Phonograms Galore! And freebie...

Hey everyone!  I hope your first few weeks of school are treating you well! If you just started this week, trust me it gets better!  

Well I'm off to dinner with the hubby but I wanted to post my Phonogram Fun student book real quick first.  It includes all 70 of the phonograms used in the Spalding Method.  Click the image if you'd like to snag it on TPT or here for TN.  

And while I'm on a phonogram roll... here's a freebie perfect for a literacy center.  Click the image to download.  

Back to School Picture Book Linky Parties

Chrissy @ First Grade Found Me  is hosting an awesome Back to School Picture Book Linky party, plus Lindsey, The Teacher Wife hosted an awesome MUST HAVE Picture Book Linky a few weeks ago.  I LOVE books.  I make weekly trips to the thrift store just to peruse through the books.  And Kid-to-Kid has a free book club.  You can get a free book EVERY month with any purchase.  Sometimes I buy a book just so I can get another one free.  Anyway, here are some of my favorite back to school books.

Strega Nona is a cute, clever, catchy story PERFECT for illustrating the importance of following rules and the justice of consequences. Students love it, plus it sparks great class discussions.

  

You are Special is so wonderful for creating a positive classroom community, recognizing each child's worth and unique strengths and talents, and discouraging labels and judgements.

 

Heckedy Peg is my childhood favorite.  I LOVE the story and LOVE the hand-painted pictures. Kids absolutely adore this story and beg me to read it again and again. This suspense-filled story also underscores the importance of listening to instructions and following rules. Check out this awesome picture below.

 

Last, but not least, Hooway for Wodney Wat.  So cute, so funny.  This is another great story for creating a positive classroom community environment.  The kids identify with Wodney Wat and quickly understand the importance of not bullying others.

 

Now I know these last two aren't exactly "picture books" but they do have pictures and they are GREAT beginner chapter books.  My students love reading them in small guided reading groups and LOVE it when I read them aloud.  You can check out either of these units that I created to go with them if you're interested. 

 If you haven't read any of these awesome books, you definitely need to give them a try. I promise your students will love them and I think you will too! :)

Summer School & I'm leavin' on a Jetplane

I survived!  My husband has been in Japan for two weeks without me and in exactly two hours my plane departs to join him.  Hooray! (For the joining part, not the long flying part)  This week I've been staying with my sister who recently had a baby and teaching summer school.  My school decided to let the teachers have free-reign over their summer school classes this year and I decided to teach a Dinosaur class, a Fairytale class, and a Mystery class.  It has been a lot of fun!  I did a lousy job of snapping photos of all of the fun things we did - but here are just a few:

 We talked about and read LOTS of awesome fairy tales.  Then the kids created their own inside an awesome castle card foldable.

 We talked about lots of fun dinosaurs, wrote about them, drew them, modeled them with clay, and even made our own plaster of paris fossils! 

The kids had a lot of fun with these.  They were tricky for a lot of the kids - but they were thrilled nonetheless.  I had an assortment of flashlights so we turned off all the lights, shut the blinds, and partnered up.  We taped a piece of black construction paper on the wall then ended up using chairs to rest the flashlights on to cast a shadow of the student who was sitting very still in front of the black paper. Then they cut them out and mounted them on paper.  They turned out pretty great and the kids LOVED guessing who each other was.

We made magical wands, plus glittery castles and crowns, but I forgot to photograph those :(

 This picture I added just for fun.  I've been a little bored of my hair recently and I saw a hairstyle sort of like this on Pinterest and thought I'd give it a whirl.  It turned out pretty well considering that I did it all blind.  My favorite part of the photo is my cute kitty, Lucky, who jumped up on the bathroom cabinet to pose for the picture and get the camera flash.  So cute.  

Are you teaching summer school?  How does your school do it?  Is it purely academic review or more like summer camps?

Well I can't wait to hear, but it's TTFN because I'm off to Japan!

End of School Activities & Freebie

 If you saw my last post you know we've been doing a balloon-popping-countdown til summer.  The kids have been LOVING it.  One of the balloons last week said "Special Animal Visitor tomorrow."  I didn't really plan it out very well before hand, so the night before a special animal visitor was supposed to visit I was frantically racking my brain for possible visitors.

My husband and I have an adorable kitty, but she's pretty scared of new places and lots of hands.  My parents have a dog but he barks at people a lot...Then I thought of my sister-The animal-to-the-rescue sister.  They have llamas, horses, chickens, birds, bunnies (I think?) etc.  AND she has four kids (including a baby that is just a few weeks old).  Fortunately she was kind enough to let me come borrow their 8 week old chicks before school. And my adorable niece and nephew were anxious to help me catch them.

