Magnetic Letter Mayhem

Hello again!

So I've had something on my "To-Do List" that might seem a little compulsive to some of you...maybe not...at least I hope it's not too OCD on my part, but it just might be.

I sorted all of my magnetic letters last night.  

Like.  All.  Of.  Them.

Yep...there it is.  You should see my living room floor!  It's glittered with magnetic letters sorted by upper and lower case letters, style of magnetic letter, some styles put in ABC order, etc.  Okay...I might have a slight issue...but that's no surprise to some of you!

As you may remember from earlier posts, I will have an aide in my classroom this year and I've been busy creating and gathering "Go-To Activities" for us to grab and use with our kiddos in small groups or one-on-one.  I felt it was necessary to see what letters I had so that I can pre-bag them and have them ready for us.

When I sorted them I realized that my vowels were missing.  Now where did they go?  Then I remembered that I saw an idea on Pinterest where the teacher spray painted all of her vowels a bright red so that the children could find them easier.  

Hey!  I did that too! But where did they go?  

I'm in the midst of sorting and organizing every nook and cranny of my classroom so they'll turn up eventually, but I kind of need a plan now.  I found some cute Magnetic Letter Digital Art from Poppydreamz Digital Art!

Poppydreamz Digital Art 

Magnet Letters Alphabet and Number Clipart

I was just going to create some vowels, but one thing led to another (again) and I made a complete set...with Fundations in mind.

You can download it for FREE in my Teachers Pay Teachers Shop by clicking here!

Included in the packet is:

• a full alphabet in black and white
• a set of red vowels (5 of each vowel)
• a set of blue glued sounds (3 of each glued sound)
• a set of yellow blends and digraphs (3 of each blend and digraph)
• a set of green bonus letters (3 of each bonus letter)

I'll be printing, cutting, laminating and attaching a small magnet to the back of each tile so that my children can practice building their  words.  Hope it's something that you can use too!

Off to take care of the magnetic letters scattered all over my floor!

Have a great day!

Colorful Week Ahead!

Happy Labor Day!

Hope you're enjoying your 3-day weekend!  We're back at it tomorrow...and it's full steam ahead!  I always feel like that first week back to school is the honeymoon period of our year!  My three classes are pretty amazing and I think we're going to have a great year!  I don't really plan a lot because so much of that week is spent on rules and procedures and getting my new kiddos acclimated to life as a First Grader.  Now it's time to get down to business!  :)

This week we'll be reviewing our color words with a few activities that I've found while catching up on my blog stalking this weekend!  I'll share them as we do them...there will be a little of Pete, some naked crayons, and some opportunities to get my kiddos working together in a splash of color!

I wanted to create a few activities that my kiddos could work on with their friends at their tables...because we're still establishing our community!  I uploaded them as FREEBIES to my TPT shop last night.  Feel free to click on the links below to download them!

Free Download @ TPT

  

Free Download @ TPT

Free Download @ TPT

Enjoy your day!

Organizing Fundations and a Freebie!

First of all, I have to say how grateful I am to these two teachers!


       Both of them were kind enough to give me some encouragement on this whole Fundations journey I'll be on this year.  I'm so excited that they reached out and made me feel comfortable in contacting them throughout the year when I need it!  I've been stalking their blogs this weekend...and if you're not following them yet, you should jump on over and check them out!  (You can click on their buttons above to visit their site.)
In my last post about Fundations, I showed you all of the materials we received.  Click here if you want to see them again.
So here's how I organized all of the student materials...I numbered everything.  The teachers we observed at an area district suggested that we do this so that if a piece ever came up missing, we could just flip it over and see the number and match it with the student.  The first thing I did was pull out all of the magnetic pieces, flip them over and write the same number on each piece with a silver Sharpie.  I then labeled the fabric envelope, letter board and both sides of the dry erase boards with the same number.

I was a little worried about all of these magnetic pieces so I only put the ones we will need to start the year on the letter board and I sorted the rest.

There are about 30 "extra" pieces that we won't be using during the first few weeks of school and since I need to keep it simple for my Firsties and myself, I purchased a bead organizer at Walmart to store the additional pieces in.

  So now, when we need a specific tile, I can just pull them out and pass them out to the kiddos. Hoping this works!  :)
I also had a few requests to share the letters I created as an extension of my newest favorite book, The Day the Crayons Quit! 

  

You can download them by clicking here.

Have a great day!

Resolution Activity and a Freebie

Hi Friends!
Hope everyone is ready to bring in 2013!

If you're looking for a fun and festive resolution activity to do with your kiddos when you return I wanted to remind you of this little diddy...

Last year we made 2012 Resolution flip books to help us bring in the new year!  This week (we go back on Wednesday) I'll be making our 2013 Resolution flip books with all three of my reading classes.  I found a writing activity by Ginny Dowd, aka The Phonics Dance Lady where she had the kids write a resolution for school, home, self...and I forget the other...but there was another!  Side note...I'm at the hospital with my family this week as my dad was admitted this past Saturday.  He is diabetic and his numbers got all out of whack which brought on some other issues...so we're going to be here for a bit until everything gets back to normal...if there's a normal for this kind of thing.  I packed a bag full of school stuff to keep me busy in the waiting room as I don't do well in hospitals...talk about anxiety...geesh!  Anyway...the paper I have the kids use to write their resolutions is at home or school but when I find it, I'll share it...or you can just have your kids write any kind of resolution too!  :)

I also received a few positive comments about my Contraction Action at the North Pole worksheets I created this past December.  Since my children are still having a difficult time, I decided to make some with a wintery theme...

