New Freebies in My TpT Store!

This will be a quick post!  I wanted to make you aware of two new freebies that I just posted in my TpT store.  I will post below some pictures and explanations of the products.  I hope your January has been productive!

Penguins

January can be a hard month to get through... especially after the exciting "ber" months!  This week in our first grade class we have been reading about Animal Groups in our Journeys Reading basal.  To go along with the reading selection we have been learning about Penguins.  Kids love penguins!  These are some of the books I am using.

I especially love the book Penguin Chicks!  I went through this book and marked all the words we were going to be using in our Penguin Glossaries and as I read to the students we would stop and write the penguin "words" on the board and I would have the students define them in their own words.  I wrote the brief definition they told me under each word.  The students then made their own tiny glossaries that they folded from a piece of paper.  They glued the penguin words into the glossary in abc order and wrote the brief definitions.  They were encouraged to go home and test their families' penguin knowledge!  Here is a copy of the glossaries and the penguin words we used.  Believe it or not - the students LOVED making these!

We also talked about the parts of a penguin, including the babies' down feathers and how the feathers need to stay dry.  We used a penguin labeling sheet and a baby chick folding book that talks about the brooding patch and has the students glue a paper flap over the chick tho show the parent penguin keeping its chick warm.

In the picture above there is also a True and False flap book that I use at the end of the week to test the students' knowledge of penguins.

Another activity we did to get everyone out of their seats was to pretend to be penguin fathers!  We went out into the hall where I gave everyone an Easter egg.  They were challenged to place the egg on the top of their feet - if a penguin egg touches the ice the chick can die.   The students then had to carefully walk with the egg on their feet - it was pretty funny.  :)  

Some of the other things we have planned this week are to go into the gym to use the scooters to have penguin tobogganing races!  That should be a great moment to get our wiggles out.  

We are also going to do a little creative writing.  The students are going to imagine that they are a penguin of course!  The first thing we will do however, is think of some fancy adjectives that we can use in our writing.

We will use the above sheet to think of eight adjectives about penguins.  I ask the students to pick a few of their favorite adjectives that they came up with to use in their writing.  

After we finish writing and correcting our work to have it "hall hanging ready"  (our neatest work, correct grammar, and spelling) we then complete the craft, attach our writing and hang it!

This penguin is made from a piece of paper formed into a tube.  A little 3-d action!

Next week the students get to choose a penguin to research.  This sounds a little crazy for first grade but it can be done!  There are a number of ways to tackle this.  You can bring in ipads or go to the computer lab.  I find it easier at this young age to copy off the information I find on the Internet or from books, staple it together based on the penguin, and highlight important details for them.  I then separate them into groups based on what penguin they are studying so that they can research as a team.  I then give them copies of the packets with the highlighted information that pertains to the penguin they are researching.  Putting them into groups makes it easier for me as a teacher to float around and help them as well.  They then have a report booklet that has questions about their penguin that they need to answer.  For example: size, where they live, predators, interesting facts, what they eat.  They also have to draw a picture of what their penguin looks like.  This report then acts as the circular white belly of a penguin that we can now put together and hang proudly in the hall.  

If you are interested in any of these fun work sheets or projects, you can find them on my TpT store in a product called Penguin Party!  It sells for $3.

While you are there, check out my winter writing crafts:

Also grab my counting snowmen circles by 3's for FREE!

I hope the rest of your January flys by with lots of learning!  Have fun!

Happy New Year Freebie!

Grab this off my TpT page!

I am going to use this the first week back to school in January!  I’m sure the children will be hearing the term “resolution” and will be wondering what it means…   It’s a great time to discuss goals with your students… do they want to be more organized?  Become a better reader?  Read more?  Play outside and spend less time on the computer or in front of the television? 

1.Select the appropriate writing page for your class.

2.Copy off the face shape on appropriate skin color paper. – enough for two students per page.

3.Copy off the hats on various colored construction paper. – enough for two students per page.

4.Copy off the lined paper on different “hair” colored paper.  This is a good starting point for your students.  They can cut it to whatever length they would like, curl it, accordion fold it, or cut the ends into points like I did on my sample.  This will give each project a unique look.

5.Use crayons or markers to complete the face details.

6.Add a hat topping and a blower.  I bought my blowers at the dollar store.  The hat topper can be streamers or a pom-pom.  I used glitter glue for the confetti. 

7.Have Fun!  

Grinch Day!

Today was Grinch Day!

