Cloudy and the 50th Day

So, my plans to post last week were thwarted when I was thrust into becoming a CSI detective. Let me just tell y’all that I would make an EXCELLENT investigator should anyone ever need a private eye. For real. I successfully caught someone impersonating someone else & TOTALLY trying to scam one of my friends on Facebook! I SO felt like I was living in a Lifetime movie last week!! I had NO time for anything other than sleuthing. Now that that whole saga is over…*I think for now anyway*…I’m ready to play catch-up.

We learned all about clouds and the kids had a BLAST!!! Actually, I think I might’ve had a *little* more fun than them :) I don’t know why, but I LOVE teaching about clouds and the weather! SO fun!!

I was inspired by my sweet friend, Abby, to make these fun little cloud guys. These were such a great visual to get my kids to understand what kind of clouds are high/low in the sky.

We also made little cloud anchor charts that my kids used throughout the week for writing.

We described clouds…

And we even made little cloud flip books…inspired by the fabulous Anna Brantley over at Crazy for First Grade …and practiced labeled them, too.

For word work, we practiced writing our popcorn & spelling words in the clouds :) This was definitely a class FAVORITE!! I thought of my grandpa ALL day…the classroom smelled JUST like him ;)

The activity that had the class talkin’ for DAYS after it was over was this great little craftivity we did after we read the book, “It Looked Like Spilt Milk”. The kids did a little writing… “Sometimes clouds can look like...” and then we followed it up with a little “get-your-hands-dirty” kinda craft. We just mixed equal parts glue and shaving cream together and painted it in the shape that we wrote about. When the mixture dries, the cloud stays puffy and it gives a little when you touch it. It was the COOLEST thing!!!!

This was the cloud my sweet student teacher made…

And this is one from one of my sweeties…

We made our “Very Busy First Graders” spiders and hung them from the ceilings. Last year we put them on the door, but I’ve yet to touch the door since the school year started :)

We also learned about bats!!! I didn’t take pictures of most of our work, but here’s our little “bat cave”. I made a big giant bat full of bat facts we collected as we read several different non-fiction bat books. I had the kids make little paper bag bats and then write two facts on the pink strip {we did this for writing one day}.

We’ve definitely kept ourselves busy these last few weeks! Now we’re getting SUPER excited about the 50th day next week!!! Woo hoo!!!! I’m pretty sure I lived in the fifties in my former life {ha!!} because I SOOOO love anything and everything poodle skirts and cuffed jeans. We’re excited about celebrating our halfway to the 100th day! I’m getting all my fun stuff ready for next week when we enjoy the 50th day festivities!!! Here’s just a little sneak peek…

If you’re interested in incorporating some of these craftivities into your 50th day plans, you can check out my newest little mini unit on TpT… “Cruisin’ Through the 50 First Days of School”. I included the templates and directions and several other fun little activities…

It’s usually $5, but you can grab it for $4 until Thursday! EVERYTHING in my little shop is 20% off ‘til Thursday. I’m giving away this little mini unit to the first person who leaves me a comment and correctly guesses my favorite 1950’s artist and/or song. WOW…that covers A LOT of ground ;)

Alright now…time to watch my boys WIN!!!!! GO RANGERS!!!!!!

Rewind.

These last few weeks have been moving in fast forward, so it’s time to stop down and rewind just a bit :) To sum it all up, we learned about apples, made applesauce, learned about all things moon, and know more about spiders and arachnids than we ever cared to know. My student teacher started on Tuesday and I love her big. She was observing in my room 2 days a week during the Spring, so I’m SUPER excited to have her back. She’s a natural, so that makes me happy. And, she’s the most helpful, sweetest person EVER. In a year where I’m facing more classroom challenges than ever before, I’m feeling SO very blessed to have her on board with me :)

Now, let’s get down to business. Here’s a little ABC order apple activity I put in my stations a few weeks ago.

While I’m down with Daily 5 and all, I had to make some SERIOUS changes to the way my literacy block is structured. I’ll tell y’all more about that in a different post. In the meantime, you can download the ABC order activity, activity sheet, and a few more literacy activities by clicking on the pics below.

