Friday, October 25, 2013

Five for Friday {Field Trip Edition}

Hey yall! Happy Friday!
 
This week was loooooong. And awful. And terrible. And exhausting. And stressful. And any other negative adjective you could use to describe a week.
 
Seriously...it sucked.
 
But today was a good day, because we went on a field trip to the local dairy farm!
 
1. When we got to the farm today, we started out by watching a cow-milking demonstration. The kiddos were pretty amazed {and let's face it, so was I!}. Did you know that a dairy cow can produce up to 80 pounds of milk a day?!?! Pretty crazy!
 
 
2. Next, we played on the huge playground. It had lots of cool structures, like a tractor, boat, and a house, for them to play on. There was a giant sand pile and a corn pit. The huge slide was a lot of fun, but the biggest hit of all was the giant jumping bean! We also hit up the corn maize!
 
My dad had fun swinging the kids!
 
 
 
My mom with some of my kiddos in the maize.
And yes, both my parents came as chaperones on the trip! My parent chaperone had to cancel at the last minute, but one call to my own parents and they came to save the day!
 
3. After lunch, we learned all about dairy and the dairy cows. We took turns making some butter and then enjoyed our homemade butter on crackers!
 
 
 
4. The hayride was my favorite part of the trip. Even though my littles had a hard time staying on their bottoms, we enjoyed a leisurely ride around the pasture. And what's a hayride without a good farmer song???
 
Click on the picture to watch an adorable video!
 
5. The last thing we did was hit up the barn and get up-close-and-personal with some farm animals. Bunnies, chickens, calves, pigs, goats, ponies. Most of my kiddos have limited experience with rural life, so I loved seeing how excited they were to see real live animals!
 
 
All the kiddos got to take home a pumpkin from the pumpkin patch, which we will keep at school and decorate next week on Halloween. It was such a fun day, but we sure were exhausted! Check out these two cuties who were knocked out on the bus ride back to school.....but they weren't letting go of those precious pumpkins!
 
 
I hope yall's Friday was as fun as mine! Happy weekend, friends!
 
 
fiveforfriday2_thumb3

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Granny Swallowed Halloween (freebie!)

Hey yall! Happy Sunday!
 
How many of you love the Old Lady Swallowed... series? My kiddos go crazy for these books! Anything that gets them excited gets me excited, too! They really get into the books, so I try to snag as many learning opportunities as I can from it.
 
This week, we'll read this book in conjunction with our bat unit.
 
 
We will also be completing activities from my Granny Swallowed Halloween pack.
 
 
This pack includes:
 
*Story Sequencing

*ABC Order

 
*Grammar Sort {nouns and verbs}

 
*Rhyming Match Up


 
*Scrambled Sentences

 
*Word Search
 
 
*Writing Prompts {4 to choose from}
 

 
*Color by Vowel Sound {short vowels}
 
 
You can snag the Grammar Sort from this pack below for free! I just ask for some love in the form of feedback :)
 
 
Or you can purchase the whole pack here!
 
 
I will give away 2 copies for the first 2 people to comment below. Tell me your favorite Halloween candy....and don't forget to leave your email!
 


Friday, October 18, 2013

Five for Friday!

Hey yall! Happy Friday!
 
This Friday is an extremely happy Friday, because I'm at home in my pjs! Today was a furlough day, and even though my pocketbook isn't happy about it, the rest of me sure is!
 
I've spent the last two days in parent conferences, so today was a much needed break :)
And since I'm still in my pjs at 1:30, I thought I would just go ahead and link up with Casey this week.
 
fiveforfriday2_thumb3
 
1. We've been studying landforms in Social Studies. We've made flapbooks, sang songs, and played games to help us learn the different landforms. But my kiddos favorite landform activity? Landform cookies!
 
 
Sugar cookie with white frosting for the base, blue frosting along the side to represent coasts, graham cracker crumbles for the desert, green sprinkles for the plains, candy corn mountains, and a Rolo plateau. This was the day I officially became the "best teacher ever!"
 
2. For fire safety week, I assigned some homework where the students had to talk with their family about creating a meeting place if there is ever a fire in the home. They were to draw a picture of their meeting place on the back.
 
 
Haha! Don't you just love first grade spelling?
 
3. This week, we've been learning all about digraphs. The very first pack I ever purchased on TPT was Cara's Digraph Kids pack and I still use it every year!
 
Annnnnd I just realized I spelled chipmunk wrong.....teacher fail!
4. I officially started my last class for my Ed.S this week! The class meets once a week from 5-9:45...ugh! But at least I get to spend those 5 hours in my university's new $500K Mac lab each week!
 
 
5. My teacher buddy texted me this the other day. This is definitely fitting for my chatty class this year!
 
 
Alright folks, I'm off to enjoy more pj/couch time :)


Sunday, October 13, 2013

Informational Writing {and a flash sale!}

Hey yall! Happy Sunday!
 
I'm just popping in real quick to let you know about a flash sale going on in my little TPT store. Everything in my store is 20% off and TPT is offering another 10% off if you use the promo code FB100K. They have reached 100K followers on Facebook, so we're celebrating!
 
Click on the picture to start shopping!
 
This might be a perfect time to pick up my newest unit: Forest Animals Informational Writing Pack
 
 
This pack is chalk full of graphic organizers and writing sheets to help your kiddos with informational writing. It features 7 different types of forest animals that they can research and write a report on. It also includes an ABC order activity and a word search, just for fun!
 


 
This unit meets the CCSS for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade.
1.W.2
2.W.2
3.W.2
Its also a great way to integrate some science and writing!
 
As always, I'll give away 3 copies of this pack to the first 3 to comment. Be sure to leave your email!
 
Happy shopping!
 


Monday, October 7, 2013

Sight Word Games {freebies}

Hey yall!
 
Raise your hand if your school uses Fry's sight words. Our school does and my kiddos this year are struggling to master those darn things. So I've made it my mission to see to it that every single student masters that dang list.
 
I wanted to make it fun and was thinking of ways to do just that when I ran across this awesome unit from Lovin' Kindergarten with Mrs. Lindsey...
 
 
Perfect! I snatched it up and immediately began printing. Each kiddos gets a bubble gum machine that I let them decorate. The first 100 words are split up into 6 different sets, each a different color. Each time the kiddos master a set, that get that color gumball to put on their machine {and I give them a real gumball!}.
 
Let me tell you.....motivation has arrived!!!
 
They are working hard to master those words and can't wait to fill up their machines. I also sent home a list of the words for them to study at home.
 
But I also wanted them to get lots of practice during the school day, so I made a couple of fun holiday-themed sight word games for them to play.
 

 
Most of my kiddos have just about mastered the first 50 words, so these games just focus on the second 50 words from Fry's first 100 word list. Click on each picture above to snag your copies!