Pumpkins, Witches, and Ghosts, Oh my!

Halloween and Red Ribbon week, aka "survival of the fittest" week, is over.  Can I get an amen?  
The whole week was filled with a whole lot of craziness, and yet, we somehow managed to get in some learning.  I was completely exhausted when I left school Friday and I took a 3 hour nap on Saturday to prove it. 

  We read some nonfiction books about pumpkins and then made this whole group circle map to help us get our ideas flowing for our pumpkin writing. 

We made the little jack-o-lantern craft shown below to display our writing.

 

We also made this life cycle anchor chart that students could refer to throughout the week.

We did a little bubbling boo and popping pumpkin experiment that the kids loved.  I got this idea from Crystal Underwood and you can get get more detailed directions for this activity HERE.

We also weighed and measured mini pumpkins.

The day before Halloween, we read this fun book:

and watched the  "Room on the Broom" Youtube video.

After hearing the book twice, the students were able to do a sequencing activity easily and we attached it to the cute witch craft shown below that I got from April Larremore HERE.

And y'all, we did another writing on Halloween.  If you have taught elementary for very long, then you know how hard it is for kids to focus ON HALLOWEEN. {Can I get another amen?}

 Students had to write three reasons they liked Halloween and then we made the ghost trick or treater to display with our writing.  The ghost came from TLC lessons.  I added the little orange trick or treat bag to the craft that I got from My Cute Graphics.

My team dressed as M&M's for Halloween.

I am really glad Halloween week is over.  Really glad.

 Happy Teaching everyone!

Do Worms Like Light?

We recently did a science investigation to see if worms like light.

We started by graphing our predictions.  

Each student got a paper plate, a worm and a flashlight.  They had to shine the light on the worm taking care not to follow the worm with the light if it began to move. 

 (we had a discussion about this prior to the investigation and we discussed that if the worm moved away from the light and we followed it with the light, then we were not letting the worm make the choice)

Every student's worm moved out of the light so our conclusion was that worms do not like light.

If you would like a copy of the investigation sheet we used to record our observations on, you can grab it at this old blog post.

I want to share a fabulous find I found while on pinterest.  See the tubs that are holding my student's place value blocks in the picture below.     Worth.Every.Penny.

Those little jewels can be found at Dollar Tree.  

Here is the original blog post so you can grab the cute little labels too:

Frogs and Cupcakes

Happy teaching friends!

Farfaria app and a Giveaway

I have been using the Farfaria app in my classroom for a couple of weeks now and I must say that my students are loving it! What I love about this app is that your students have access to over 750 stories and 5 new stories are added weekly.  Every story can be read aloud to the student with a Read-to-Me feature.   

We were learning about spiders this past week so I made several spider stories available for my students to read.  

Students can also explore on their own and make choices about the books they want to read.  Here, one of my students is in the "explore" section of the app where he can choose the type of book he wants to read.  For example, he can choose from adventures, fairy tales, make believe, and classics to name a few. 

I used this as a center this week and told the students they had to use Farfaria during their center time.  

During the day, I also let my early finishers use the ipad and noticed that most of them were revisiting this app time and time again.

In the picture below, I have shown a couple of stories that I will definitely be using in the future.  "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" will go perfectly with the story "Jack and the Wolf" that is in our Journey's basil.  I will be having my students compare and contrast the two stories.  We will also be using the story "Ben Franklin and the Kiteboard" when we do our Ben Franklin study. 

You can download Farfaria for free and read one story per day for free with no obligation to pay by clicking on the picture below OR keep reading to enter the giveaway below for a chance to win a free 3 month subscription to Farfaria.

Farfaria has graciously allowed me to give away one 3 month subscription to their app.  You can enter below.  The contest runs through Saturday Oct. 12 and the winner will be announced on Sunday.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

If you don't win the giveaway, Farfaria offers unlimited access to 750+ stories starting at just $4.99 per month.

(I noticed while visiting the app store about this product that they have a life time app fee of $49.99 which I think is great for teachers.)

Follow the links below for more information about Farfaria:

Farfaria app store

Google Play download

Farfaria website

Happy Teaching Friends!

Apple Science

We have been learning about inquiry skills in science.  Today, we used our inquiry skills to do a little apple investigation.

Students used a balance to measure weight 

using non-standard units. 