The students and I dressed the part today either by wearing green or dressing like a Who from     Who-Ville!  It was a great break from our normal routine.  I had music from  How the Grinch Stole Christmas soundtrack playing as the kids entered the classroom.   We started the day by reading the Grinch - it amazed me that so many of my students  never had the book read to them before.  We talked about the illustrations, the great use of adjectives, and how the author repeated words to emphasize certain things.   The students then helped me come up with adjectives that would describe the Grinch and I wrote them down on a large piece of paper.  I had drawn a picture of the Grinch on the paper the night before.  

I told the students that we were writing  informative letters  to the Grinch.  We were going to give the Grinch some ideas on how to make his heart grow bigger.  I challenged the students to pick two of the adjectives off our paper to use in their writing.  We made a Grinch to display our letters.

You can get a copy of the writing paper and the face and hand pattern here.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BynoRTQzFyS0cG9MUDVYdUozU0k/view?usp=sharingG9MUDVYdUozU0k/view?usp=sharing

I put their writing on a 13 by 9 inch paper that I cut down from a larger paper.  I cut the legs from green paper approximately 2 by 9 inches, and the arms were approximately 3 by 5 inches cut from red paper.  The students folded the legs accordion style, added the face and hands, and created their own shoes and hat for the Grinch.  I walked them through creating the Grinch's facial features.  The last thing they did was add cotton.  It was time consuming but they loved it!


You won't find any Dr. Seuss things for sale on TpT  because of copyright issues.  Most of the papers I found were free from different Blogs.

If you follow the link at the top of this page and go to my Pinterest page under Grinch Day you can find all the links to these fun math and literature pages plus a ton of other great Grinch ideas.

We ended our day completing a Venn Diagram after watching the How The Grinch Stole Christmas cartoon.  It has the students compare the book and the movie.  I sent them out the door with some Grinch Pills.

It was a fantastic day.  We worked so hard today with our writing and problem solving and yet the children will simply remember that it was fun,

We need to have fun while we're learning - especially in the first grade!

Rudolph's Flight - more fun with prepositions!

I hope you are having a fun filled December in your class!  Today we did some more work with prepositions but we did it with some reindeer flair!

The students once again picked prepositions from a bowl (as we did in our Journey's Cupcake Party story)  but this time it was all about Rudolph's Flight! The  Rudolph paper plate craft creates a little pocket to hold the student's book.

 

Once again - the students had a blast and it gave them a hands on understanding of prepositions.

You can get this lesson on my TpT store for $1.75  - You will love it!  :)

These are some fun books you can read with this project!

Up next is Grinch Day!  We are having our Grinch Day this Thursday ... time for some green fun!

Our First Grade Pow Wow!

We are winding down our Native American Unit.  We have spent 2 1/2 weeks on learning about different nations.

These are some of my favorite books to read to the students:

We first learn about pictographs and the students practice using various pictograph signs to communicate on paper with each other.  They then use these pictographs throughout the next two weeks on their other crafts they create.  

We learned about the Native Americans who lived in the southwest.  We talk about the Navajos and we create wall hangings and clay pottery.  I send home a recipe with the students so that I am not having to make 18 batches of clay. :)  The recipe is as follows:

The pottery air drys.  Such an easy clay to make and use.

We study about the Native Americans that followed the Buffalo.   The students learn about the Sioux and  design and decorate tipis and we create a village on our back table ... the students LOVE this.

We make totem poles and canoes when we study the Tlingit of the northwest.  

(Yes, the totem poles and the tipis are in the same village - but hey - we only have so much room to work with here! lol)

Tomorrow we will be making our headbands, vests, and necklaces in preparation of our pow wow on Wednesday afternoon.  Here are some pictures from last year.  We have five games set up and the students rotate through them.  One is a stick game.   They toss painted sticks.  It's similar to a dice game.  You get points depending on what sides of the sticks land facing up.  Another game has them put sticks on the backs of their hands and they have to toss them and catch them.  There is an arrow toss.  We use wooden skewers and toss them into a circle on the floor.  It's similar to a marble game where you get to keep any arrows your arrow lands on.  We also play a rock passing game where one rock has a red painted dot on it and one in plain.  You sit in a circle and pass to your right and the person on your left has to guess which rock you passed.  The last game involves  the students  tossing rocks (bean bags) into various sized hoops on the floor.

The students will  be writing about if they were a Native American.  This allows them to share what nation they would be from and why.  I will add the writing projects at the end of the week.

They get so excited about this unit and in turn it gets them excited about sharing what they have learned in their writing.  It has been a very fun 2 1/2 weeks!