Spring Break!

Hello Spring Break(capitalization necessary as it is a holiday!)!

I am so excited to be able to relax this week. I have a very small list of things to do. They are as follows:
1. sleep in. Or at least take naps, to fully enjoy the laziness that Spring Break offers. I often feel guilty for sleeping in and taking naps, but on Spring Break, I need to just give myself some slack.

2. practice the uke daily. I printed out some songs to learn and I want to work on strumming. It's hard to play, strum, and sing! I can strum, but when I start to sing, I forget how! But I have to remind myself, I am retraining my brain. It takes time :)

3. finish my lesson plans for the rest of the YEAR! My wonderful team got together to plan it out and its looking great.
It looks like this-Think Link next week, 2 more weeks of the basal reader, 1 week of teacher rotations for reading (we are all picking our favorite book to teach...hmmm what shall I choose?), 1 week of fairy tale teacher rotations (Peter Pan!!), 2 weeks of Wizard of Oz, and 2 end of first grade days. WHOOOO!

4. see my sweet youngest sister (in-law) kick booty at her gymnastic state meet! Go for the Gold!

5. embrace the experience of a RUSH concert with my sweet husband. He loves RUSH. They finally came to Nashville to we are going to see them, of course! Darling husband doubts I will be able to "handle the noise". I am putting up a strong front (but secretly, he is probably right...).

That is all I have planned. 5 simple little things. The rest will be up to my whims and fancies. Hurrah!
If the weather fancies to turn itself around and allow the sun to bake me, I would happily add that to the list. Currently, it looks like a week of rain. Hmph.

Anyway- I leave you with a cute book one of my children wrote...
Title: There was on Old Lady Who Swallowed a Cupcake
Page 1: There was an old lady who swallowed a cupcake. I don't know why she swallowed a cupcake.
Page 2: It was Mrs. Person.

Apparently I am now and old lady :) At least they understand my obsession with cupcakes...

New Look!

So I decided the blog needed a fresh look for SPRING!
It's been truly beautiful here lately, and I have needed it something bad. Sunshine is a vital ingredient in my happiness. And the dears need it too!

And now readers, a gift for you! I made this graphic organizer to help us summarize a story. I purchased the clip art from Scrappin Doodles! SO CUTE! Hope you can use it.

How to Summarize a Story


I am going to start How To writing after spring break. I will start researching next week. I am very excited about it! The kids were so successful with our Moe Willems author study and I can't wait to see them explore a new genre of writing.

If you have used anything great for teaching procedural writing, comment and share! :) I saw on Proteacher a few weeks ago where a teacher had a piece of gum and asked the kids how to blow a bubble. She did -literally- what they told her. No one said take the wrapper off, so she put it in her mouth wrapped, etc... Sounds super fun! I think I will do it with How to make a PBJ! The point is to help kids really think through the directions they will write. As I said, I just can't wait!

Wizard of Oz FEVER!

Alright, so fabulous Babbling Abby posted this amazing Wizard of Oz unit a little while ago. My first grade team and I snatched it up from TpT and we are planning on doing it the last 3 weeks of school.
The unit has inspired us and we can't stop thinking of ideas!!!
- yellow brick road leading to the 2nd grade hallway "We're Following the Yellow Brick Road to Second Grade"
- cupcakes (lots of ideas floating around this)
- lollipops for the lollipop guild
- pictures where they dress as their favorite characters (funnel- tinman, witch hat, straw hat-scarecrow)
- choose-your-own spelling list of Wiz words!
- playlist of every version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow ever!
- and it keeps on growing!

Feel free to post your own ideas, and definitely go check out the unit on TpT!

Also on Thirst for First, there is a super giveaway of one of Babbling Abby's units about Poppin' Adjectives (it was already on my TpT wishlist!) and an AIR POP POPCORN MACHINE! Choose me, please!

Have a sunny, wonderful day!

Sweet Sounds of First Grade

Hello friends,
I recently discovered 2 things I must share!
1. The ukulele. I decided I wanted to learn to play. It is a great instrument, the Guinness Book of World Records calls it the easiest instrument to learn. I have already been able to learn about 5-8 chords and with those can play many songs! I decided that it would be fun to sing to one of my kids for his birthday. This dear of mine LOVES music. He sings his heart out every day while we work. Sometimes loudly. But I can rarely shush him because I understand when a heart needs to sing!
So, I brought my little uke to school. I had to teach the sweeties that it was NOT called "tiny guitar". haha. We sang a few songs I found on this website, Storytime Songs. I am still early in my stringed instrument playing, so I did not know, but apparently guitar and ukulele chords are written the same, just played differently on the instrument. So I used the guitar chords to have a little sing a long time. It was a huge hit! My birthday boy loved it! The kids begged for more! I sang Somewhere Over the Rainbow to them and they had never heard it. *tear* So I will be teaching it to them in the coming weeks.
I will also be rewriting some lyrics to familiar tunes (I hope) so we can sing about content, not just rainbows :)

2. Second great thing to share: Teachers Pay Teachers! Good gracious, why was I not perusing this earlier???? I knew what it was (a website where teachers post lessons/printables/anything and other teachers can buy them). However, I had no idea the vastness of the resources or that so much stuff was FREE!!!! Marvelous! I gave up facebook for Lent, and have basically replaced it with finding free TpT items! This week I found 2 great ones: A St. Patrick's Day measuring center and a creating short vowel words center! Both are fabulous and will be so helpful in the upcoming weeks! Love it!
I have decided this summer I will work on updating Writer's Workshop plans for the year and post them on TpT as well. This is my second year of teaching, and I have learned I have a strong love for Writing! I love making the plans, and watching how my little firsties improve every day! We are wrapping up a Mo Willems author study this week by reading our published books (in the style of Mo Willems). Maybe I'll post it up soon! I would have to work on making it a tiny bit cuter... Cute is NOT my strong point, but I try, because I know it comes with first grade territory :)

I hope you are making wonderful discoveries, as well!

