Mirrors and Literacy??

Long time no blog seems like...anywho; we finished up learning about penguins this week...such a fun unit to teach.  I totally forgot to snap a pic of our learning chart!  The kids loved learning about these little guys...check out the pics below!  

waddling like a penguin...tricky, but every "penguin" got to eat krill when they reached me!

sight word hunt...they always love to get movin' round the room!

Okay, so my kids were beyond excited about this little center!  How cool to use mirrors for learning!  They totally loved this center.  I know I will have to make another one of these!

we are doing so great reading words!

I got this fun idea from Deanna Jump...we practiced odd and even counting and numbers

we watched live penguins from the national aviary...sorry for the "not so good" picture, but we got to watch the penguins feed....you may can see the workers in there with them.  We watched them waddle up the rock hill and one fell in the water...poor thing!  But, oh my...so much fun!

We practiced sorting blends onto the correct cone

They asked to play it over and over

I gave this as a freebie last year, but I know some people have had problems downloading it...not sure what's up.  I can load it in my tpt store for free because it's DJ Inkers.

beginning and ending sounds

Cute little paper bag penguin from Kim Jordano over at kinderbykim

I've uploaded the penguin measuring and patterning activity from last week's earlier post...it's in my tpt store for FREE...I've had problems with scribd archiving my things, so I'm gonna do all of my freebies through tpt...that way it's always there and for free!

The rest of these penguin centers can be found in my penguin unit.

Winner...

Congrats to Barbara Anne!  I am e-mailing you my penguin unit!  Thanks so everyone for reading and playing...it's always fun to give something away!  Stay tuned for more penguin fun and hopefully posting my February Intervention pack soon...very soon!  :)

Presidents and Community Helpers are coming too!

Penguin Math

We are studying penguins this week...one of my favorite units all year!  Here's our math centers and a fun little math "art-tivity".  You can find these centers (plus lots more) in my Playful Penguin Unit over at my tpt shop.

Literacy centers to come later this week!  

And, I just posted my Happy Hearts Valentines Unit on tpt if you want to check it out.  

Thanks, as always, for reading my blog.  I'll give my new Penguin Unit to one random person that comments on this post.  Be sure to leave your e-mail in your comment so you can grab your freebie!  

Good Luck!

*comments until 11:59 count*

Mitten Centers & a Giveaway!

First, go check out the FAB giveaway at Mrs. Bearden's Class...if you're the winner you will receive my new Playful Penguin Unit and Jamie Mayas' Patriotic Pack..head on over and leave your entries on HER BLOG.  Giveaway ends Sunday night!  


Our theme this week focused around the book The Mitten by Jan Brett.  So do our centers.  Here are some of our centers for the week.  You can find all of these in my Mitten Unit Here.  I have been really bad about taking "action shots" this year during centers, but hopefully you get an idea of what's going on in our classroom.  

A new spin on patterning...using a code

I goofed on this sheet...I will get this fixed...sorry friends! (if you bought the mitten unit)

Have you ever read Move Over Rover by Karen Beaumont?  It's the cutest little story about animals who want to squeeze in the dog's house to stay dry until along comes a skunk...you can probably guess what happens...

We retold The Mitten using our story props and story strip...and this cute little "paper bag mitten" that houses our props...you can find this in my mitten unit too!  :)

this was a fun twist on sight words...challenging

adorable symmetrical mittens...this was a partner activity...their design had to be symmetrical and they had to discuss their design together.

We compared The Mitten and The Hat by Jan Brett

Our 100 year old people...from Deanna Jump's 100th day Unit

100th Day Fun!

Today was our 100th day of school and boy was it a busy one!  We were non-stop working on all of our fun 100th day activities!  Whew...I am one tired girl...but it's always tons of fun!  We counted to 100 like, 100 times.  So, here's what we did today...most of these items you can find in my Hip Hip Hooray, It's the 100th Day unit...you can grab it for $5.00  Keep checking back for Valentine's, February Intervention, and Presidents!  I'm working hard y'all!  

working on putting 100 animals in the mitten

putting 100 gumballs in the machine

 Okay, so last year I had a student teacher to help me monitor groups when we did these little activities; however, I had to go at it alone so this is how we counted to make sure we had 100 items in each large mural...as a class we counted as I added and covered the items with blocks...yes, we had to add more on 1 of the things, take some off on one of the things, and one group was almost perfect...they had 101.  

I def. went it to great explanation about how to count the items out, but it was hard for them to keep up with each other in the group.

Here we are seeing how many times we could write our name in 100 seconds

Tracing our numbers 1-100

Working in partners on our 100th day ice-cream cones

Here is the little 100th day book we will *finish* up on tomorrow...here are the pages inside

We made something as a class (mainly because we ran out of time) out of 100 blocks...

Here's how it turned out...it's a little hard to see on the rug, but they called it a playground

We practiced tallying all the way to 100...I called different students to come up and tally

Below are the finished projects hanging up in the hallway...

The cute little crown pattern is a FREEBIE in my tpt store

So easy and So cute!