Math EVERY day, Surprise, and a new kid

Whew!!  I did it!

I have been working on this bad-boy since before school started....

and even though I've been using in my classroom since Day 1, I never had it put together well enough to share with anyone...

But since today I've been home, a little under the weather, then I decided that perhaps I might finish one thing off my to-do list

(what lesson plans for this week??)

Soooo....without further ado...

I use this pack every day in my class to reinforce and review skills. I even teach them skills that we haven't taught yet in the curriculum so when I get there, they already know it! 

Which is FAB - U - LOUS, because then I can skip that unit/topic all together and go back to something they need extra help on OR I can go further than what is planned....it's a thing of beauty really.

This pack has:

Name for the year

Number words

Hundreds chart

Weather charts for the year, with an analyze the data page for each month

Mystery number riddle templates and posters

Place value and number sense, starting with two digits, but options for three and four digit numbers

More and less with the hundreds chart

Fact family with added addition and subtraction sentences

Greater than/less than

Tally marks

A page for students to create word problems

EXTRAS to change out throughout the year

And lots of pictures and "Teacher Tips" to help you walk through it!

And it doesn't matter when you start it - last year I started this almost 2/3 of the way through school, and my kids STILL needed it!

TpT

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OK friends....

HERE is my surprise for you!!!

starting tomorrow NIGHT (that's MONDAY, OCTOBER 1st)

I am hosting a giveaway with MANY, MANY, MANY, MANY friends.

They have all GRACIOUSLY donated one of their Halloween-themed units for this giveaway.

The themes include bats, spiders, and just pure fun, Halloween!

There are about 25 packs up for grabs, so make sure you come back tomorrow!

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One last thing...

I have a friend who has decided to take the plunge into the blogging world!!

It's a big jump, and I remember a year ago when I decided to do it - not knowing ANYONE who has done it before...but a year later, I have so many friends and have grown so much, probably one of the BEST jumps I could take!!

So do me a favor, head over there and share some bloggy love!

She's a 4th grade teacher, but she has some great ideas that everyone could use!

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Apples Here and There!

So this week was Apple Week

In addition to reading and doing all kinds of things with Johnny Appleseed,

(check out my post from earlier this week on that!)

I also really like to read How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World.

I really do like this book...

Let me just tell you...

I hit on EVERY. SINGLE. "subject" (do we even call them subjects anymore? everything curriculum; cross-curriculum and such...lol)

We talked about:

sequencing - steps to make an apple pie (according to the book)

science - evaporation (she had to get salt from the salt water, so we talked about how if you hadocean water in a jar, the water would evaporate but the salt would stay...THEN, one of my girls asked, "well, then would the salt be wet? how could she use it then??" GOOD question - I guess I will have to go to the beach this weekend and grab some ocean water so we can test this out - oh shucks..the sacrifices I make for my job - ha!)

social studies - maps...country vs. state and compass directions

math - ordinal numbers

After we read and discussed the book, I had them do a "quazi-foldable" ha!

In each box, they wrote the ordinal numbers and then what she did to make the pie.

They turned out cute!

THEN, it was apple tasting time!

Last night  I SLAVED peeling and cutting apples (not really - it was only like 20 minutes)

(ooh ooh! movie quote!

"She could peel an apple in one long curly strip"

anyone?? It's one of my FAVORITE movies ever!)

They had their choice of:

Apple Cider

Apple Chips

HOMEMADE Apple Butter and biscuit

HOMEMADE applesauce 

(oh. my. gosh...this was SOOO good!! I even got a compliment of "wow - this is almost as good as my grandma's homemade applesauce from a fellow teacher" I was feeling pretty special at that point..ha!)

Then, of course, they graphed it...

yes...that is a CHALKBOARD.

Do any of you know what that is still?? lol We're a little behind times, although I DO have a doc cam - woo!

They have different colors because they also taste tested different color apples and they picked that color apple to write their name on, then we graphed with those apples on this graph - so it's a double-duty graph. 

I also use Hadar's apple unit a lot this week

We did some prediction on whether or not apples would float, then I "cut" (yes, cut with scissors - I forgot to bring a knife, so I improvised) open the apple and they predicted what the seeds were going to do

(they look like footballs, don't they - ha!)

OK...

Now...for some FALL activities...

We were learning about seasons...since you know....us Floridians TOTALLY have fall and winter.

ha!

Do you KNOW how hard it is to teach about these seasons??? sigh....

Anywhosit...

We did a foldable science/fluency/reading com - visualzing activity.

The got their poem and we did or poetry fluency lessons...

I read it.

They read it (choral).

They partner read it with their partners (ABAB, then BABA so everyone reads everything)

Then we choral read it again...LOVE IT!

Then, we did a window foldable...

