ABC Countdown: D-K

...and the countdown continues!

D: Dino Day

• We drew pet dinosaurs and wrote about them
• My plastic dinosaurs decided to go sit on desks of those who were working quietly
• Here are a couple of books we read...

E: Experiment Day

• We got to do a fun experiment today! Click the picture below to see the instructions. 

F: Favorite Book Day

• We got to bring our favorite books to school today. The kiddos loved doing buddy reading and sharing their books with each other! 

G: Game Day

• We played some fun games today! Here is one of my favorites...it's a place value game called Bullseye from What the Teacher Wants. Click HERE to go to the site for a free download! 

H: Hat Day:

• We wore our favorite hats to school today! 

Insect Day:

• We got to do some fun insect activities today! All of the activities I do come from Deanna Jump's Insect unit which you can find here. It is adorable and SO FUN! My kiddos LOVED doing the build-a-bug activity. 

Joke Day:

• For joke day, we had Laffy Taffy for a snack. However...before they could eat theirs, they had to read their joke to the person sitting next to them :)

Kindness Day

• For kindness day, we talked about things we can do that are kind. Then whoever showed kindness that day, got a little treat before they went home. I handed out 'hugs'...because hugs are kinds! ;)

Summer's almost here....Our ABC countdown begins!

The end is near!! I can hardly believe it. And I can hardly wait! Spring Break gave me little sneak peak of summer and let me tell you...I am pumped for it!

This is my project I started during Spring Break that I plan on finishing this summer...

I love crafts. But I have SO MUCH STUFF....and since we live in a 1 bedroom apartment, all of my craft supplies have been slowly taking over our bedroom. Over spring break I set up a desk, and started getting it all organized. It is nowhere near done...but at least the floor is visible now :) I'm excited to work on it this summer! 

By the way....for those of you who are into crafts and in need of a good storage solution for your ribbon, I found the PERFECT ribbon holder! My mom and sisters and I made these boxes awhile ago...they are made out of paint sticks! I discovered that they are the perfect size to store ribbon...AND they have a slit for the ribbon to poke through! You can find the tutorial HERE.

Okay....back to school. The last 26 days of school my team and I do an ABC countdown. LOVE IT! Here's what we've done so far...

A: Art Day: 

• We did some watercolor painting.

B: Bread and Butter Day

• We talked about where bread comes from and how it's made, and then we made our own bread! 

This was so stinkin' fun! I pre-measured all of the ingredients for the bread and had the kids help me dump them into a gallon sized bag. We closed the bags then they got to help mix everything by smooshing the bag around until the ingredients were completely mixed. We also made butter by putting heavy whipping cream and a little bit of salt in a jar and then took turns shaking it. So fun! They loved eating it best of all! :) I kept hearing things like "this is the best bread in the whole world!!" We ate it while we watched a video of The Little Red Hen...and several kids made the connection between the things the Red Hen was doing and what we had done to make our bread. 

C: Come Celebrate with Us!

• We had our 1st grade program! Each 1st grade class performed a reader's theater and we sang a few friendship songs. The program had its little hiccups...but luckily when you are 6 or 7 years old it's still really cute when you mess up :) The parents loved it...they did a cute job!

Stay tuned for the rest of our countdown!

Easter Activities

Here are a few things we did to celebrate Easter...

We made crayon resistant Easter Eggs

We wrote our opinions of the best place to hide an easter egg!

Find the bunny page topper HERE 

We played a money egg game. They picked an egg out of the basket, counted the money inside and recorded the amount on their paper.

Source: Fantastic First Grade Froggies

We played "How many am I hiding?" with eggs and smarties. 

Easter egg spin and graph found HERE

We made bunny ears! I always try to include something educational into our art projects. I had them write on their bunny ear headbands why they liked Easter.

During Easter time I like to teach my kiddos about oviparous animals. To start off, we read Chickens Aren't the Only Ones and made a big list of oviparous animals.

 Afterwards, each student made a page for our class book of oviparous animals. 

I have this awesome egg poster that I always show my kids...

We first look at the eggs and make predictions about what animal is in each egg. When you hold the poster up to the light, you can see a picture of an animal in each egg. 

St. Patrick's Day

I LOVE St. Patrick's Day in 1st grade! We always have a little Leprechaun that visits our classroom the entire week before St. Paddy's and leaves things for them. Our Leprechaun this year left these little notes for them...

I printed them off on gold paper. While we were out of the classroom (i.e. at specialty, recess, etc.) our Leprechaun would leave a little note with some rolos at their desk. You can click on the picture above to grab a copy!

We read this book...

And did this cute writing activity that you can find at The First Grade Parade. 

Every year we have our students make a Leprechaun trap and they bring it with them to school the day before St. Patrick's Day. That evening, Leprechauns visit our classroom and set their traps off.  I LOVE seeing their traps...they are so creative! 

We had a Leprechaun visit our classroom and left us a treasure hunt! 

He took us all over the school and eventually brought us back to our classroom where we found the treasure! He left us some Magic Leprechaun Powder (pistacchio pudding mix) and left us instructions for it. When we  mixed it with milk, it magically turned green! We ate our pudding with some E.L.Fudge cookies. We had lots of fun and the kids loved it!

Freebies!

Hurray! My computer is back!!! To celebrate, I have 2 freebies for you!

The first is a little sign I made for parent/teacher conferences. I framed it and put a bowl full of packages of popcorn next to it (see below).

Click the image below to grab it! 

The next freebie I have for ya is a cut and paste activity to practice the ee/ea sound. My kids LOVED this!! They get to make cute little ee/ea candy jars :) You can grab it at my TPT store by clicking the image below! 

Catching up...

 I am SUPER behind. Story of my life these days :)

I'm going to breeze through so I can hopefully get caught up to where we are at right now.

Deanna Jump has some AWESOME penguin stuff on her blog. We did this fun little relay game that I saw on her blog HERE. I split them up into teams...they had to carry their "egg" across the finish line and the rest of the kiddos kept track of team points on their paper using tally marks.

Now onto Valentine's Day...

Gift I gave to my kiddos....you can get the tag HERE for free

This is one of my favorite activities we did on Valentine's day. You can find it here at What the Teacher Wants

We have also started our Rocks unit for science. We read these books...

 We talked about different types of rocks and how we use them. We discussed the attributes of rocks...how some are bumpy, smooth, big, small, different colors, etc. I had the kids observe different rocks and draw pictures of them in their rock books. 

 I have some freebies that I want to share with you all....but I am currently using a 'loan' computer right now. My computer had to be sent in so I could get a new computer cord so the freebies will have to wait. Cross your fingers that my next post will NOT be coming from this one! :)

 

Penguins

One of my favorite units to do in January is our Penguin unit.

We read LOTS of non-fiction penguin books and wrote down what we learned. We also read a Scholastic News magazine about penguins.

I had my kids all make a penguin folder to keep all of their penguin stuff in. My kids were so excited when they would be able to put something else in their folder! This idea came from Erica Bohrer. You can download penguin cover printable on her blog HERE. 

Here are a few things we put inside...

Penguin digraph sort from The First Grade Parade

These next two things...I don't know where I got them from!! I found a couple of years ago on someone's blog....if you know where they came from PLEASE let me know so I can give them credit!

My kids LOVED reading the Tacky books. We did a Tacky the Penguin reader's theater and invited their parents to come see them perform. They were so excited and did such a SUPER cute job!!