It's Almost the 100th Day!

The 100th Day of school is finally coming up for us.  It will be this Tuesday.  Every year for first grade, I send home a 100 cut out and the students have to decorate it and glue on 100 objects in groups of 2, 5. or 10.  We have been learning how to skip count by 2's, 5's and 10's so it's the perfect way to reinforce those skills.  I also made a sign to hang on the top of my door after being inspired by so many bloggers who have done that to greet the kids in the morning.

I also cut out 100 on the Ellison die cut machine so that my students can make a 100 cut out design.  I saw the idea floating around pinterest and I think the original owner of the idea is Michelle Gagne.  I am so excited to see what they will come up with!

The kids will also get to decorate this crown from Julie Lee on TpT.

This is the template for the 100th Day Collection Project.  In years past, I used to cut out each template on cardboard.  But with the increase in class sizes, I wasn't able to do that.  I also used a thick poster board instead of cardboard.  I don't know the exact dimensions of the 100 but it takes up less than half of a poster board. 

One of my students turned in his early.

Here are some of the projects my students did in years past.

I love how creative they can be!  This was my class 2 years ago (only 20 kids).  They all did a great job on the project.  I also have them do a short oral report on what they did, what they used, and what kinds of groups they made.

Here is the letter that I send out.  

Get the letter here.

Did you have fun celebrating the 100th day of school?  I'm excited for what my kids will bring in! 

TGIF!

TGIF!  Despite it being a "short" week, it felt pretty LONG to me!  It was due to the fact that we had a rainy day on Wednesday and when it rains, it pours.  Literally and figuratively.  Our district went from 20-1 in K-3 last year to 32-1.  Luckily, I only have 27 students but 16 of them are boys!  I don't know what happened!!  They are little darlings though and have come a long way since the beginning of the year.  Remember my post the other day about my finds at Lakeshore?  Well, here's a before picture of my calendar area and an after.

Before

After!

I am loving the fact that I can now have a word wall in my room too!

I was able to get some old keyboards from school and made these awesome keyboards so that my kids can work with words and practice typing their high frequency words.  I got this fantastic idea from First Grade Fresh's blog.  I am so thankful for awesome bloggers who have inspired me with new ideas for my classroom.

Here are one of my little munchkins hard at work.  I love that they can work independently and are so engaged in learning!

Here's another one of my little darlings working independently writing/stamping words using the Word Work Activities from Babbling Abby from The Inspired Apple.  I bought every single one of her word work activities and my kids LOVE them!

At the beginning of the year when I first discovered TpT, I bought the Calendar Companion from The First Grade Parade.  I would write it on the board and it would be sometimes difficult for my students to follow along.  Our district does not have funding for Elmos or Smart Boards so I actually set up my iPad as a document camera.  More on that in another post.  Anyway, I love the Number of the Day activity from the packet so I created the Number of the Day for my whiteboard.  I laminated those pieces and cut the middle of them out so that I can write directly on the whiteboard.  It is so much easier than trying to draw all that every day.  My students can now do this all by themselves and it's a wonderful way to reinforce many skills in math/number sense.

I am loving my new calendar, whiteboard, and word wall area.  The things on the side are like a "pride wall" area.  I have a picture of the kids' faces printed in color, their name, and hang up a monthly writing activity.  The kids love looking at a picture of themselves.  

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.  Look for a giveaway to be posted sometime this weekend.  In the meantime, enjoy this sub report form. 

Download the document here.

Freebie

I've been hard at work over the past couple of weeks revamping my spelling homework packet pages.  I was already making them for my own classroom but they weren't as "pretty."  After looking at many teaching blogs, I was so inspired that I decided to jazz up my spelling homework pages and came up with these.  I've included Theme 7(all three weeks) for a free download.  If you would like the rest of my packet, you can purchase it in my TpT store!  

Download the Theme 7 sampler here.

Enjoy!