I was a little worried that the kids might be disappointed when they saw I had brought chickens for our "special visitor," especially after a boy in another class asked "are you really bringing a crocodile to school tomorrow!?". But my worries were unnecessary.  The kids LOVED the chicks. They were a bit of a distraction, but a LOT of fun.  I also ended up e-mailing all of my students' parents the night before and inviting them to bring any animals to visit as well so we ended up having a guinea pig, a dog, and two birds come to visit.  The kids were absolutely in heaven.

We've been doing lots of testing, along with lots of fun stuff for the end of school.  We've been working on these School Memory books from Cara Carroll @ The First Grade Parade (BEST TPT freebie EVER!).  We put a photo of each child on the front doors and glued additional doors to the outside to personalize each book.  The kids love them.   

 And to encourage summer reading I created this summer reading pledge.  Click the picture or HeRE to download it for free. (You can also find it on TPT for free)

 Also, a few weeks ago I created this Book of Sayings and Phrases student booklet.  Teaching Sayings & Phrases is a part of the CORE Knowledge Curriculum, but it could be incorporated in any classroom.  My kids love learning them.

 We talk about them, copy them in our books, write about them, and illustrate them.  Then I love hearing them using them afterwards.  Recently they were planning to surprise me when I entered the classroom and one girl said "Don't let the cat out of the bag guys!"  So cute. 

You can grab them on TN or TPT by clicking either of the images.

 

And last, but not least.... the winner of my Flat Stanley giveaway is LISA @ Learning is Something to Treasure!  I read my husband all of the entries and he randomly selected her.  Congratulations!  I'm e-mailing you the unit. 

(See previous post to check it out!)

Flat Stanley Unit Giveaway & Award

I don't usually ever blog twice in one day, but it just so happens that I've been sick in bed/on the couch for two days now and had a lot of computer time on my hands :( so it brightened my day when I was awarded the Lovely Blog Award by Tori @ http://toristeachertips.blogspot.com/. She truly has great ideas! Check her out! I'm so excited to have made some new blog friends!  See the end of this post for my blog award recipients - Hopefully I can brighten their day! Do any of you new bloggers ever get discouraged with how cumbersome and tricky it is to learn the blogging world like I do? Sigh.


 And next up... FLAT STANLEY!  As I said earlier - my kids LOVE him.  I'm so excited to use this integrated all-things-flat-Stanley unit with them in our remaining 2 weeks of school.  You can click the image below to grab the unit on Teachers Notebook, or you can click here to get it on TPT.

Also... I'm going to do a little GiVeAwAY of the unit to the winner of my HUSBAND's random choice next Sunday! :)  Here's what you need to do:  1 - Follow my blog. 2 - Follow my TN or TPT store 3 - Leave a comment.  (PS - If you blog about this giveaway I'll give my husband extra encouragement that you deserve to win:)

Here are a few Flat Stanley crafts we've done:  We read Flat Stanley and the Egyptian Grave Robbery several months ago with our Ancient Egypt Unit and made these cute mummies.  Currently we're reading Flat Stanley and the Japanese Ninja Surprise, so on Friday (by student request) we did some ninja star origami - wouldn't recommend for first graders without additional adult assistant.  Next week we're going to be making ninja masks, but I couldn't resist making mine beforehand and doing a ninja photoshoot with myself some... uh... friends afterschool.  :) 

 

And FINALLY here are all the FABULOUS blogs that I found and am awarding the Lovely Blog award. It really was fun to sift through so many teaching blogs to find these hidden gems!  Here are the award rules: 

1) Follow the person that gave you the award.  

2) Link back to the person that gave you the award.  

3) Pass the award on to 15 new bloggers. 

http://www.mrsjonescreationstation.blogspot.com/

http://1stgradewithmisssnowden.blogspot.com/

http://funforfirst.blogspot.com/

http://teachingwithloveandlaughter.blogspot.com/

http://thewizardofboz.blogspot.com/

http://thefirstgradereader.blogspot.com/

http://www.adventuresn2grade.blogspot.com/

http://hellomrssykes.blogspot.com/

http://runteacherrunriley.blogspot.com/

http://lakairways.blogspot.com/

http://thirdgrade-firststate.blogspot.com/

http://teach123-school.blogspot.com/

http://theteacherschatterbox.blogspot.com/

http://tangledupteaching.blogspot.com/

http://classfullofspecialkinders.blogspot.com/

http://munchkinmanagement.blogspot.com/

http://madlylearning.blogspot.com/

http://publicschoolteachersodyssey.blogspot.com/