Reading Pals

Here is that wonderful book I got the other day. My kids are working on learning their short vowel words to "beyond mastery" and starting on the long vowels, as well! They love using the puppets.
Check it out here!

Valentine's Day catch up!

Well, I fell behind! It's almost March and I have not updated about our fun 100th day and Valentine's day activities! ~LONGEST POST EVER~

Before the update: we are working as a grade level on number sense after we got our test scores back a week ago. Too much red in that area!! We are using a great book called Building Number Sense.As the subtitle implies, it is full of games and interactive activities to help firsties really grasp a number's value, and how that interacts with other numbers. We began with making number bracelets 0-10. Each bracelet is a simple pipe cleaner with a certain number of beads on them. Each set has a different color (10-red, 9-purple) so everyone's look the same. Some other teachers have addded a numeral tab on theirs and I think I will do that this week as well.
Once you have made the bracelets, you can manipulate them to create some learning. Put your bracelets on in order least to greatest! Put on a bracelet that is less that 4! Find the bracelet that is more than 6 but less than 8! Put on all your even number bracelets! Make a number bond to 3! So many great things to do. The kids are very excited about their bracelets and I think they will be helpful.
Here is the website if you want to purchase the book. It's a GREAT resource!


Additionally, some of my Title 1 kiddos are needing some help with transitioning from short to long vowels. I got this great book from The Learning Circle , but I cannot remember the exact title, except it was Short and Long Vowels... I'll have to get a link for it later... Anyway, it has the text chunked into phrases! Some pages just practice chunks and some put them together to form a sentence. I love it! And it comes with these fun puppets that frame the words. One is a pig and the nose is cut out, the words show up on the pig's nose! So much fun.

Ok, now here is the update on 100th day and Vday. Sadly, 100th day was cut short due to weather. We went home 2 hours early. I was quite sad. But the kids had such a fun day! We made our 100th day snack (10 each of M&M's, raisins, fruit loops, animal crackers, whales, gummi bears, marshmallows, fruit marshmallows, pretzels, and Skittles! YUM!!!) and sat it aside for later.
Then we made fruit loop necklaces. We divided a piece of paper into 5 long strips and had to fill each strip with 10 fruit loops of the same color (should have taken a picture...) then after I checked it they strung those on the yarn. Next they colored a "100th day medal" on cardstock and strung that on, too. Last they filled up the paper strips again to equal 100 fruit loops! They were beautiful.
Our last activity (silly snow) was our 100 year old portraits! I cut out black ovals to make it look like an old-timey photo. Then we cut felt for shirts, and drew faces with oil pastels. The hair was cotton balls, of course! Then we wrote about what we will do when we are 100 years old. Here are some of their portraits."When I am 100 years old I'm going to sleep on Saturday. I will be in a wheelchair." Love his plaid shirt! :)
"When I am 100 years old I will walk to the park."


For Valentine's Day we brought in cards for each other. I gave each child a bag, stickers, and Hershey Kiss as morning work to decorate their bag. Then we played "Mailman". We put all the bags in the back of the room. One child got their cards out and delivered them to everyone, then picked someone to go next. It was a great way to pass them out because we got some work done at the same time! And it was anti-chaotic!

We also made heart creatures. We worked on writing about a character with these sweet animals. Each child chose their animal and wrote their name, where they live, and what they love. My favorite are the elephants!


"This is the King Lizard. He lives in the deep jungle. He loves to hide." Love that creativity!!

I will do my utmost to update in a more timely matter from now on. Hopefully no more super long posts!!!

Self Portraits and Groundhog Day

Hello!
This week we finished our self portraits. The students drew themselves and brought in photos of things that are important in their lives. They used magazines to add to their collages of pictures and used that to decorate their shirts. We made these portraits to be a visual helper for writing. We learned writers write about their own lives and passions, so we made self portraits to show our lives and passions! The kids were SUPER excited and they did a great job!
Check them out!
Her writing reads "I like me and my little brother because he was two years old and so tiny! Did my little brother tiny, yes? I love you." (love it!)This friend learned the word "brunch" when making his collage. Yay for vocabulary!
My personal favorite portrait! He worked for three days making his hair! And he made his eye brows out of yarn. Obviously our resident artist. It looks just like him. Precious! Also, who doesn't love a good picture of a dinosaur??
I've decided next year I will make these portraits at the beginning of the year when we do our community building part of writer's workshop. So fun, and the kids worked so hard! Couldn't be prouder!

We also learned about Groundhog Day together this week. The kids had listened to Substitute Groundhog in the listening center and we read Double Trouble Groundhog Day together. Then we made this graph to see who was Pro-shadow and who was for No shadow.As you can see, we are ready for SPRING!!
Then we made buttons to show our support for our Pro or No shadow cause. The kids really liked making and wearing the buttons. I told them that this year Phil did NOT see his shadow, so Spring should be coming soon. But while we were working on our buttons, it started to snow!! Our faith in Phil has faltered... But we still had a delightful day!

Gearing up now for 100th day on Tuesday! Can't wait to do all our fun activities. I'm working on getting permission slips so I can post pics and videos soon. Should be a great week.