I've posted them for free in my TPT shop so you can just click above and the link should take you right where you need to be.  Apologies to all of my friends who don't get to experience a winter full of freezing temperatures and snow...but I'd love to be in your flip-flops...except on a snow day!  :)

Wishing you all the best for a Healthy, Safe, and Happy 2013!

Let it Snow and Some Contraction Fun!

Not really...no snow yet but my mom came to school today to change my tree!  Here are the before and after pictures:

My kiddos seem to be having a hard time with contractions...maybe it's because our reading series throws plural nouns (just _s and _es), possessive nouns and contractions at us within a few weeks of each other....who was that genius?  :)  Before I know it, I'm seeing apostrophes all over the place and none of them in the proper place!  So, while reading What Santa Can't Do by Douglas Wood and Doug Cushman, I was inspired to create some VERY basic worksheets that would help my kids.  

So...TA! DA!  

Click here to download!

I know...I actually made time to create something!  Each page focuses on only one contraction at a time.  The children are to circle the two words that make up the contraction in the sentence and then rewrite the sentence using the contraction that just happens to be found at the top of the page...here's a peek:

I left the last sentence open ended on each page to allow my children to complete it on their own...as we're still working on sentence structure too!  If we have an extra few minutes I'm going to have the children illustrate their sentence(s) on the back.  I'm thinking it will make great classwork, seat work or even morning work once they get the hang of it!

I included the following contractions in this packet:  can't, don't, isn't won't, didn't, let's, it's, she's, he's, they're, and we're.

Hope it's something you can use!

3 Letter Blend Freebie

So my little friends are sort of struggling with this whole 3 letter blend thing so I decided to make a little something to help us out. They can read them...but to spell them in their daily writing appears to be a little tough! We always talk about how blends are sort of easy because if you just stretch them out, you can hear all of the sounds. We always pretend we're stretching a really big rubber band when we're doing this but I decided that maybe this group needed it to be a little more concrete. I want their sticky little fingers (I say that in the most lovingly way) to physically stretch these blends out and practice reading and writing their words. :)

Here's what I've made...nothing too exciting but I'm hoping it's the ticket to blend heaven for us next week!

I cut a rubber band and taped the letters so that we can s-t-r-e-t-ch them out!

I printed them out on regular paper and it seemed to work. The plan is to then add the word ending and practice reading them with friends.

Once we're done reading them, we're going to write with them. I made up this simple worksheet for them to practice writing sentences. Again, nothing fancy shmancy but hopefully it's to the point and will help them out! If you're interested, click on the image below for the worksheet.

Here are the individual blends and word endings I made. Help yourself! (We use Treasures as our reading series...I don't use the series as much, but I do follow the same skills the series uses. These blends are taught in Book 3 Week 5. I think the story is Gram and Me.)

scr_

str_

spl_

The sun is shining in Ohio! I think I'm over this whole praying for a snowstorm thing so we can have a snow day...bring on Spring!

Free Bailey School Kids Literature Unit!

Hi Friends!
Well...it's the last day of Winter Break!  I can't believe how fast it went but I am kind of ready to get back into a normal routine and I'm missing my kiddos a bit!  I'm always anxious to hear about what they've been up to.

So, I have an amazing group of little friends this year who are great readers already...but there are a few at the top of the heap who need to be reading a little more than the basic decodable and leveled books our reading series offers.  I created a small literature unit on The Abominable Snowman Doesn't Roast Marshmallows, which is from The Bailey School Kids series.  You can download it here:

The Abominable Snowman Doesn't Roast Marshmallows Literature Unit
On a side note...I love creating literature units that are focused on the interests of my first graders not necessarily what the reading series tells me they need to read.  I like to use one or two books from a series that will have the potential to hook my friends on the whole series.  It really helps my families choose books for their children too because if they like one book from the series and they find out there are more books just like it, they are likely to want to start reading all of the books in the series.

I haven't used this literature unit with my kiddos yet so there may be some editing that I'll need to do as we complete it.  I like to listen to their conversations while we're reading it so that I can make revisions to the unit if needed but also use their conversations to choose another book that matches their interests to read next.  I'll be sure to update my post with revisions as we go.

That "11 in 11 Linky Party" was a great way to catch up on my blog stalking this past week and find bunches of new blogs to follow.  I found the cutest idea from Kimberly at Funky First Grade Fun.  You need to check out her Super Spelling Slippers post.  The details are at her blog...which is amazing!  She lets her kiddos wear their super spelling slippers during their weekly spelling tests!  I know!  Something so simple...but how fun is that?!  I think I'm going to use this idea in my own classroom once we start learning about long vowels with super silent e.  We always need a little extra magic to help us remember that little silent guy at the end of our words.  AND who wouldn't love throwing on a pair of slippers in the middle of a wintery school day!

One more thing...Denise @ Sunny Days in Second Grade created some cute pencil flags to give to her students to kick off the New Year in grand fashion.  So I'm off to the local teacher's store to find some festive pencils for my friends.  Check out her blog...pretty cool stuff!

Hope everyone has a great first day back to school...tomorrow for me!
Jenn