Easter Math Reader Freebie

Hey, everyone.  Easter is a bit early this year!!  It is on March 31st.  If your Spring Break is on the early side like mine, then you may want to start looking for Easter activities now!!

Here's one that I hope you can use to get you started. 

                                              

Easter Math Reader Freebie

 Here comes some shameless promoting!

 Includes 4 full pages of syllable sorts, sorting review robot sheet, templates for the robot project photographed,  and teaching tips to get the most out of the theme. Also included are some large size pictures and a large size sorting header so you can teach your class the concept.

 

                                                       

President's Day Activities

My students have learned about our famous presidents for the very first time.  This required some great books to help students gain background knowledge.  These books were terrific!

After reading about and discussing Lincoln's life we brainstormed what we learned about him and made a circle map.

We also had to write about him.

These Lincoln faces are adorable.  I can't seem to figure out where I found the template.  I tried to retrace my steps, but to no avail.

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We also used Vicki Plant's penny toss activity. This activity was on a regular 8 1/2 by 11 piece of paper and we enlarged it on poster paper.  This is a freebie from Teacher's Pay Teachers.

This Link Will Take You To Her Store!

Of course, we had to write about that as well.

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Our Washington thinking map was done differently. 
Of course we will be writing from this map too!

This activity is from DLTK.  

(I left off the bow tie.)

Link to Washington Project Template
   
I'll leave you with these simple (student copy) circle maps! Take advantage of all the opportunities this unit has for writing!!

Washington Circle Map 

Lincoln Circle Map 

                       

Valentine's Fun!!

 Mr. Schoenberger is an extremely talented entertainer!!

He came and made balloons for all the kindergarteners!!

 This little girl was thrilled with her crazy hat!!

 

We also made cute froggy bags for the valentine cards.

This was created using a DLTK template.  I enlarged the template so it would fit this larger size bag and copied them on the appropriate color cardstock.  The heart for the mouth was made using a heart punch that I purchased from the craft store.  If you want to do this yourself, here is a link.

Frog Template Link 

 

We also made these adorable necklaces!

We placed beads on a  pipe cleaner and twisted them closed. Then we strung them through red yarn.  Some of the kids were able to shape the pipe cleaner into a heart.  A heart shape was the original idea, but I let the children leave it in a circle if they chose to.

 

Of course we graphed our conversation hearts together and individually.

This idea was inspired by Kimberly Jordano.  We brainstormed and interactively wrote these words.

 Then we wrote them individually on the hearts, cut the out and placed them in the envelope. They are to be read with reading buddies.

 The Valentines that we made for our reading buddies.

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 Here are pictures of some the other Valentine related activities. These are from Nicole Ricca's Valentine  Math and Literacy Unit.

 

Next post on will include our learning about the Presidents!

Working With Words: RF.K.2e

 If you are working with word families in your class like me, you probably want your students to create words with letters. This activity used to create a headache for me.  I had to gather individual letters put them in baggies and then change them out. This was very time consuming.  I even tried to simply place all 26 letters in baggies and have students take out only those needed.  That too was time consuming as students struggled to retrieve only those they needed...so I created these disposable letters.  

Students have to cut these out quickly.  I tell them that this is not an art project!! Believe it or not, this is still faster than the search through 26 letters.  Here is a tip. Don't have them throw away scraps until the end of the activity.  They may end up accidentally throwing away letters!!
The letters are doubled up on the page and each set uses a different font.  This is so each version can be alternated between students and they won't get their set confused with their neighbors. 

Here are a few different sets of letters for working with word families for you.....

-an Word Family (Microsoft Word)

-ad Word Family

-en Word Family

-et Word Family 

Don't forget to write up set of large cards for your pocket chart!

 

I also made a word family sort worksheet and I am sharing it with you.

 

-an and -ad tree map for word family sort

Blank Tree Map for Word Families (Write in Words)


Back to First Grade Parade

Next post on Valentine's Fun!

Classroom Fun in February!

And we had to squish a little Groundhog's Day in there...

The PM group is looking good in their 100th day goodies!

The AM group happily wearing their 100th day hats!

We used cut up pieces of construction paper and crayons to design our hats.

I used this idea from Erin Eberhart.  She had students organize the fruit loops on a hundreds chart.  The stringing of the cereal proved time consuming and some students struggled to finish.  If you try this and your volunteers are unavailable, make sure you have bags so students can take what they have not finished home to complete!!!

The beauty of using the hundreds chart for the necklaces, was that we cleared them off,  and reused them for this color the number activity.

I loved this idea!!!

Finally, I rushed to fit in these 100 exercises.  Sorry for the sloppy charting, I always mean to make a really nice copy of this, but I always run out of time to do it!! :(

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