I was inspired by my dear friend, Abby, to introduce labeling and talking about Johnny Appleseed and apples seemed like the perfect time to throw it in to the mix! We made construction paper apples and then labeled the parts.

This past week, we learned all about Spiders, Fire Safety, and Clouds. I’ll share all of our cloud activities in a separate post because there’s lots to include!! I used the Fire Safety Unit from the ladies of Made for 1st Grade and the kids were in LOVE!!! Such a GREAT unit, so you definitely wanna check it out!!!

As for spiders, we had lots of fun with those little arachnids, too!!

We started the week with a little spider labeling and thinking maps.

Grab the printables here…

My kids worked on matching subtraction sentences during math tubs this week and they did an awesome job! They used buttons and spider rings for counters. The download is included in the “My Spider Brace Map” printables.

We also did a little spider syllable sorting and a stamp-a-spider {stamping chunk words on spider legs} during our literacy block…

You can grab the spider syllables below. I don’t have the stamp-a-spider template, though. I used Power Point to create them though…just added a circle for the body, two little dots for the eyes, and then created a table of 8 rows to cut for the legs. I typed the chunks inside the spider body so the kids would know what kind of words they had to create. Does that even make sense?!?! HA!

We also worked on graphing and problem solving this week, too. After talking to some of our 2nd grade teachers, I really want to make sure my kids know how to read and interpret graphs and answer some of the questions that go with them. The longer we work on them and practice, the better!!

Alright. There we go. A nice little rewind of the last few weeks learning! I’ll be back on Tuesday to share some of our cloud activities with y’all! In the meantime, have a GREAT Monday!!!!

Wandering Wednesday

Sorry for missing my little regular Wednesday feature last week. I was busy bein’ a momma. I just needed a little time away from the wonderful world of blogs, but now I’m back and ready to get down to business. Let’s not waste any time.

First stop tonight, sweet Alessia from Mrs. Albanese’s Kindergarten Class.

Alessia has been a Kindergarten teacher in Canada for the past 6 years and says she can’t imagine doing anything else! Of course, with a few years of teaching under her belt, Alessia definitely has a lot of ideas to share! Here are some of my favorites…

LOVE the idea of a Playdough Club where parents volunteer to make playdough for the classroom as it’s needed! I TOTALLY could’ve used this when I taught Kindergarten!!

This bulletin board idea is PRECIOUS. I mean seriously. Crayons out of water bottles?! GENIUS.

And this “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” felt story makes me smile!!

There are definitely some fun things goin’ down in Mrs. Albanese’s Kindergarten Classroom, so head on over and check it all out! And while you’re there, say hello and don’t forget to follow!!

Next on our stop, we’re visiting Allyson over at Stickers & Stars.

This busy momma of 3 is a first grade teacher, but she formerly taught 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades. Of course, first grade is her favorite :) A teacher after my own heart. HA! Allyson has some fun things to share like this CAH-ute crayon wreath she made…

This cute Solar System hat will be on my list of “to do’s” when we get to our unit on Space. Presh!!!

And I seriously LOVE this idea. She assigns each “rule” to one of the kids in her classroom. This is one of those, “Why didn’t I think of that!?” kinda ideas! LOVE!

Stop by Stickers and Stars and leave sweet Allyson some love. And while you’re there, don’t forget to follow her so you can keep up with all her fun ideas!

Last on our list tonight, the sweet girls from The Lemonade Stand Teachers.

If y’all haven’t visited yet, y’all are missin’ out!!! This blog is FULL of fabulous ideas! Tiffany, Holly, and Rayann are so creative and I’m LOVING their fun ideas! I’ve even implemented several of them in my classroom already this year!! Here’s a DARLING activity we’re doing tomorrow {in honor of Fire Safety week}…

PRECIOUS, right?!?! LOVE it!!! And you’ve gotta see their version of Even & Odd Street. I mean seriously…such an AWESOME idea!!! SO creative!

And I think this poetry activity is SO stinkin’ cute!!

Like I said before, if you haven’t stopped by yet, you’re seriously missin’ out!! Head on over, say hello, and don’t forget to follow!!

