Workin' Hard on the Weekend

After passing out at 9:30 on a Friday night, I've managed to work on school related stuff all weekend.  We have our accreditation team coming this week and I wanted to make sure that my room looked amazing and everything was super organized for the week.  It was really telling that there were still three teachers left on my floor when I left at 6:30pm Friday.  (This never happens.) I went back for a few hours on Saturday.  As I was leaving around 4pm, three teachers were coming in to work.  If they would have been there earlier, I probably would have stayed longer!  

My students are head over heels in love with "I Have, Who Has?" games.  I made a set for r-controlled vowels.  

It includes three different games - one for /ar/, /or/ and one for the sounds of /er/, /ir/, /ur/

My class really loves unicorns this year.  The girls gasped when someone read "I have core. Who has unicorn?"  

I also made sure to read Uni the Unicorn for a lesson introduction.  It's a sweet story - I highly recommend it!

I finished up my literacy centers for the beginning of March.  I don't really do anything Dr. Seuss related and skip straight to St. Patrick's Day.

It has five centers that cover synonyms, present and past tense verbs, long and short vowels, r-controlled vowels, and making sentences.

Both are on sale (50% off) for the first 24 hours.  (Click on any of the above pictures directly to the item you want.) Make sure you follow my TPT store and Instagram (polkadotfirsties) so you can see when I upload things.

Want to check out the quality of my centers?  Look at Category Sort: March Edition.  It's a freebie!

Category Sort and a Giveaway

I'm staying home from work today.  It is a rare event that I actually take a sick day, so I figure I should celebrate (from the couch) by hosting a flash sale.  Everything in my TPT store is 10% for today only!

You'll want to check out a new packet I made this weekend called Category Sort: March Edition.

Students sort 12 cards into 2 categories (spring and St. Patrick's Day) and then record their answers on the sheet provided.

*First person to comment wins a free copy of Category Sort: March Edition*

Need more St. Patrick's Day ideas?  Check out Sharing Kindergarten's St. Patrick Day Product Linky Party!

Amanda and Stacia from Collaboration Cuties is having a 300 followers giveaway.  It's absolutely HUGE, so you must check it out!  I donated my Digraphs Packet: Craftivities & More.

Five For Friday....on Saturday

The last two weeks I managed to be first on Kacey's Five For Friday. This week I must have slacked off a little because it's Saturday and I'm just now posting!

I'm also linking up with Amanda's Flashback Friday.

1. I'm gearing up for some great St. Patrick's Day activities next week. This week was spent printing, laminating and cutting. Maybe one day I'll learn how to do the visual plans, but this is all I have!  :)

Literacy Centers  - Mix of March by Swimming into Second & March Literacy Centers by Sarah Paul

Writing - Catch a Leprechaun by A Cupcake for the Teacher, In Like a Lion & Out Like a Lamb by Miss Kindergarten Love

Our lesson plans for the following week are always due on Friday mornings at 8am. I love that I have to have everything prepared before I leave on Fridays, but sometimes I find the BEST ideas over the weekend from visiting other blogs and Pinterest. When are your lesson plans due?

2. My school participated in Accelerated Reader's "Read the Most From Coast to Coast"yesterday.  The goal was to beat the number of AR quizzes from last year.

This was in place of our Dr. Seuss celebration.  In previous years we've done a Green Eggs and Ham day (which completely makes the school smell like eggs - Yuck!) I have a teacher confession: Dr. Seuss' books drive me crazy. I don't like them.  I do realize that this is probably considered blasphemy as a first grade teacher.

3. Every month I send home a family project.  Students are supposed to decorate the template, write ten describing words for the month and send it back. I forgot to take a picture of the board, so here's a snapshot of one of the projects.

Here's what the family projects for February looked like:

Do you do anything similar in your class?

4. Funny story: I took a big gulp of water while the students were working.  It went down the wrong way and I had a HUGE coughing fit.  Everyone kept doing their work....no one looked up for about a minute (which felt like an enternity). Finally one of my students asked if I was okay.  I was still choking my this point, but I gave him a thumbs up.  Then a few other students noticed....and one said "Does this mean we get to go home?"  Yes, because if your teacher is choking you get to go home early!!

5. Diane from Fifth in the Middle is hosting a linky on her blog that is broken down by state.

Go HERE to see what blogs from your state! I know I love to find Georgia bloggers and others from surrounding states.

6. (Yes, I made it six this week!) We studied biographies and learned about George Washington Carver and Harriet Tubman. 

First, we created a George Washington Carver craftivity. 

As the students finished up the craft, one little girl came up and ask me if I would put out some scrapbook paper so they could add arms. How could you say no to creativity? Some of them may have looked a little better without the scrapbook paper.  Hmmm....

I found the George Washington Carver paper for FREE on TPT.

Here's our Harriet Tubman!

I especially like the bun in her hair.  :) The students cut a coffee filter in half to put on her shirt.

Here is a student created sample.

7. (I'm outta control this week!) Congrats to Crystal from Ms. Jones' Junction! She won a copy of my Guy Butterfly and Benny Butterfly: a mini unit for y as a vowel and Digraphs: Craftivities and More from my 100 followers giveaway!

Enjoy your Saturday!

Bossy R & Leprechaun ABC Order

I really love this time of year in first grade! They know the rules and they are much, much more independent than when they came to me.  I know the magic will only last a couple more weeks before they get a little antsy for spring break. I'm starting to get sad that I won't have them in my class in a few months.  But then I have to think about the wonderful thing called SUMMER. The pool will ease my pain a little. Ha!

On another note, we started studying bossy r words today.  This week the focus is "ar" words, but I wanted to introduce all of the bossy r spellings. We thought about our first and last names and made a list on the board. I didn't take a picture, but this really helped the students recognize the bossy r in words they already know.

I found this free bossy r scavenger hunt. (I can't find where it's from, so if it's yours let me know!) I put the cards up in various parts of the room.

I told the students that they were part of a crew on a pirate ship and they had to go around and check all of the pirates. There are a lot of cards in this hunt and it kept them engaged for quite some time!

I'm starting to prepare for St. Patrick's Day!  How about you? I'm ready to take down all of the hearts in my room and decorate with some pretty shamrocks. Since I got a lot of visits from my Presidential ABC Order post, I decided to make a Leprechaun ABC Order.

Click HERE to download.