It's the Little Things...shamrocks, leprechauns, and prepositions!!

Hello Everyone!
I hope your week is going well! My last post suggested that it had been a few years since we've gotten to enjoy St. Patrick's Day at school. Well, that changed this week!  Finally we got to enjoy some shamrock, leprechaun, and rainbow fun...and believe me, there was a ton of learning going on!! Take a look!

Morning Work---ABC Order

Math Notebook- All in Green! :)

Our Number Operator Page looks awesome in green!

Graphing in Math! Lucky!!

Math Tub...More Graphing!

What is all this green for?

Practicing Fractions!! 1/4!

4/4 = one whole!

Leprechaun puppet play reading!

Practicing ai words on a rainbow!

Finding gold!

And creating something out of the wrapper!

Rainbow Shape and Color poem

"Living under a rainbow" writing

We had fun learning through all the colors!!  Thanks for letting us share!
If you would like to try some these, maybe next year...CLICK HERE!!!

Next week we will try to introduce kids to prepositions. This is a tricky concept for our young learners.  We will also begin learning about life cycles, specifically chickens...so...Rosie is coming back for a visit!  You know from Rosie's Walk, by Pat Hutchins!!!  I love using this book to explore position and direction words, so it is also perfect for prepositions.  I put together a mini unit on prepositions with Rosie as our focus.  Here are some pics of what is included.

The hands on visual retelling preposition book's pattern is included in the unit.

If you are looking for a simple way to help kids make connections with prepositions... For your copy of the mini unit, CLICK HERE!

Phew, I didn't mean for this post to be so long, but I couldn't wait to share this little peek into our world of wonder!!  Sometimes we forget that the little things, even leprechauns and shamrocks can...and do... engage kids into learning. Connecting hands to heads and hearts is what I love about being a teacher!

Have a great rest of the week! Stay tuned for more!

Joyfully!

Nancy

Animals Eat, Move and Have Covering!

Hello Everyone!!
Well, this spring break has been awesome!   The weather has been rainy and cloudy the whole week.  Yay for all the lakes around us.  They are finally filling up after a looooong drought! I got a lot done on the homefront!! Some closets cleaned out, carpets and wood floors redone, made some fresh new wreaths for my front doors, and took a quick trip to visit my baby. I also had time to combine and add to an animal unit.  Kids love animals.  They love learning about the different characteristics and fun facts.  Three of my favorite books to use to integrate science, ELA, and even math are "What If You Had Animal Teeth?," "What If You Had Animal Hair?," and "What if You Had Animal feet?" all by Sandra Markle.

The animal feet book is fairly new, and so I had to add to my old unit. The new unit contains cross curricular activities to go along with all three books.  

Here are a couple of pictures of what what is included. 

The unit is now about 70 pages of poetry, reader's response, science research, math and some hands on visual opportunities! 

Click HERE for you 70 page unit!!

This coming week we will also take some time to work on vowel digraphs, specifically ay and ai.  I made a quick unit to help the kids understand when to use the two different digaphs.

Using letter tiles, kids will build and record real and nonsense words. (Letter tiles included in the unit!)

If you can use a 12 page ay, ai unit, click HERE!

Well, that's it for now!  Back to school for many of us tomorrow.  I have enjoyed my week off, but I am ready to make this coming week awesome for my kids. I hope they are ready!!
Till next time, thanks for stopping by for a peek into our wonderful world.  Stop by again soon!!
Joyfully!
Nancy

  

Hats Off to Learning and St. Patrick's Day

Hello Everyone!
Happy Spring Break to those of you on break!  Today, it was a rainy, rainy day here.  Great day for cleaning out closets!! And blogging!! Sorry it's been a while! We were so busy getting ready for Open House last week, I was exhausted every night when I got home. And then...we got hit with snow!! It was so beautiful and so fun, and tah dah!!...Snow day on Open House day! We will have to reschedule...so sad. We were so ready to show off!!
I finally decided to share some of what the kids had done. (If you are one of my parents and still want to be surprised when we do have open house, don't look at this next section.)
Our first graders focused on hats as the backdrop for showing off our learning!   Hats that historic figures wore, hats that cowboys wear, party hats, newspaper hats, favorite hats.  We had so much fun learning through George Washington and his tricorn hat.

We also had fun learning through Abraham Lincoln and his famous stovepipe hat!

Then, of course, we had to create our own hats!

And write about how we made them!!

And then write  some more...about hats!

And don't forget the cowboy hats!! All decked out!!

With a little poem on the back!

Speaking of hats, our school will be celebrating our 10th birthday this spring, so we had to add a party hat to the mix!

We can't wait to show off all of our hard work to friends and family hopefully soon!!

Most of the activities and lessons are available in my "Hats Off" unit. 

You can get the 74 page unit ... for free! Just click here!

The week we get back from Spring Break, we will enjoy St. Patrick's Day together. I seriously don't remember the last time we were in school on St. Patrick's day.  We were always on Spring Break. So I had to scramble and put together a mini unit.  We will have fun with these learning activities throughout the day.  

Take a peek at what is in this mini!

For your own free 24 page unit, simply click HERE!!!

Phew!!  I hope you made it all the way through to the end of this post.  I didn't realize it was going to be so long.  Thanks for hanging in there!! As always thanks for your support and for stopping by for a peek!  Have a wonderful week!-------And go away rain!! I want to go out and play!

Joyfully!

Nancy