Five for Friday--My 1st One!

Thought I would finally join this linky party because coming up with 5 random things takes WAY less brain power than coming up with another teaching post for you (it's been a loooong week)! :)

1. FUNNIEST THING EVER: Each day, my students complete a "Number of the Day" activity when they come back from P.E. and Music. I always make a number with base-ten blocks or ten-frame cards and then freeze the image on my screen so I can use the surface where the document camera is while they are completing the activity. Well, this is from one day this week--I froze the image and captured my hand in the process. I saw it but thought they may not notice or be distracted by it. Well, I greet them all back in at the door as they file in and get started. There was an UPROAR of "Whose hand is that???!!" and "Is there a ghost in here???!!" because they saw a hand and no person at the desk where the picture was taken. H-I-L-A-R-I-O-U-S. I then had to explain the "freeze" function and the fact that I only have so much time while they are out of the room and didn't want to waste 6 seconds unfreezing and refreezing an image without my hand.

2. Sooooo I gave an individual patterns assessment a few weeks ago and and didn't get to finish it because it took so long for each kid to complete and I have 22 kids. It has been stressing. me. out. to get them all finished. Last night, I went ahead and decided to delete it from the grade book and throw out the rubrics!! This is my victory pile in the recycle bin!!! 

3. My newest ringtones!! My email tone is WAYYY fun!! :)

4. Isn't this an awesome sentence that one of my little sweethearts made?? Hahaha!

5. A friend of mine posted this on Facebook the other day. Never considered myself an introvert but most of these TOTALLY apply to me, especially #1, #5, #6, and #7. Hmmm, that could just be my ADD......... ;)

Have a great Friday night!! :)

Money, Money, MONEY! Part 2 of 3

I hope you caught part 1 of this money series.

If not, click here to head over and read it!

First, pictured below is the money chart I referred to in the last post. Please do not be distracted by the ugly handwriting. I am not proud of its appearance but the kids appreciate it! We made this after the exploration activity mentioned in the last post:

Another exploration activity we did that the kids ABSOLUTELY loved was this:

I gave them a tray of real coins and some magnifying glasses. During stations, they were allowed to go over and explore the coins on the tray, 3 at a time. I put out several of each type of coin, making sure that it included a variety of styles. They were way impressed to see the new pennies and nickels and were AMAZED that I had an actual half dollar to show! They were also very perplexed by the Sacagawea coin because most had never seen one before.

One final thing to share in this post is an equivalent value activity. I showed the kids 30 cents in pennies and explained that I wanted to put the change in my pocket. However, I didn't want to carry pennies around because they were SO heavy and weighed me down! The students paired up with a cup of coins and an iPod (I have 4 in my classroom and only did this with about 10 students at a time, so 2 groups shared one) and worked on a solution to my problem (something we have been going over in reading!). Since a lot of them had a great background knowledge in counting money, this was a very easy activity for them. (I, of course, still had those few that had no clue what to do.) The students came up with as many solutions as they could think of and took a picture of it. To conclude, we looked at and compared all of the pictures to decide what was the least amount of coins I could carry to still have 30 cents. We actually put the iPods side by side so we could compare the amount of change quickly--that was really neat. Here is the chart we made after we printed the pictures (and yes, I had some excellent helpers assist in writing!):

AND we then had to sing our FAVORITE money song!!:

Don't forget to stop by and pick up a free copy of my money exploration pages!

Stayed tuned for the conclusion of  Money, Money, MONEY!. I will share even more about what we have been doing AND will be launching/giving a few of these away:

Have a terrific Thursday!

Money, Money, MONEY! Part 1 of 3

For the past two weeks we have been studying MONEY!

This has been a favorite unit so far because the activity possibilities are ENDLESS! We crammed a lot into our two weeks of instruction, ending it just last Friday.

We started out with an exploration activity, of course. I gave everyone a cup of money and a recording sheet. They studied each coin and made observations about them. Some of them even sorted the coins and some even counted the coins! I could see how much they knew right away just from observing them completing this activity:

After about 10 minutes of exploration time, we made an anchor chart that included each type of coin and its characteristics. Please do not be distracted by the ugly handwriting. I am not proud of its appearance but the kids appreciate it!:

To close the day's lesson, the students completed the last two boxes on the back of the recording sheet:

I took the responses from the last box and compiled a class list of questions for us to answer throughout the unit:

We have been answering 1-2 questions per day.

AND this fun money song has been part of our daily math routine! It has been stuck in my head for two weeks now, but the kids love it (especially the background singer!):

You can snag a FREE copy of the above recording sheet by visiting either one of my shops!!

Also, stayed tuned for Money, Money, Money! Part 2 and Money, Money, Money! Part 3. I will share even more about what we have been doing AND will be launching/giving a few of these away:

Time-Order Transition Words + Freebie

Happy Saturday!! I have a fun little writing lesson and activity to share with you that we did a few weeks ago. This lesson was definitely a favorite among the first graders because it involved eating some of these...

We started out by eating an Oreo and then telling a neighbor how we ate it. We then viewed this YouTube video of a retro Oreo commercial:

We made a chart for how the little boy ate the Oreo and then we were ready to write one about ourselves (after eating another Oreo, of course!). Here are some work samples:

After the activity, we wrote a few words on this reference page for time-order transition words to put in our Writers Notebook. We will add to it as we come across new words:

Click here to grab the notebook page from Google Docs.

While preparing the whole activity to share with you, I decided to beef it up a little (since I just kept it pretty simple when I did it with my students). It includes the pages shown above, plus a few others AND a little craft. Check it out in one of my shops:

And comment with your email address below to win a FREE copy of this minilesson! I will pick 3 winners on Sunday evening!

The winners are:

Suzy Q.

Mel

Najda

Thanks for entering, everyone!! :)

Super Saving on Superbowl Sunday {plus Monday}!!

Happy weekend, everyone!! Are you all ready for the super sale??! I have decided to join in, too! Click on the buttons below to visit and save up to 28% at TPT and 30% at TN!!

TPT:

TN:

Here are some of my FAVORITE products and best sellers:

Enjoy!! I hope you find some great stuff this weekend! :)