Countdown to Christmas

I know it's just Thanksgiving but I'm already thinking about Christmas! Before I left school for Thanksgiving break I had to set up my classroom with my Countdown to Christmas. That way we can start our Christmas Countdown on Monday, December 1st. I hung it on my door so it will be the first thing my kiddos will see when they return to school. 

If you would like to check it out CLICK HERE

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Giveaway Time!

I've joined up with Reading Royalty for a giveaway! She has recently updated her TPT's products and her blog. To celebrate she is having a giveaway and I have donated my Turkey Time Product. If you are looking for some fun printables for Thanksgiving Fill out the rafflecopter below.


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Five for Friday! It's been a busy week!

Well, the weekend is almost here and I'm linking up with DoodleBugs and 

her Five for Friday Linky Party. Here's a peek into our week.

We got busy with turkeys this week! We have been working on addition strategies in math and this week we have been concentrating on adding doubles and adding doubles plus 1. They loved this turkey game. They played in partners and each one had a different colored crayon. First player would roll a die and whatever it landed on they would double it. If it landed on 3 then they had to find the sum of 3+3. Then they colored a 6 on their turkey. If there were no more 6's then they lost their turn. Then the second player would roll the die, double the number and find the sum. Then they colored the answer with the crayon color that they chose.

We used large foam dice too. It really helped cut the noise down and they loved using them!

We have been learning about animals for several weeks and to wrap up our unit we are doing a research project. My kiddos picked an animal and then had to find some nonfiction books so they could gather information about their animal. The had to find 4 facts about their animal. To help us accomplish this we asked the fourth graders for some help. The two classes worked really well together. It was great to see the fourth graders take the lead by encouraging and supporting the first graders. Once they had their facts they had to make a popplet. Below is one of our popplets:

My kiddos love to sing and we seem to have a song for everything we do! lol I thought it would be fun to share one of our favorite Thanksgiving songs. This is one I have been using for years and I found a video of it on youtube. 

                                    

Do you order books from Scholastic? I do and I just love it when our order comes in. I'm not sure who gets more excited! I always buy way too many books for the classroom but I absolutely cannot resist. Anyway.....my book order arrived yesterday and I opened the box and started sorting the orders. Then I found it...

One of the funniest books I have ever read! 

I laughed so hard. You have to get yourself a copy of this book!

The /aw/ sound. We have been working on the /aw/ sound all week long and I think we've got it! I hid /aw/ words all around the first floor of our school. My kiddos get excited when they start seeing words around the school. They know there is a word hunt just around the corner.

They find words and bring them back to the classroom to read and then we put them on the easel.

We also read our fluency phrases.

If you would like to purchase my /aw/ sound unit you can by clicking here.

The sounds of /wa/ and /war/

My kiddos have been busy learning the sounds of /wa/ and /war/. To help them learn we did word sorts, some hands on activities, and word building. We made these fun turkeys with our /war/ words.

To build /war/ words we sang this little song.

A building we will go,
A building we will go.
We'll take a /war/,
And add an /m/,
And then we have warm.

My class this year loves to sing! If I turn anything into a song, they learn it faster and remember it. If only I could carry a tune!! Fortunately, they don't seem to care.

We used a Build the Word activity to make
more /war/ words. My kiddos cut the letters
out and then we built words. I did this the same way as I would do a Making Words activity.

Then I had one of my kiddos make the word on the board. They loved using the magnetic letters on the board and I loved that they were engaged and motivated to learn! It's also really helpful to have the paper copy that the rest of the students can do at their seat. This keeps everyone involved and helps cut down on behavior issues.

We followed up our week of the /w/ sound with a word sort.

 My kiddos wrote the words in the right column and then crossed the word off the word sort paper.

       

I made these two posters to hang in my classroom to help us remember the sounds of w.

If you like these activities, you can head on over to my store and purchase them by CLICKING HERE

An overview of our week!

Well, the weekend is almost over and I'm just now linking up with DoodleBugs and her Five for Friday Linky Party. After a short week the previous week, due to two teacher workshop days and Columbus Day, this week seemed a little long.  Here's a peek into our week.

This week we read a cute monster story that is in our reading program called Start the Show. It's about 100 monsters so we made monsters. They loved this project and the monsters they made were so cute. I got the patterns for the monsters from Joan Orchard at www.somewhatsimple.com

We also focused on the 3 sounds of /ed/ this week in reading. The monsters in our story hunted, mended, started, rested.... you get the picture, right?  Then I needed to teached the other 2 sounds of ed, /d/ and /t/.  Fortunately I had already made posters and bingo boards last year so I pulled those out and we went to work. Next week we will be using the word sorts in this unit to help reinforce this skill. You can purchase this packet by CLICKING HERE!

This week we had another Mystery Reader! It was a parent from my class and I was so pleased because he didn't tell his daughter that he was coming! It was a mystery for everyone!

RAIN

It rained every day this week and all of you teachers know what that means.......INDOOR RECESS! We did our best but boy do they get wiggly when they can't get outside and run around.

Since we couldn't get our wiggles out I decided they needed something that would really motivate them for learning. We started subtraction this week and I decided I would teach them subtraction with Fruit Loops!!! They absolutely loved it! On the first day I told them to build 8 with their Fruit Loops. Then I told them to eat 4. You should have seen their eyes! My kiddos suddenly sat up a little straighter and quickly became engaged with subtraction. I made task cards that we used to play Scoot. They carried their Fruit Loops in a baggie with a label on them.

We also made a Fruit Loop Subtraction book. They built a number, then covered over the amount of Fruit Loops that needed to disappear.

If you would like to purchase my Fruit Loop Subtraction Unit, you can purchase it by CLICKING HERE