Sight Word SWAT Part 2 and SUPER SUPER GIVEAWAY! :)

I posted about playing Sight Word SWAT with my students the other day. We played again today and I made it a point to get some more pictures to share with you!

Check out my collection (including the new swatters from Wal-Mart).

Some of our sight words. They are a tad worn away.

Eager beavers ready to play!!! 

Action shot!

Also, have you seen my latest giveaway?!? The prize is HUUUUUGE (literally--it's 353 pages)!!

You can win a free copy of this pack by completing a few very simple steps! Click here to head over to the post to enter! Good luck! :)

Summertime Pack + Giveaway!

Well, we have around 25 days left--how many do you have??? I can't believe this school year is almost over! I have really enjoyed my time in 1st grade and look forward to another! :)

The stores are all geared up for summer as they have all sorts of themed merchandise out with such super fun colors! All of that inspired me to create this ULTIMATE Summertime Activity Pack!

I have been working on this since the end of March (life tends to prevent me from working on things for long periods of time!) and I am FINALLY satisfied with it and ready to share with you! :)

This MEGA pack is 353 pages of math, reading, spelling, writing, and phonics activities geared toward K-2. I just couldn't stop making activities! The pack includes:

• Math
• part-part-whole
• addition and subtraction
• problem solving
• story board and task cards
• hundreds chart activities
• fact families
• attributes of 2D and 3D figures
• money
• making 10s and 1s
• building numbers
• tally marks and graphing
• ten-frames
• Writing
• summer words list
• summer writing paper
• writing prompts
• graphic organizer
• parts of speech
• punctuation
• compound words
• alliteration
• Reading/Phonics/Spelling
• summer word searches
• sight words
• nonsense words
• short and long vowel sounds
• bossy r words
• ABC order
• blends
• digraphs
• Sensory Tub ideas and activities

Whew! I think that's it. Check out some activity pics! I don't have live action shots because I haven't printed much yet.

Multisensory activities!

Lots of math!

Lots of summer writing paper!

Gotta throw in some writing.

The grill is fired up!

Sort the bossy r words:

ABC Order: 

Those are just a few of the hundreds of pics I have of the pack!


I do have a free offering for you from the pack! :) Click below to visit one of my stores and download the preview to access the freebie and to also get a peek at the other activities in the pack.

I'm also thinking that a giveaway is a must! 3 lucky winners will receive a copy of this for free! Check it out below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

And don't forget to check out our Eric Carle activities and freebies! Click to visit!

Did you get your Eric Carle Author Study freebies??

My wonderful colleague and 1st grade BFF Leslye guest posted on my blog this morning!! She does all of the Reading and Daily 5 plans for our grade level, so I loved that she agreed to share the reading activities from our Eric Carle Author Study with you! She even included a free copy of the PowerPoint and Author Study Notebook she made for us to use:

To read all about it and to download your copies of it, click here to go back to the previous post. You will LOVE the freebies! Please leave some love if you do!

Also, if you are looking for some math activities to complement your Eric Carle author study, be sure to head over to my math post!

Guest Blogger: Eric Carle Author Study

I am so excited to be a guest blogger on Tales of Frogs and Cupcakes!  I am new to blogging and sharing my creations with others, so I am excited that Janaye has given me this opportunity! Janaye and I teach first grade across the hall from each other.  We have a wonderful first grade team that does a lot of collaboration, shares the lesson planning load, and has a lot of fun doing what we all love - teaching! 

As you have seen in her earlier post, Janaye created an awesome Eric Carle Math Pack to correlate with our Eric Carle Author Study.  While she was creating the math pack, I was busy creating an Author Study of Eric Carle book and slide show to use during our author study reading lessons.  The main focus of our author's study was to identify characters and plot of the author's books and then to compare and contrast the different books using these elements.

We began our author study by learning a little about the author with a PowerPoint presentation and a video about Eric Carle.  We learned a little bit about him each day and took notes in our notebooks.  We also filled our classrooms with Eric Carle books. (I currently have 68 books checked out from our public library, not to mention what I have from our school library!) As students read Carle books on their own, they recorded them in their notebook.

