Lucky Day

For St. Patrick's Day, we kept it low key in class.  It was the end of our trimester so our schedule was off AND we had an assembly that morning so there wasn't a whole lot of time to do much of anything besides our regular assessments.  I did have the Lucky Leprechaun Math & Literacy Centers from Made for 1st Grade all ready for my kiddos.  We did them all week.  We will also be working on them until the end of March.  I introduce only 2-3 things each week so instead of having my students do ALL the centers in one week, I stretch it out for two weeks.  I love these centers from Kelly & Diane because my students know how to do them.  The skills are different for each "theme" but it's the same type of activities which I love because then I don't have 20 kids coming up to me asking me how to do it.  I just explain it once and they are good to go.  One of my favorite things from their March centers was the Super Sentence Wheel.  My kiddos had so much fun with it!  They just had to add an adjective for the leprechaun.  They cut it out and I helped them put it together.  They turned the wheel, read their super sentences and giggled with glee!

I love how the Super Sentence Wheel is divided into the subject, verb, and prepositional phrase of a sentence.  My kids love reading these sentences.  I had them pick their favorite 5 and they write it their little book (which is also included) and illustrate it.


As an extension, they read their sentences to the class.  We had such a great time with these!


Some of my kiddos are having a hard time with reading fluency.  Some of them don't get to practice as much at home so during my RtI time, while the rest of my class is gone to the Waterford computer lab, I have my little group sit on the carpet where every they want.  Then we read the story together with the CD that HM included and they get to use these fancy pointers.  They LOVE that.  It also gets them to practice reading the story so that they can build fluency.



As a way of trying to help my kids tell time to the hour and half hour, I printed out these free clock numbers from the awesome Amy Lemons of Step into 2nd Grade with Mrs. Lemon.  I printed them on 3 different colored construction papers, laminated them, cut them and taped them to the clock.  I did this on Friday afternoon so I can't wait for my kids to see it!

I also had some time to create a Dolch words practice for my TpT store. I have the pre-primer, primer, and 1st grade words that can be traced, written, and stamped or written in rainbow colors.  Rainbow writing is when the student writes the word in different crayon colors.  The student can write the whole word in a crayon color or each letter in a different rainbow color.  I had this as an option so that if all the stamps were being used or if a classroom didn't have stamps, it could still be used.

Now for the fun part!  I will be giving 3 of these away to my readers.  Here is how you can enter.

1) Leave ONE comment for being a follower of my blog and my TpT store.

2) Get ONE extra entry for blogging about this giveaway.  

The giveaway will end this Friday, March 23rd and the winner will be announced on Saturday, March 24th.  Don't forget to leave your email address!  Thank you!

Time Flies!

I can't believe how fast time is flying.  I am so glad though!  I am enjoying my class a bunch this time of year since they are really independent and can sit for a few minutes working quietly.

Last week, the giant ROCK that's headed to LACMA was near our school.  (5 minutes away).  So after school and after grading a FAT stack of papers, I drove to the shopping plaza cross the street and walked to see what all the fuss was about.

There were so many people looking at the rock and some people drove by to see the rock.  There were also people who didn't know that the rock would be on this street and were stuck in the traffic!  It was already 6pm and there were so many people out there!

It's saran wrapped so you can't really see it.  It can only travel at night because it can only go like 10 miles per hour and travel about 8-11 miles.  It took over a week for the rock to travel from Riverside to Los Angeles and every night, it would be on the news.  Slow news night?

My little munchkins needed more help with Mathematical Reasoning and Problem Solving so I bought Deanna Jump's Spring Math Journal Prompts to help them with word problems.  There were so many good sellers with math journal prompts but I decided to go with hers since it seemed simple.  I don't know if I'll buy all of hers or try to create some on my own but I figured this was a good start.  I precut the prompts and have my class president pass it out to the students after lunch.  We did the first few together and now they are a wiz at them!  We read the prompt together.  I have my students circle the number words and the write the digit next to or above the number word.  Then we underline the clue word that shows us what operation to perform.  (addition or subtraction).  I also made an addition/subtraction clue word cheat sheet to put in their journals to use as a reference.  They also have a small hundred's chart in the back of the journal to use if they need the help.  Look at all their hard work!!





The covers for their math journals.



The clue words "cheat sheet."

It's really helped them to be better problem solvers!  I hope everyone is doing well and I'll try to work on some more worksheets.. but right now it's REPORT CARD TIME!!  We just finished benchmarks and now report cards.... UGH!  Hope everyone else has survived.

On a side note, if I reach 50 people, I'll do a giveaway.  :)  Thank you for subscribing!

Fab Finds: Life Planners

Just a quickie today...

Hautelook is having a $25 for $50 of products at Erin Condren.  She makes these awesome Lifeplanners  organizers and also teacher planners!  Get yours today.  The sale ends on Saturday.  They will mail out the code on Tuesday/Wednesday.

Where does the weekend go?

Hi everyone!  I don't know WHERE the weekend goes!!!  I feel like it was just yesterday when I was in my classroom grading papers so that I could relax this weekend.  Well, instead of relaxing, I got busy and redid another packet for my TpT store of the HM Spelling words.  This one is used during center time.  I made it look prettier than when I just use it for my room.  But I'll be using this one from now on.  I just put these in the Avery plastic sleeves and let my kids practice writing with a whiteboard marker.  They can also be sent home as part of a homework packet.  Let me know what you guys think!

Click here to go purchase.

Ready for Monday?