A Harvest Unit and Teachers Pay Teachers Opening!

We are super excited to announce the opening of the First Grade and Fancy Free Teachers Pay Teachers store!!  We have been working hard on a great harvest unit to use in the month of November.  It includes math, literacy and art activities for harvest time/Thanksgiving.  We all teach first grade so it definitely works for first graders, but also has several activities appropriate for the other primary grades. You'll find subtraction, blends,  file folder games with response sheets, Thanksgiving making words, favorite pie graphing, several Thanksgiving book extensions, and so much more! Go there now and get a great harvest center activity for FREE.

Corn Kernel Word Harvest

While you're there, pick up A Harvest Unit for $7.00!

A Harvest Unit

8 Legged Fun

We have had a few weeks filled with spiders! Spider art, spider writing, spider science, spider reading, tons of SPIDERS!  It has been so much fun watching our students discover how great informational texts can be.  We definitely have a few blooming arachnologists roaming our hallowed halls.    

For art, Ericka taught a few art techniques using patterning, growing patterns symmetry and a spider web.  

She found the idea for this project at:

We have all been using the Halloween Unit that Rachelle from "What The Teacher Wants" created.  Seriously folks, it is awesome! Our students have amazed us with all of the information they have absorbed.  Here are some student writing samples:

That's "8 eyes" not "8 exes", funny stuff!

Tina used Deanna Jump's Spiders Unit in science.  Students were overheard explaining to those who hadn't been to our science rotation that they would be drinking SPIDER VENOM!! Haha!  They loved it so much and learned tons!

For some extra fun, here are some cute bulletin board ideas we created from our experiences with our 8 legged friends!

Informational Labeling Inspiration

My love for pinterest is not lost on anybody who is close to me. So when I saw two BRILLIANT ideas, I quick donned my supercape and combined them into one awesome lesson. My kiddos are loving informational texts and I have been pondering the best ways to teach their key features. Then during one night of pinning, pinning, pinning I saw this FUN picture/lesson on labeling:

Mrs. Lee's Kinder Kids
"Labeling the Teacher"

She says she got the idea from Babbling Abby.  So I give credit to her, she gives it to Abby.  Click on the picture for her post on "labeling the teacher".  Have I mentioned that I love teachers and their willingness to share?  Anyway, the next day I was pinning, pinning, 

pinning and lo and behold the cutest labeling opportunity:

From www.firstgradeblueskies.blogspot.com
click on the picture to link to her "label time" post.

Seriously DARLING huh?  She has the cutest packet of "Label Time" printables in her

Teacher Notebook store that you can link to straight from her post.

So I began with labeling the teacher.  My kiddos laughed and laughed and LOVED it!

I may have been a little dramatic, but teaching is often a full time acting job right?

I gave each child a sticky note and assigned them a body part, then we attached them to me:

Seriously? The things we do in the name of teaching.

Together we talked about how to label a picture or photo and then we labeled the "label the class" activity. Yup, pretty sure this lesson made an impression on my kiddos.  They either have labeling DOWN or they went home and told 

their parents that their teacher was crazy.

All in the day of a first grade teacher!

Thank you Pinterest and the MANY amazing inspirational teachers whose ideas are filling my boards!

Keep on, teachin' on FOLKS!