They labeled the seasons on the windows, glued the corresponding stanza of the poem, and then on the inside, they glue the tree that they colored to represent that stanza and drew the arrows to show that it was a cycle.

Click the pic below to get the poem and the tree...

I also wanted to show you how we used our "all in one" sheet this week...

We did it on Johnny Appleseed...

the "I Wonder" part is really hard for them still...

and so is the "It reminds me of" part...but the more we keep working on it, the better they'll get at it, right?? 

Anyway, for the word study part, I focused on words with suffixes.

We did plural nouns, but I just asked them what they "noticed" about all those words..and they are the ones that came up with it...same with the "ed" words - we will see what I want to work on next week...

If you want this page, go to THIS post to grab it.

Ok - If you made it through that whole post - woo!!

Sorry, it was heavy on pictures, but at least you got a few freebies out of it, right!?

anyway...here are some pictures to make you smile!

B lovin' her yogurt...

A and Me bein' silly girls - hehe!!

Happy Friday!

One last laugh...

this is so me...especially since hubs goes to auctions on Friday nights...

ha!! I LOVE my girls...

If you want to see more apple activities, check out my Apple pack HERE.

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Spider spelling!

Hey friends...

I just wanted to quickly share with you...

I'm planning my week for next week 

My theme is spiders (for one part of the day - the other part of my day will be the life cycle of a plant - lol...I know...they don't really go hand in hand, BUT...got to fit it all in, right?!)...

I'm using my Spider Literacy pack...

and I needed a spelling or sight word center (whichever...but now I need the other one - ha!)

So, I quickly made up a center

Feel free to grab it - there are two different versions.

One is spider words, and the other is spider spelling.

Each version has 2 different pages, so that you could use 10 words if you wanted to.

I know that there are six sides on a die, but the OCD part of me HAD to have them write HALF their words on one side and the other half of their words on the other side (we have 10 words), so that is why there are only 5 columns on the chart. lol

Anyway...

In other news...I took the word verification back off.

Maybe the fact that I had it on for a few days tricked the "spammers" and now I won't get any for a little while??  We will see.

So now you can feel free to leave all the comments you like :)

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Apples, ice cream, ten frames (freebie!), and word walls!

What have we been up to this week so far???

LOTS and lots of good stuff....

We've started my 

 

(letters are from Just So Scrappy Too)

unit...and I just LOVE Fall...

Again, too bad I live in Florida - lol. It's really the only season I am TRULY jealous that other people have it.

Anyway, this is when I do the plant life cycle, seasons, and of course, 

(I LOVE the Steven Kellogg version!)

I've been using Alisha's math and literacy units..

My kids are having so much fun!

In small groups, they are reading a book from Reading A-Z

(Lori - see the computer center?? Spelling City! woo!)

After they have read it a few times with me and we've discussed it, I have them use their whisper phones to read it to themselves....

Check out how I did a 3-for-2 version HERE

And one of my kiddos took it upon himself to save some seeds from his apple that he got at lunch and he wanted to plant them...lol.

Good thing I had soil on hand, because you just never know. haha!

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In other news, I've had TWO students pass their addition fact quizzes!!

They are ready for their ice cream sundae party! 

I generally have our ice cream sundae party the first day of December (or the first day that we're in school in December).

So now they have moved on to their subtractions...I bet by Christmas, they'll be in the multiplication pack!

We've also been working on subtraction strategies....using ten frames...they're getting REALLY good at seeing these as visuals..

They used the double sided counters...and instead of taking them away, they just flipped them over.

It was neat to see all the different ways the students took away six (or whatever number they working on).

Here is what they did with just the ten frames (which are laminated) and a marker so they can practice how they could write them out on their own.

Need some ten frames??

Here you go- click the pics to get some frames!

I made just one ten frame on a page...

two on a page for working up to 20....

and then some with dots already on them....there are also blank ones that you can copy off and use like I did above there....

Also, I wanted to show you my new word wall words!!

aren't they so purrrty?!?!

I put my alphabet under my chalkboard this year instead of above it. That way it could act as both an alphabet AND a word wall!

After much seeking - I saw Lori's word wall (or rather she shared it with me) and I LOVED how the words were in configuration (the boxes). So that's how I did it too!!  I L.O.V.E it!

And I think I'm just sticking to sight words for this year.

A) my kids are SO low that they really need to focus on those

B) I lack space

C) this is my downfall - the word wall, so baby steps...baby steps.

BUT....

I thought, maybe to keep me accountable for making my word wall be used EVERY week in a center, I could do a "Word Wall Wednesday" post - what do you think??

Something you'd be interested in?

Anywhosit - time to go put the baby down..

OH!

HAVE to show you one of my new fave pics of B!

Kisses for mommy!!

P.s....I have something BIG "brewing" with some friends - can't wait to show you in a few days!

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