Free BrainPOPjr!

Hello all!  
Just a quickie this morning!  I just wanted to tell everyone that BrainPOPjr is FREE this week!  If you've never used any of their fun videos and games, check it out!  We viewed the President video yesterday and played the games (don't forget the Pop a Joke--they LOVE).  

Sorry, friends!  They changed  it during the day today.  :-(  It is a great program if you've never checked it out.  They do always have at least one freebie each week.
  Click Moby to visit the site!

And don't forget to ROCK the VOTE!

Have a great day!

Classroom Freebies Too, Monsters, and Adding One!

   Happy Halloween!

I hope your little monsters are sweet to you today.  We are going on a field trip to a corn maze…and it’s freezing cold!  It was 80 a few days ago and now…brrr!  Pray for us! 

I’m so excited that this will be my first post writing for Classroom Freebies Too!  Thanks so much, Charity, for the opportunity!

For all you CF fans I am sharing a game that I made tonight to help some of my sweeties master the math strategy of Adding One.  Most all caught on quickly, but some still need more practice.  Click the pic to go grab it at my TPT “store”. 

We had Monster Day on Friday and read some of our favorite monster books such as I Need My Monster and  Monster Manners .

We created our own monsters after this.  I wanted to tie into our geometry Envision topic so we talked about how we could create monsters by cutting the shapes that we know.  There are some c.u.t.e monster patterns out there for the snagging lately, but this time I wanted my kids to be able to completely make the monster how they wanted it.  We don’t have an art special anymore so I worry about hindering creativity.

So I put out every color construction paper I own and let them have at it.  They turned out soooo cute!  

Here are a few:

One fella made one with wings (I forgot pic of it) and it is the only one that keeps falling off the wall.  Too funny! 

They completed a My Monster description page after that.  

Here is Maddy’s (hers is the green monster above).  If you’d like a blank copy of this sheet, just click Maddy’s page and it will take you to Google docs. 

 

Do you know about Dogzilla?  I’ll have to post about him soon!  They LOVE! 

I hope you can use some of these!  Have a great rest of October!

I like big BOOKS and I cannot lie...

Oh dear friends...thank you sweet baby Jesus that tomorrow is Friday!  My sweet first graders have forgotten all our procedures in just a week!  I actually had a girl tell me today that she'd come to join her reading group when she finished her puzzle.  Really!!  Oh, and did you know that when we come back from the bathroom with the pass, we stand in the door and yell at the top of our lungs.....

Okay, who needs to go the bathroom??!!  

**bang my head on table**

We did manage to get some work done this week, however.  

I am TERRIBLE at using my big books.  I have so many of them but seem to only use them to teach to my themes.  I forget about them the rest of the time.  I've noticed that during free choice centers on Fridays (after our morning of testing), lots of my firsties were getting into the big books.  As I sat on the beach last week (ah...was it just a week ago?), I came up with a way to let them use those big books and start on the concept of research.  I came up with this form:

Click on pic to snag the form!

I introduced the form on Monday during literacy stations.  We practiced the form using No, David!  You'll be amazed at how many exclamation points are in this book!  

They are LOVING this station! 

I've "prettied" up the form since I took this pic!  Haha!

I hope your kids enjoy this as much as mine!  Have a wonderful Friday!

Make them beg!

Greeting from the Beach!  

I'm on Fall Break!  It feels so incredible to de-stress and do nothing but read for pleasure and listen to the waves. I've read one trashy romance novel a day so far.  Haha!  The weather here in Florida is GLORIOUS!  When I left Tennessee it was 40-something and raining!  Yuck!  

I was sooo mean to my sweeties last week.  They returned from library on Tuesday and found this:

I had pulled out all of my Halloween and Fall books and put them on the shelf at our carpet area.  And wrapped them in caution tape!  They were so excited and immediately wanted me to start reading them.  Nope. Not yet.  Not happening.  

I made them wait for 2 days.  They were dying! They BEGGED me to start reading these books.  It's amazing when they are begging for books instead of games or movies.  Before I took the tape off or read even one book, they had to complete this page:

Frame from Jen Jones at Hello Literacy

You can snag the file by clicking picture above.  I starred the word predict because we are working hard to add it to our vocabulary.  I hope you can use it!

Off to sunscreen up and pick out my book for today.  Blessing to you!

First Grade Common Core

Hands-on Common Core activities!  

Common Core ideas for First Grade! 

 Do I have your attention yet?  I've been hearing such wonderful reviews about the K version of this book so I was excited when they released the 1st version.  I was even more thrilled after I downloaded the free sample.  I was expecting a typical workbook feel but that's not what this is!  It looks just like our favorite units that we download from TPT (even with graphics by Scrappin Doodles)!  Activities, posters, worksheets!   I'm so excited to get my hands on the First Grade Common Core workbook!

Go check it out!