Five for Friday- April 26th (1st time)

Life has been crazy for me. Spring is always an emotional roller coaster ride; full of emotions.  I'm linky up with Doodlebugs for Five for Friday for the first time ever.  Seems fun! 

ONLY 4 MORE DAYS!!

We are going to the ZOO!!  We are getting so excited!  The kids can't wait.  And best of all we will have nice weather. I just saw it is suppose to be 77 on Tuesday.  LOVE!  Especially since it has been so close here all spring!  I saw on the news tonight they have four month old lion cubs and a baby hippo.  AHHH!  How cute!  Can't wait to see them! So many of my kids do not get to go to the zoo so it will be a first time for some!  I love to see their faces. 

Since we have been getting ready for the zoo we have been doing my addition and subtraction picture cards.  We have also been practicing our beginning and ending sounds with zoo animals.  Both of these are part of my Zoo Animals Math and Literacy Extravaganza unit. Click on the title to check it out on TPT.

 

 

We have also been doing my Zoo writing center.

I love to put these in a pocket chart and the students copy the words during work on writing. It is great for them to look back at later and know the words because they can see their pictures.

 

Zoo FREEBIE!

Here is a little zoo freebie for you!  We are practicing our counting by 10's.  I will have the kids cut up the numbers and put them in order on a sentence strip.  Fun! Fun!

 

Scrambled Sentence book

So next week we are starting our Scrambled sentence book. I just created this to help my students composing sentences a little more.  We will read the mixed up sentence and then rewrite it the correct way.  Then students need to draw/finish the picture to match the sentence. It is great review and practice for students!

So here is my

Check out Doodle Bugs teaching for more fun!

May calendar books! DONE!

I'm so happy to get my May Calendar books done!  I spend a lot of time on these each month.  I now have January through May complete. This month I added a couple pages to spice things up. We don't want the kids to get bored during this last month of school.  Only 24 days left!  Not that I'm counting!
Here are a couple pictures of the new pages this month. Of course a lot of the same monthly pages are still in the packet. Calendar, days of the week, months of the year, counting the days in school, weather graph, Daily domino, Daily Double Dice roll, Problem of the day.

 This page is new. If you can't print these pages in color just have the kids circle yesterday with a blue marker, today with green, and tomorrow with red before you start.  Then they will get the hang of it.  You could cross out yesterday since it is in the past, circle today and underline tomorrow. 

I'm excited about this birthday page.  We celebrate birthdays all year when they happen.  Since this is the last month before summer it will be a great memory page for them to remember their friends and when their birthdays are. I am just going to have the helper tell us his/her birthday and write in that name.  That way we are only doing one name a day.  If you want to do more you can to speed it up.

Here is another new page.  I am going to have the kids color the date on the chart.  Then they can actually see if the number is odd or even. I will have the students write the day number on the line and circle odd or even. 

This month I am doing Daily Domino with subtraction.  I also added Double Dice Roll with addition. You can choose if you want to do both pages with addition and subtraction or just pick one of each. 

Here is an example of the Problem of the Day pages.  I work hard to make all of these different.  There are a few that I have continued each month just to give kids practice. I hope that you enjoy the differentiation of the problems.

Here is the link to May Calendar Books on TPT! Grab your copy today!

We are done with school on May 24th.  So if you have school into June and would like June calendar books please leave me a comment or email me.  I am not planning on making a calendar book for June but I will if you need them.

 

Thanks for all your support! 

I got my first check the other day from TPT!  It's so exciting to meet new bloggers and teachers along the way.  Thanks to my followers for all your support!  I appreciate it! 

Enjoy!

All things ZOO!!

So we are busy getting ready for the zoo!  Only 15 more days!!!  I can't wait!  I made a zoo packet that we are going to use while we learn all about the zoo.  First we have a countdown chain!  Everyday we are taking off a number until we get to the zoo.
  Click on the picture to grab your copy of the packet! 

We are going to do a writing project starting next week.  Each student will pick an animal that lives at the zoo.  We have a lot of easy nonfiction books in our library that focus on only one animal in the book. I will get a book for each child.  If you don't have enough books you could pair your students up and do this as a partner activity. So the students will fill in the animal web.  They will write in the covering, what the animal eats, and where it lives.  They will also find an interesting fact about the animal.  I know some of the words will be hard to read but the students should be able to see the animals from the pictures in the book.

After writing in the web.  The students will fill in the chart to tell about their animal. 

Then students will write sentences to tell about their animals.  They can write so much from the pictures in the books.  This is a fun activity that helps the student learn about zoo animals.

I also have two pages of animal beginning and ending sounds.  I also have answer sheets so students can check their own work. 

And, my favorite!  Story problems.  My kids are getting so good at these.  We work hard to read through the story together and figure out if we will add or subtract. It will be interesting to see them draw the animals.  I created 6 addition and 6 subtraction story problems. 

Animal equations!  I created 12 addition and 12 subtraction cards.  Students use the pictures to write equations.  I also created an answer sheet for each checking.  My students love these!

 

This packet also has some writing prompts!

My favorite animal at the zoo is ....

My least favorite animal at the zoo is....

If I ran the zoo I would....

 

Don't forget to pick up my Zoo Writing Center to complete your zoo learning!

Zoo writing center

 

Have fun and enjoy learning about zoo animals! 

 

 

 

Work on Writing- Pocket Chart Centers

This year I have been working on making pocket chart writing centers each month. I started to make some thematic ones to use as you teach different units.  I like using these because the kids copy the word by the picture.  This is better than just using thematic word walls because they have something to look at later as they read the word.  Many of my kids are ELL and do not have a lot of background knowledge.  So these writing centers help them build their vocabulary. Here are a few that I have in my TPT store. Try them out! You kids will love them!

 

Here are a few pictures from my April writing center! Click on the picture to grab your copy! 

 

We are going to the zoo soon so, of course, I had to make one with zoo animals.  Click on any of the pictures to grab your copy from by TPT store!

 

I also made a farm animals writing center.  A must if you are studying farms! Click on any picture to get your copy!

 

Hope you enjoy my little writing centers!  Easy and effective to implement! I'm working on plants writing center next. If you have a theme that you would like me to make a writing center for let me know!  Thanks! Lisa