 Since this was our first of two author studies we planned, we completed the first story map on the Promethean board as a class and students did not record it in their book.  On the second day, we discussed it as a class and I wrote on the Promethean board as students also wrote in their books. The third day, students completed the story map independently after a class discussion.  We completed story maps for The Mixed Up Chameleon, A House for Hermit Crab, and Do You Want to be My Friend?. All three selections provided an obvious plot for students to identify and a clearly identifiable beginning, middle, and end.

 After reading the three books, students identified their favorite book and took a favorite book survey among their table group.  Then we compiled the results from each table to determine the class favorite.

The top two class favorites were then selected to complete a Venn Diagram to compare the characters and plot of each book.  The Venn Diagram was completed in a whole group discussion.

I am so excited to be able to share with your the PowerPoint presentation and the Eric Carle Author Study Notebook! Click the links below to download.

Sight Word SWAT!

I'm stopping by this evening to show you a super fun game we played yesterday--Sight Word SWAT!! I apologize in advance for the lack of more detailed pictures but I was caught up in all of the excitement going on!

I found myself with a small group of hard workers (half of my class was at computer lab), 20 minutes, and warm weather yesterday, so we headed out to our porch for a little springtime game that I have been wanting to play. We use Saxon Phonics and with it comes sight word cards. I distributed several cards to each student and had them read the words and write them on the sidewalk (which was fun enough for them). They were instructed to write them big enough to be seen and in their neatest handwriting.

At this point, they had no idea what would happen next and didn't even question why I was holding a small tub full of flyswatters (shows how normal it is for me to be holding something odd, haha). The game was simple--I called up 2 students at a time and called out a sight word. They had to race to find the word and then SWAT it!

 The first one to swat the word won the round and got to stay in while the other student had to sit back down. A new student took his place and we did it again! To say they had a blast would be an UNDERSTATEMENT! I couldn't even take many pictures because I was so involved in how involved they were!

When we finally went back inside they had SO many questions!:

"Did you make up that game???!"

"Did you play that game with your 4th graders???!"

"Are we going to play that again???!"

"When are we going to play that again???!"

Love it. Walmart has super cute swatters out for $1 right now! I bought 10 new ones last weekend. Pics to come.

This game can be used for sight words, math facts, number recognition, shapes, etc. Give it a try!

Eric Carle Author Study

This week is ALL about Eric Carle! We will be doing an author study on him in reading/writing, will use his art techniques to make animals in science, AND we will do some math activities based on some of his books! It's going to be an exciting week!!! I will definitely be posting photos and sharing ideas and freebies!

I sat down Friday night to make a few Eric Carle-inspired math story problems for my team and I ended up with a 128-page pack to share with YOU!!

This pack includes:

-47 pages of story problems (with cut-and-glue manipulatives option)

-time (to hour and half-hour)
-number sequencing
-part-part-whole
-money combination sense
-number decomposition
-number combinations
-patterns
-place value
-ten-frame mats
-part-part-whole mats

You can view it in either store by clicking below (a sample download is available):

Want to win a FREE copy?? Leave an email address and I will choose 3 winners on Tuesday night! :)

WINNERS!!:

Five For.....Saturday

Hey there! Life is always busy so it's a good thing Five for Friday is always a short, fun, and easy post to do! :)

Here is what we have been up to:

1. In science, we have been talking about interdependency. This week we planted some grass seeds, played with worms, and even added worms to our grass cups since we learned that worms can help plants grow.

2. Of course, this also means that we had to discuss the facts of life.............I may have accidentally fried some worms by leaving the cups out on the porch too long. :O Can you find him??? And no, we did not eat the fried worms.

3. We have also been working HARD at coming up with strategies to use when solving math problems. These are the ones they have come up with (so far). And please ignore the letters that I have yet to finish decorating!

 4. We revisited doubles last week and this is the chart we made. One of them also discovered that all of the sums of the doubles were even!! We had to note that very important observation. :)

5. And the best one of all--

LOVE it!!

There you have it! Have a great Saturday!