End of Year Activities

I only have 10 1/2 more days of school.  Crazy to think how fast the year flew by!  

If your class is anything like mine they are getting a little restless.  As far as behavior goes, I started using Class Dojo.

Once the kids here the chime that someone has earned a point, you could hear a pin drop.  At the end of the day, I give them Star Dollars for how many points they've earned.

I don't think I'd use Class Dojo all year long because I'm constantly turning on and off my TV.  I need something extra up my sleeve for that last month.

As far as activities go, I need something quick, easy and engaging.  I'm known for my crafts (Thanks TpT!).  I want to show you some of the things we've done in the last week and will do the last few days.  

S'Mores Craft & Writing 

We are making s'mores tomorrow to go along with our camping theme.

All About Skunks {Freebie}

Nouns for Sale: Lemonade Edition

Students write nouns on lemons and then make a pitcher of lemonade.

Watermelon Adjectives {Freebie}

Students write adjectives on seeds.

Antonyms: Go Together Like Peas and Carrots

Synonyms: Go Together Like Peas in a Pod

Gallon Guy/Girl

You can find all of these items in my TpT store on sale through tonight!  

5 for Friday: April 5th Edition

I'm especially excited for this week's Five for Friday! 

I had my post already to go yesterday, but once I got home I was tired. Like couldn't keep my eyes open and went to bed at 8pm tired.

Which is why I'm just now posting.

But it's SPRING BREAK!  Finally!

So I'm going to share what's been happening this week and then go lay on the couch for a week.

1. Introducing Connie Conjunction! She loves to join two sentences together using or, but, because, and so.

I just realized I misspelled conjunction. Eek! I'll be fixing that ASAP!

Wait. Did I just say but?

No, not that kind of but.

I'll let you get your giggles out.

Oh wait, my firsties giggled all week long every time "but" was said.

Thank goodness I have more girls than boys this year.  Last year's class would have had a field day.

Each student drew their own Connie Conjunction, labeled the poster, and wrote a sentence using a conjunction.

I found blank glue bottles in a packet on TPT (freebie alert).

Each student wrote a sentence using a conjunction and wrote the conjunction on the glue bottle.

2. It's first grade's month for the bulletin board out in the hallway.  We went with an Earth Day theme.

Each student wrote about a way they would help the Earth.

3. We wrapped up our weather unit.  Students chose a type of storm to research and write about. This one did an excellent job writing, but her picture was a tornado.  Oops!  We are still working on graphic features!

Let's compare anchor charts for a moment.

Here's the beautiful one about the different weather instruments.

I keep telling my parapro that she need to make her own font and sell it on TPT!

And here's mine that I made for our new plant unit.

Inspired from First Grade Parade

I made it during lunch while eating. :)

4. April family projects were due this week.  I don't usually have a family project due in May since it's such a crazy month.

You can tell the parents and students are ready for school to end. The beginning of the year the projects are elaborate and this time almost everyone just colored their flower.

5. I forgot to share these beautiful crosses we made for Easter!

I gave each student a card stock cross, messy glue, and tissue paper.  They folded the tissue paper over the end of the pencil (eraser end), held onto the tissue paper and dipped in glue.

Look the end result!

Now for a week I won't think about teaching or find any super cute ideas that I want to use, right?? Because it's Spring Break! Happy Saturday!

Easter Plurals

I have been in a complete fog the last couple of weeks. Between the time change, report cards, conferences and the normal daily to-do's, I am ready for SUMMER. It was mentioned in the latest staff meeting that there are only 8 Mondays left of the school year.

I. can. make. it.

Here's an Easter freebie for you! Enjoy!

Font by Kevin and Amanda

Graphics by My Cute Graphics and Krista Wallden

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.

Presidential ABC Order

I hope you've been enjoying your weekend so far! I was so surprised to hear that some of you don't have the day off on Monday. To ease your pain a little, I created a free Presidential ABC order for you!

Click here to download.

Don't worry, I won't have too much fun sleeping in. That means I'll be sleeping to about 6am due to my internal alarm (and my dogs who like to wake me up). I'm actually plan on getting some work done on my car. The joys of being a responsible adult! Pray that it doesn't cost me too much. :)

Christina from Apples, Books, and Crayons is hosting a 100 follower giveaway. You can enter to win a copy of my Landform Posters (one of my biggest sellers in my TPT store).

Hop on over to Apples, Books, and Crayons to check it out!

Hello 3 Day Weekend!

One of my favorite weeks of the year is over! I just love celebrating Valentine's Day with my students. There's still so much love to go around in first grade and it's so innocent.

You know what made be laugh even more? I was scrolling through Pinterest last night and so many of the people I follow were already pinning St. Patrick's Day ideas.  We can't even wait for one holiday to be over with! I know I'll be pinning some St. Patrick's Day ideas this weekend so I can't say too much! It's really going to throw me off that Easter is at the end of March.  Bunnies and clovers in March?

Anyhow, onto my weekly linky party post!

I don't know about you, but I adore these week in review linky parties. I don't have a lot of time or energy to blog during the week. I enjoy finding new to me blogs every week and getting some great ideas to use for the future.

1. Valentine's Day was a blast! We had a visit from the Sweetheart Snatcher and exchanged our treats.

2. Check out this Valentine's hair! Oh. My. Word. Is it not amazing??

3. We taste tested Hugs and Kisses.

4. We finished up our study of diagraphs and made 2 easy crafts.

First up was the peach craft. We brainstormed words that ended in "ch" and made an anchor chart (which I forgot to take a picture of).

(Yes, my students did say it looked like a tush, but what can you do?)

Our beach scene.

On each shell, students wrote words with ending diagraphs "ch" "sh" and "th."
I'm putting the finishing touches on my Diagraph Packet and it should be up this weekend!

5. I have *finally* figured out Google Docs! This is my first attempt uploading something to Google Docs, so if it fails let me know.  If you are looking for the Piggy Bank templates from a few weeks ago, here they are!

Click HERE for the templates.

Super excited for my 3 day weekend! I hope you have a break too!

TGIF!

Woohoo! We made it to Friday, people! It was one of those weeks where after school I came home and immediately put on my pajamas. I'm hoping this weekend my motivation to do anything will come back.

1. We started studying diagraphs and made this adorable Valentine's craft.

2. Is it just me or is inflectional endings super hard to teach? We started with past tense verbs and made it rain with those verbs. Any craft with scrapbook paper = awesome.

This craft is from Across the Hall in 2nd grade. You can purchase the templates and activities to go with the book The Day It Rained Hearts here. I used everything in the packet this week - it fit the needs of my students perfectly!

3. It's teeth time! We did the typical hard boiled egg in Coke and juice.

The smell in my room was amazing.

4. I felt like we made a zillion crafts, which leads me to tell you about my glue stick issues. I found a solution for issues with my pencils. Glue sticks are another issue. I've asked parents to send in additional glue sticks and I swear it's like my kids eat them.

I spent $20 on these big glue sticks last weekend and some students FORGET to put the lid on. Glue sticks are my new nemesis.

5. In math, I had some much fun with Michelle's Once Upon a Time Unit, I barely had time for the actual worksheets from the text.

How cute are those clocks??

I also gave my students cards numbered 1-12 and told them to make a human clock face. I should have videotaped what they did (and who became bossy). At one point I said "A clock is a circle, people." Then I selected a few students to be the short hand and long hand. They had so much fun learning about time.

***********

I'll leave you with this little gem. Don't you love phonetic spelling sometimes? The best part of this is that it was a character trait printable.

The student said it was "shiny." ;)