After the zoo trip

 Mrs. Voss' smarties made a pop-up book with their favorite animal inside.  I LOVE the spelling!

We made lions for our zoo.  This animals were made from precut paper (by Miss Morte) and the kids put them together.   The patterns are from Mrs. Larramore.  I have lots of information from her blog, Chalktalk.

 This is a gorilla head.  It turned out so cute!

 This is a research paper done by Mrs. Shelton's class.  They recorded facts they learned about zebras.

 This research was done by Mrs. Voss' class.  It compares what was learned about zebras and giraffes.  The Venn diagram words are from Mrs. Jumps unit on teacherspayteachers. 

We made Elmer the elephant is my class today and Miss Morte had the kids write a list poem about elephants.

BUILD Tower

 This is the Books about math.  The kids like this tub.  There is no pressure to do anything except look at books.

 This tub has three dimensional shapes and cards of things in the world that are 3D.  The kids try to match them up.

 This is Independent work and the children roll a dice and write the next three numbers.  This has been a hard concept for them.  It is especiallly hard if they are asked to provide the numbers before a certain number!

 This tub had a game in it to work with numbers.  The cards had teen numbers.  The game is played like war.  The kids dealt the cards and turned over one at a time.  The highest number was the winner and got to keep both cards.

 Doing math this time had a paper the kids had to count the objects and write the correct number.

 This was another book box.  It had a book that the children read and colored.  It was about a watermelon that was divided half and fourth.

 Using manipulatives included a set of dice and a recording sheet.  The kids rolled the dice and added the dots together.  They found that number and colored it with a color pencil.

 This independent work included dice also.  The kids rolled the dice and traced that number on the paper.  The first number to have all traced was the winner.

 Learning numbers was popcorn numbers from 1-25.  The kids had to complete the chart.

Doing math in this tub required the child to look at the numbers and determine which was smaller and which was larger.  The largest number was colored red and the smallest number was colored blue.  It was graph review as well!

Literacy tubs and letter Q

 The tubs this week were a little easier for the kids to manage on their own.  This was almost like last weeks with the only change being the letters were lower case.  The kids turned the cards over and found the matching letter on the sheet and colored it.

 This was great fun because the kids got to stamp their own name and then the name of their friends.

 This was a book about having a hole in your smile.  Lots of kids in my class have a big hole in their smile and the tooth fairy must be exhausted!

 This is Miss Morte helping the table with CVC word cards.

In this game, the students had to draw a card.  If they could read the word, they kept the card.  If they did not know the word they could ask a friend.  Some of the cards said skip a turn and some said take a card from a friend.  Miss Morte had to referee the game before it got out of hand!!

 This is the adorable giraffe the class made with a 18" tongue.

 This is the zebra.  We also recorded facts on a bubble map and we are collecting pages about each animal to make a book for each student.

 This is a copy of Elmer the elephant from Mrs. Voss' class.  Isn't it adorable?

 These are from Miss Alkire's class.  I know the kids had fun making these!!

 This monkey is from Mrs. Jordan's class.  Her daughter painted the plates ahead of time and the kids created the monkey from the cut pieces.

We are studying letter Q this week and I found this cute idea on Pinterest.  The kids thought it was great fun to make this.  Mrs. Voss found some adorable QU stories and songs on YouTube and Promethean Planet.

More Plants

 We did lots of plant activities this week.  Miss Morte did a great job of teaching the children all about what plants need and how they grow.  I was testing for report cards and I did not get a lot of pictures.  Wish I could recreate everything they did!  Miss Morte talked about how a coconut is a seed that grows into a tree.  This led to Chicka Chicka Boom Boom of course!  The kids cut the circles and glued them to the tree mostly in ABC order!

 This is one of the recording sheets from Deanna Jump's plant package.  I have an entire shelf devoted to her and Kim Adsit on my bookcase.  I love their stuff and you are missing out if you have never used any of it!

 I found an adorable literacy and math unit on Pinterest for a free download so of course I printed and laminated it all and put these in my literacy stations.  This next week you will see the math ones in my BUILD tower!  On this tub, the kids looked at the pictures and had to clip the correct letter sound at the beginning.  The picture below is a recording sheet they did independently after the game.

 This game involved sorting words onto 6 different gardens with the same ending sound.  Even if they could not read the words, they could match the letters at the end of the words.  There was a sheet to record at least 3 words under each family of letters.  This was not easy unless Miss Morte or myself stayed right with them talking about the strategy to use. 

 This game involved turning over the umbrellas and finding that letter on the recording sheet.  They then colored the matching rain drop.  This one was easy to do by themselves.  There was a "little" cheating from ones that figured out to just color every rain drop!!!

 The principle behind this game was to take a hat, a raincoat, and a pair of boots and make a sentence.  As you can see that did not always make sense.  The kids had to be able to read the words and determine if it was a sentence before they copied it.  For the ones that can read, it was great fun but for the ones who are not there yet...frustration...for them and for ME!

literacy and math tower games

 The game above was an ABC order game.  It was hard for us but I wanted to introduce it to them because in First grade they do ABC order.  We tried to sort them by first letter first.  Then I showed them how sometimes we have to use the second letter to decide what comes first.

 This sheet was in the same tub as the ABC order.  The kids just had to record the last sound.

 In this tub, each child got a baggie with a dry erase marker, abc cards (from saxon phonics), and 6 cards with CVC words.  They were to pick a card, read the word, build the word, and then write the word.

 The children had to build a sentence and then record it in their journals.

In this tub, the kids had to lay out all the jars with pictures on them.  Then each child got 3 bears with CVC words.  They had to decode the word and place it on the correct picture.

BUILD (math tubs)

Books About Math

 The picture above and below and the two book boxes. 

Using Manipulatives

 In the game above, the kids rolled the dice and counted the dots.  They put that many "ants" on the pants.  They recorded the two dice on the page in the book.  After 3 rolls, they counted all the ants and used the spinner to see if the one with the most or least ants was the winner.  Thanks, Deanna Jump!
In the game below, they took a bag of colored animals and colored the dot that color.  They counted the animals in the bag and circled the correct teen number.

 Independent work

 In the game above, the children would roll a dice and move any of the characters toward the top.  The object was to get all the ants to the top on an exact roll.  Thanks, Kim Adsit.
In the game below, the kids rolled the dice, record the two numbers and then add the dots and record the answer.

Learning and Using Numbers

 The kids would roll the dice and add the two together, then take an animal to cover the number in the barn.  They had to get all their animals in the barn before their friend did.
The game below was like many we have played.  I love Kim Adsit for these games.  They are the same concept but the characters are changed.  It keeps the game interesting without having to reteach a new game every time!  The kids roll the dice and move that many spaces toward their end until someone reaches the end making them the winner.

 Doing math

 This top tub was VERY HARD.  Next year, I am going to start very early doing numbers before and after the quoted number.  The kids were supposed to write the number on the sheep and then record the number before and after that number.  ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR...but we will practice this some more.
The tub below was matching the addition statement to the correct number on the monkey.  Our color printer was out of ink for awhile so they are in black and white.  :(