Smitten with First

Author’s Heart (Author’s Purpose)

Last week we worked on identifying the author's purpose of a text. This is a skill that my kiddos just do not get excited about. To make things a little more exciting we tied Valentine's Day into it.  We started off talking about how author's write about what is on their heart. Sometimes they write to inform, other times it may to entertain us or persuade us.  Then, we made these hearts and sorted these sentences from … [Read more...]

Verb Tenses and a Long A Freebie!

I wanted to hop on real quick and share a quick, cute, and simple long a freebie with you all. Last week we worked on long a. On Friday we sorted snowballs by long a and short a. We used all the long a snowballs to create a winter scene. I usually do these every year and always love to see what scenes my students come up with.  Here's a few from this year. Some days we just run out of time. Friday was one of those days! Otherwise, … [Read more...]

Bossy E and Long A!

Ok, who else is wiped out after this first week back? I swear I feel like I've been sleep walking the past 3 days! #thestruggleisrealyall This week we started Bossy E and long vowels. Whew. We started our learning off by meeting Bossy E. We talked about how he jumps over the consonant, hits the vowel on the head and says, "HEY, SAY YOUR NAME!" They always think this is hilarious!  Next, we made these quick and simple Bossy E hats and … [Read more...]

The Snowy Day FREEBIE

I love The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. I use it every year with my students to teach cause and effect. If you do not have the book, you can find the read aloud online here.  This year, we made this anchor chart and filled it in as the story went along. We listened to the story the first time all the way through and then paused it to discuss the cause and effects the second time through.  Afterwards, my students matched each … [Read more...]

Sight Word Party!

Hi friends. I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and spending lots of time with your families. We just got back from Disney World and I am all sorts of exhausted.... bones that I never knew could hurt - HURT!  Do you have a word wall in your room that you put your sight words on? For years my word wall was just a wall...with words....looking all pretty...with cute font....on pretty little laminated cards. We used it to help us … [Read more...]

Reindeer Day

One of my favorite things about the week before our Christmas break is our Reindeer Day! Our kiddos come to school dressed up like little reindeers and Rudolphs and they are just about the cutest little things!  We started off playing Pin the Nose on Rudolph by placing the red stickers on his face. It is played just like Pin the Tail on the Donkey. The stickers are the garage sale stickers. I don't really think that is the … [Read more...]

Grinch Day!

This week has been nothing short of busy. Between school and getting packed for Disney I think I may or may not have had more than the average caffeine intake!  Today was one of my favorite Christmas celebration days.... Grinch Day!  The Grinch is just loads of fun! He left streamers, green glitter and foot prints all over the room! I used a sponge to make the Grinch's feet by cutting the sponge into the shape of his … [Read more...]

Deck the Halls!

Last Thursday we had our annual Math Night at school so decking the halls with Christmas was definitely in order!  In math we have been working with numbers so to add a holiday touch to our learning we made a NUMBER TREE FARM! I wrote several numbers on sticky notes and put them on the board. My students had to pick a sticky note off the board, take it back to their seat, and complete their number tree using that … [Read more...]

FREE Proper and Common Noun Sort

I wanted to hop on real quick and share a simple, quick, and easy proper and common noun activity with you. I have blogged about this before (here), but I wanted to share it with you again because we do this every year and my kids love it.  Meet common cat and Proper Pete.   I originally found this idea several years ago from First Grade Fingerprints. I made these posters in 2012, laminated them, and have used every year … [Read more...]

Frying up FRY words!

I don't know about y'all, but I am always trying to brainstorm ways to get my students motivated and excited about increasing their sight word fluency. I have been trying something new this year with my class that I shared over at Blog Hoppin', and I wanted to share with you all here too!  My district uses Fry's sight words. Each grade level is given a particular set to assess each student on. Our goal is that each child will … [Read more...]

Thanksgiving Week!

Hi friends! I'm playing a little catch up from last week.  In language arts we worked on prepositions for where and when. Oh boy can these be tough for our little ones! After discussing what  a preposition is, we played "Pin the feather on the turkey"! The kiddos LOVED this. They each had a turn to pin the feather anywhere they wanted to on the turkey. We used magnetic tape on the back of the feather to make it easily … [Read more...]

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