 They then measured the circumference of the apple with a string.

Then they measured the length of 

their string with non-standard units .

They recorded their information on their recording sheets.

FYI:  I purchased the balance clip art from The 3 am Teacher 

and I got the linking cube clip art free from Charlotte's Clips.

If you would like a copy of the recording sheet, then click on the picture above.

Happy teaching friends!!!!

Teachers Pay Teachers Boost Sale!!!!!!

Have you heard the BIG news?  TpT is having another back to school sale tomorrow! Everything in my store will be 20% off AND you can save an additional 10% using the TpT code BOOST at checkout.

The cute button above was made by For His Glory.

Working in the classroom

Our official first day of school with the students is August 25.  Faculty goes back tomorrow (*SIGH*) with meetings all week and "Meet the Teacher" on Thursday.

I have been working on and off in the classroom for the past two weeks. We've had to come up with some storage ideas since we will be team teaching this year.  My team teacher, Tammy Riggan, came up with this crate idea for storing our books.

I put 4 desks in a little pod.  My morning class will get one color crate and my afternoon class will get the other color crate.  To manage kids all trying to get books at once, I put a colored dot on each desk (blue, green, yellow, red) and each day a different color will be in charge of passing out books.  

As you can see in the next picture, the books are heavy and causing the crates to bow in the middle, so I will be turning these horizontal so they can sit on the floor.

I used zip ties to attach the crates.

My sweet friend, Tammy, got creative this summer and made all the first grade teachers a super cute name hanger for our doors.  How cute is this?

For all my teacher friends out there:

picture source:  Aesthetic Outburst Blog

Back to School TpT Sale

The Teachers Pay Teachers Back to School Sale is August 4th and 5th!  Now would be a good time to buy those items on your wishlists!  

Sale image courtesy of Room 213.

Happy Shopping!

300 followers and a sale

I got an email yesterday telling me I had 300 followers on bloglovn'. To celebrate, I am throwing a sale in my TpT store today and tomorrow.    

Thanks to all my blog followers! 

 I know I've been MIA but I have been busy watching my favorite golfer all summer.  He finishes up his summer golf tomorrow and Friday in Kerville and then it will be back to reality for me.  

Give Away Time

Howdy friends!  I have been working hard and playing hard!  I am trying to squeeze every precious drop I can out of this summer. 

I am currently working on supplemental activities for second grade Journeys reading.  Here is a sneak peak into the first two stories in the second grade Journeys reading series.

Henry and Mudge

My Family 

I'd love to give away a copy of one of these or any product of your choosing from my TpT store to three lucky followers.  Just enter via Rafflecopter below and I'll pick a winner Sunday night.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

New Journey's reading packs in Spanish - What???????

I think I heard crickets chirping when I logged into my blog today.  I really have been busy.  I taught 2 weeks of summer school which ended today.  (picture me doing a happy dance)

I have been working to translate my Journey's reading units into Spanish and the first book is nearly done.  I have had many requests to do this and finally had the time to do it.  (With MUCH help from Melissa Martinez - can't thank her enough!!!) Click on the picture below to check out the first story "What is a Pal?"

I also have some news.  My first grade team will be team teaching next year.  Two teachers will be considered a team. We have 6 teachers in all, so we will have 3 teams.  I am teaching the math and science.  My team teacher will be teaching ELA and social studies.  We will start the day with our home room and then switch and teach each other's home room.  It should be interesting.  We haven't figured out a schedule nor know exactly how this will work but I will be ready to dive in and figure it all out in August.

Hope everyone is having great, restful summer!!!

TpT Sale May 6-7

TpT is having a teacher appreciation sale.  In addition, I am putting everything in my store 20% off.  Use the code below to get up to 28% off on May 6-7.

Busy Week

It has been all kinds of CRAZY in my classroom the past couple of weeks.  We have been watching with wonder the life cycle of our Painted Lady butterflies.

We also started our plant study.

We planted some grass seed and the kids were excited when they started to grow.

We read these books about the parts of plants:

After reading the books, we labeled the parts of a plant and made the flip book that tells what each part of the plant does.

If you want some more plant ideas, 

you can check out some of my old posts:

Plants

Little Botanists

Plant Stuff

We have 25 days of school left.  We can do this!