! We're working on a few things for later on this week, so for tonight we have a quick little freebie for all our our First Grade Fanatics! Today in reading group we did a fun little reading about the history of Halloween. We only have kids 2 days this week, so I decided to not to start a new unit. Anywho, I found a reading somewhere out there a few years ago, I'm thinking maybe on ABC teach. We read it a few different ways, and talked about it, and the kids really learned a lot about why people celebrate Halloween, and the history behind it. Then later on during intervention (where I have my reading group again) we did this activity. The kids had to come up with 4 things that we learned about Halloween. They did a great job, so we thought we'd share it with you. Enjoy!

What do we know about Halloween?

We Have Some Winners!

Congratulations Kelly and Miss Taylor. Thanks for including your email addresses! We will email our Fall Fun Game Pack, It's a Pumpkin Parade, and October Math Journal Prompts to you shortly!
Thanks everyone for participating. And don't forget you
can still get these items from our TpT store. Stop on by and take a peek!
Have a great weekend!

It's Fall & It's Time For a Giveaway!




Happy Fall y'all! To kick off the season we thought we'd share a fun game with you, let you know about our latest additions to our TpT store, and throw in a giveaway that includes some of our fall themed lessons/activities!


Pick Your Pumpkins is a perfect game to have your student practice addition and understanding more/less when comparing two sums. We liked Jodi's apple version so much that we decided we needed a version using pumpkins that could be used in October & November!
To get our pumpkin version click HERE!

We've got some new fall additions to our TpT store and would love for you to check them out and let us know what you think!


Our Fall Fun Game Pack is a game pack that includes 5 fall themed games and over 500 math/literacy game cards that can be used interchangeably between all five games. Plus each game includes 12 theme related special cards!
Click HERE to stop on by and check it out!


Another new addition to our TpT store is It's a Pumpkin Parade! This 88 page unit is oozing with math and literacy activities! It's perfect for use during both October and November, and will be a great addition to your themes. This unit contains:
*Pumpkin Blend Game
*Playin' at the Pumpkin Patch Game
*Greater/Less than
*Scarecrow Addition
*Find my pumpkins (greater & less)
*Pumpkin Place Value Puzzles
*Pumpkin Equations
*Pumpkin Word Builders
*100 Pumpkins
*Pumpkin Word Sort
*SQUASH (sight word game)
*My Pumpkin Mini Book
*5 Senses Writing
*Pumpkin Life Cycle
*Pumpkin Pie Sequence Cards
*My Pumpkin Report
*Pumpkins Can, Have, Are
*Pumpkin Pie in a Bag

Click HERE to check it out!

Now onto our GIVEAWAY!
We would like to give 2 lucky winners our Fall Fun Game Pack, It's a Pumpkin Parade, and our October Math Journal Prompts!

There are three ways you can enter:
1. Follow our blog and leave a comment that you follow us.
2. Follow our TpT store and leave a comment that you follow our TpT store.
3. Blog about our giveaway and leave a comment with the link to your page.

This giveaway ends on Friday, October 7, 2011 at 11:00pm (PST)
Winners will be announced Saturday October 8, 2011.

Don't forget that you can enter up to 3 times!

Thanks so much for being our FABULOUS followers and have a wonderful week!




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!

Clipart Courtesy of Scrappin' Doodles.