Plants!

I'm just a little behind on blogging...we studied plants a couple of weeks ago and I have been meaning to get these photos on here for, well, 2 weeks now.  Plants is one of my favorite units to teach...look at all the fun things we did!  If you're interested in my math and literacy centers for plants go HERE.   If you're interested in my Tops and Bottoms Ideas go HERE.

When I saw  Cara's little anchor chart I just had to make mine like hers...well, almost...mine isn't near as cute as hers, but it worked!  

 We label the parts of a flower every year and I always love the way these look hanging up!  

 See the confetti in the middle?  I found this at Wal-Mart a few years ago in the Easter section and I'm almost out!  I use it all the time!

Can't find it this time... :(  Anybody seen any?

 Look at these little Flower Friends!  I love the way these turned out too!  This came from Cara at The First Grade Parade as well.

You can find it HERE.

 I think I say this every year, but if you haven't read Tops and Bottoms by Janet Stevens you must.  

It is one of the cutest, best little books ever!  I love it so much that I have a packet with these ideas in it.  You can find it HERE.  

Here is Lazy Bear and Hard-working Hare.  How cute is that?  Bear's eyelids even flap!

We wrote about what makes us feel lazy and what we want to work hard at.

 We made fruit and veggie people after learning how plants are grown and why they are important.

 Um, how adorable...my kiddos went cuckoo over these little friends.

They loved the little parts like the hats, ties, and bows!  I loved the writing piece.  

Below are snapshots of each center and all of these can be found HERE in my Plants math and literacy centers packet.

 To "pluck the petal" students folded back the petals on the flower.  They love these "foldy" subtraction centers so much that I think I now have 4 sets.  :)

If you made it all the way to the bottom you are one faithful reader!

Thank YOU!

I hope you found something useful and fun in this post!

Transportation Centers

Hey y'all!  Well, I have 3 more days until my Spring Break officially begins...what about you?  I'm so excited...mainly because that gives me a week to hopefully catch up on some house cleaning and organizing plus I hope to do a few fun things with the fam!  

I wanted to show you our transportation centers that we worked on some last week and finishing them up this week.  I couldn't get in all of my themes for this time of year so I just squeezed transportation into my morning baskets.  :)  You can find them HERE.  My literacy and math baskets have community helpers centers that I hope to blog about later in the week.  And you can find those HERE. 

This one we've done before with a different theme.  I still have a few kiddos that have trouble looking at these double digit numbers and ordering them by 5's.  So, we are still practicing.

My kids are getting SO good at addition that they really don't need me at all.  Some are simply recognizing the facts and knowing them without using manipulatives.

I shared this at my presentation a few weeks ago because it is one of my student's favorites.

I made these little roads and color coded them with a dot.  They use the little car manipulative to drive and read the word.  How fun is that?!

Here, they had to read all of the words and pick out the rhyming words.  I started doing some rhyming games like this last school year so they were having to read more words and listen for rhymes. 

Unscrambling sight words...

More subtraction...

teen number words...

What comes next?...

ordering numbers...

and counting by 10's.

That pretty much sums up our transportation centers.

You can find all of these games HERE in my Transportation Pack.

I haven't given away my Transportation Unit yet, so leave a comment below and I'll choose a winner tomorrow.  :)

St. Patrick's Day Centers!

Wow!  I can't believe I am actually making a post mid-week.  That usually does not happen with 3 kids at home and #singlelife since my hubby is smack in the middle of baseball season.  Boo!  I so miss him when he's not here to help, but enough about that!  

So, we are working on our St. Patrick's Day centers this week.  I can see so much growth right now and I am lovin' it!  I love how independent they are working in their little centers and looking more and more like first graders every day.  Speaking of, I am having some first grade teachers from our district come visit my classroom this Thursday to watch guided reading.  Eeek!  But, I get to go watch them on Monday!  Yay!

On with it...All of these centers can be found in my St. Patrick's Day Centers Pack Here.

My students are doing really well with ordering words to build complete sentences.  We will have one of these centers for just about the remainder of the year.  :)

 Working on a new sound /ck/ with word families

 This one is super fun!  I don't know what it is about races, but kids are all over them!

They spin the boy/girl spinner & the ending sound center.  Who will win...Irish boy or girl?

I also included a teen number race in the unit.

 Rhyming Rainbows...they had to read the words and match the clouds to the rhyming rainbow.

 Unscrambling Sight Words...

 Subtraction using dice and manipulatives.

 And....addition using manipulatives

 Counting dots by 10's...

 Not gonna lie....this was one a little tricky...this one is filling in missing numbers to 50.

 Matching teen numbers to number words...

 I do this every year.  I love how bright and colorful they always look, plus it's great to hang from the ceiling and leave up for a WHILE!  :)

As always, thanks for reading my blog!  I hope you find an idea you can use!  :)

Silly Willy Centers!!

We are knee deep in Dr. Silly, silly centers, and spring activities!  Plus, our annual Jack Hartmann concert was yesterday.  Whew!  It's been that kind of week.  I've never blogged about our silly centers before now, so I wanted to show some of them because they are all kinds of fun!  Who doesn't love silly?!?!  (well, most of the time)  You can find all of the centers shown in my Silly Center Pack Here.  And, even though these were created for my classroom to use during Read Across America week, these would be great for anytime!  They're just fun with lots of learning!

So.....I love to hang "stuff" from my ceiling that goes along with our centers.

This week, we have these cute little balloons floating...

and, this is where they get their addition sentence.

Still working hard on subtraction...I totally forgot the Goldfish Crackers that we were supposed to use with this game...so we used the trusty ol' unifix cubes.

Math & Literacy integrated into one center!  Ding!

Were the number sequences in the correct order?  Well, they had to record in the yes/no boxes to let me know.  :)

They had a fit over this one...not sure why, but they loved matching the candles to the cupcakes.  Notice the candles are white...this was not a self-correcting game.  At this point in the year, they really have to know their "stuff" or figure it out by using resources in our room.  

This is about the time of year that I really have my students begin practicing reading sight word phrases...they did really well.  They had to read 12 phrases and color code their dots, but they chose only 6 to record.

Word families...

Blends...

Vowels...

Beginning and Ending Sounds...

And, finally...our version of "The Hat on the Cat" and the -at family.