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!

Winner Announced!

Hi Everyone,

I just wanted to announce the winner of my giveaway!

Tammy, check your inbox!   Thank you for participating!!  For those of you who didn't get to win the packet, I wanted to let you know that I will be having a 15% of sale off everything in my store on Feb. 29th in addition to the 10% off that TpT is giving.  Don't forget to enter code L2P9Y on Wednesday to get a total of 25% off my packet!

My cart is full already and I'll be checking out more teachers' stores that day!  Enjoy and happy Monday!

HM Spelling!

I am super excited for this post because I've worked hard on my HM Spelling Homework packet so that I can upload it to my TpT store.  I don't have a whole lot in my store yet but I'm hoping to create quality products that can be used in the classroom.  After working on my packet, I have even more respect for all the teachers who create and sell things there.  It takes A LOT OF TIME!!!

I created these worksheets to go with the spelling words I use each week for my students.  At first when I made them, they were very basic but then I realized that I could "jazz" them up and share them with other teachers.  I used the extra spelling words from the wonderful ladies from Made for 1st Grade.  (Who by the way ROCK!!!!)

Some of the concepts covered include writing the word 4 times each to practice writing the spelling word, configuration/shape boxes to recognize the shape of the word (tall letters, little letters, and letters that extend below the line), and reading comprehension-- where the student has to read a sentence and figure out which of the spelling words would make that sentence make sense.

Now for the exciting part!  I will be doing a giveaway of my HM Spelling Homework packet for Themes 3-10.  To be entered in the drawing, you just have to do the follow things:

1) follow my blog and post a comment saying you do so

2) follow my TpT store and post a comment in this entry saying you do so

The giveaway will close on Monday, Feb. 27.  The winner will be announced and contacted that day.  *EDIT*  I decided to do this because I just got an email from TpT saying they will have a sale on Wed. (10%) so I'm also going to throw a sale so that you can get additional discount on top of that.  :)

In the meantime, you can download theme 7 (all three weeks) as a preview/freebie here.