Hope y’all enjoyed tonight’s little wandering adventures! I’ll be back next week with three more!! If you’re interested in being featured on Wandering Wednesday, just shoot me an email at thefirstgradeparade@gmail.com.

Hope y’all are having a FABULOUS Wednesday! We’re halfway through the week and it’s time for me to catch up on Modern Family!!!

It's BAAAAACK!!!!!! Another Erin Condren Deal!!!!!

For those of you who missed it before, One Kings Lane is offering another killer deal on Erin Condren products!!! From today until Friday, October 14th, you can grab a $50 gift card for $25!!!!!!!

You might remember me blogging about this back in August. I ended up spending way too much money, but I got myself a life planner, one for my mom, and several gifts for Christmas!!! THEN, I totally took advantage of the steal on address labels and gift labels. Right now, One Kings Lane is offering ANOTHER deal on those, too!!! With Christmas right around the corner, you seriously CAN'T PASS IT UP!!!!!!

If you didn't get to take advantage of the $25 gift card {worth $50 of Erin Condren products}, do it NOW. I mean it. Don't pass Go. Don't collect $200. Just GO THERE NOW!!!! For real. The life planners {& teacher planners, too!!} are $50. You can grab a $50 gift card for $25 at One Kings Lane and get a planner for HALF the price!!! OR you can shop her fabulous store and select anything else that catches your eye :)

The sale ends Friday, so start shopping!!!!! I know where I'm doing all my Christmas gifts this year :) LOVE IT!!!!!!

Fly Me to the Moon

Happy weekend, sweet friends!! We’re in Houston celebrating my grandparent’s 55th wedding anniversary. They are SO dang cute! They’re treating the family to a murder mystery dinner cruise around the bay tonight :) A night without the kids?! Yes please!! So sorry for my recent absence on the blogging scene lately…and I’m especially sad about my lack of Wandering Wednesday this week. Y’all…life is crazy and I needed to devote my nights to being a mommy :) And I don’t regret it one bit! Anywho…these last few weeks have been jammed packed, so I’ll be updating quite a bit in the days to come. Over the last two weeks, we’ve been observing changes in the moon and we’ve had SO much fun!!!!

We started our study using Abby’s Over the Moon Unit…making a Moon Facts book, making Mooncake, creating Moon Goons, and launching spoons! The kids LOVED it!! I’ve been slacking on taking pictures, so I don’t have any to share, but y’all…it was fun! We also incorporated tons of activities from my newest unit, Moon Mania, that the kids really enjoyed, too!

When we introduced our moon study, we made a fun little moon anchor chart to hang in our science center.

The kids used the facts we collected to add to their Moon Facts Book {from Abby’s unit…keeping in our Science journals}. We also made a little “Moon Matter of Facts” craftivity that the kids AH-dored. The kids had to write 3 facts and then watercolor a moon. We used glue to make the craters, let it dry, and then painted over it.

The kids kept themselves busy during our “dailies” this week with lots of hands-on moon themed literacy activities. We put space themed pictures & words in ABC order, recorded them, and used those words to create sentences.

We labeled a space scene using word cards as a spelling resource…

We also sequenced the phases of the moon and then made moon mobiles & labeled each phase to reinforce what we learned.

The kids did a little handwriting craftivity where they copied a poem and then made the Man in the Moon with aluminum foil.

In Math, we made craters on the moon with addition facts…

We also sorted even & odd numbers, played fun moon-themed math games, and did a little moon measurement activity, too! {no pictures :( BOO}.

We talked about compound words and learned new vocabulary, too! We made these fun little flip books to show what we learned.

One of our fun Sci Fri activities was making moon craters!! SOOOO much fun!! The kids LOVED it!

We also started sending home our MOON BAG!!! My class is OBSESSED!!!!

All of these activities…plus lots more…are in my newest unit, Moon Mania. If you’re interested in reading about what’s included in the 76 page unit, you can check it out HERE.

In other news, I broke down and started a little Facebook page for Emilyk Cole. I figured it would be a fun way to get to put a face with y’alls names :) I’m not promising I’ll be great at updating it, but I’ll try!