Spiders, Skeletons, Pumpkins, Oh My!

Happy Halloween Eve!

CRAFT OVERLOAD! CRAFT OVERLOAD! We whipped out 3 crafts this week…which is a BIT more than I usually dig into!

Confession: I am a first grade teacher and I don’t really LOVE crafts! Oh sure, I love the IDEA of the craft and the finished product! I just don’t necessarily love the {I can’t find the other piece, glue stuck on the tables for 7 DAYS, cutting hair with scissors, I’m not done!} PROCESS of the craft. OK, there I said it!!! Anybody with me, or am I the lone teacher whose blood pressure rises just a touch when the glue bottles break out?? I WILL say that music seems to help…I always try to find a fun theme related song to play while the kiddos craft. Then, I can NICELY say that I can’t hear the music if it gets too loud! :)

Now that I got that out of the way…if you are looking for a fun craft to do with your kiddos tomorrow to celebrate Halloween, check out some of the craftivities we created this week!

First up, was our Cinquain Spiders! We are learning all about descriptive writing this month.  We discussed adjectives and we wrote about spiders. Then, they glued the poem onto black paper and added the legs. They turned out really cute and this was a relatively painless craft!

            

Next up was the Q-tip skeleton to go along with our Human Body unit! After reading Dem Bones {LOVE} and watching the Dem Bones song and book on School Tube, we crafted up this cutie! I found this presh idea on Pinterest! I put 20 Q-tips in a baggie for each kiddo and passed out black paper and glue bottles and let them have at it! I did have to cut 6 Q-tips in half for the fingers and feet. My firsties LOVED these!

Last up, was a Fact Family house. Really simple…just a rectangle for the house and a triangle for the roof. They glued them together and wrote the three numbers (1 on the roof and 2 in the windows that they drew on the house). Then, they wrote their 2 addition and 2 subtraction number sentences at the bottom…adorable visual! :) You could make these {Haunted Houses} if you wish!

I am off to make Monster Munch and Pumpkin Fluff Dip for our Halloween party tomorrow night! Both of these recipes would be fun to make in your classroom, too!

I posted a mini pumpkin unit {Oh My, Pumpkin Pie} on TpT. I plan to add to this more next year, but thought I would go ahead and upload what I had so far in case anyone was looking for some pumpkin math and literacy fun! It includes  a short vowel /u/ word work word sort and printable, a making words activity with the letters in pumpkin pie, a how to make {individual pumpkin pie} writing activity, and a Spin and Graph {pumpkin edition} activity. Click here to check it out! AND…just for reading all the way to end, I will give this unit to the first 3 people that comment on this post! :)

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Blog Stalking :)

Holy October!!!! Where has the month gone??? While I haven't posted, I HAVE been blog stalking! You know you do it too...you want to catch up in blog land, but don't want to post. And who needs to when all of these FUN ideas are floating around!

So...this post is all about the activities that I have been doing {stalking} from YOUR FABTASTIC blogs! :)

Pumpkin Parade ~ We will be having our parade on Halloween! Thank you Lauren, at Just Add Clipart, for this PRESH idea! Can't wait! :) We always did Disguise a Turkey in Kinder and I was looking for a cute home project for my firsties! LOVE!

Candy Corn Fact Families ~ ADORABLE idea, Mrs. Saoud at Primary Graffiti! I found some candy corn cut outs at my local Parent Teacher store to use. I am going to cut them into 3 parts and the kiddos first have to put together the candy corn puzzles. Then, they can pick two candy corn fact families to write the facts.

Fairy Tale unit ~ THANK YOU to Mrs. Magee at First Grade Brain for this awesome unit! It saved me soooo much time as we just added this unit to our curriculum map this year! LOVE the story maps, and the Would you kiss a frog? graph activity is too cute! This unit was perfect as we prepared for our field trip to Birmingham Children's Theatre to see Cinderella!

I will leave you with a quick Spooky Subtraction freebie! I am using this during Number Work with pumpkin erasers from Target as their counters.

Enjoy the rest of your week! :)

Fab Follower Freebie!

WOW! Thank you to all of my fabulous followers!!! It really is amazing! While I do not anxiously check my number of followers every hour like I did when this blog was just a baby {come on...you know you did it too!!!!}, I DO get excited each and every time there is a new follower! :) Thank you so much for all of your positive and sweet comments! Blog land has made this my most creative and FUN year of teaching yet! :)

Here is a freebie to celebrate YOU and your awesomeness! :)

We are studying Fairy Tales this week, so I created a Spin and Graph {Fairy Tale edition} to use as a math menu choice. I did the first Spin and Graph {Apple Edition} a few weeks ago and it was JUST RIGHT for my kiddos!

You can head over to my TpT store to grab it for FREE!

Thank you, thank you, thank you! Enjoy the rest of your week!

Math Menu Update - Spin and Graph

Happy Sunday Funday! Hearting the HECK out of this cool, fall weather here in Bama!

Now that the Daily Five is running smoothly, it is time to shake things up in math! HA! We launched Math Menu last week! I explained to my firsties that I was so impressed with their Daily Five rock star selves, that we were going to try Daily Five in math! I modified our choices a bit from my posts this summer! {reason being: Mountain Math is an effective teaching tool when we review the answers together and Math Menu did not really allow for this. Some students might complete it on a Monday and we might not check it until Friday. Sooo…we replaced the Mountain Math choice with a Data Detective choice!)

I asked them if they would ever go to a restaurant and order two dinners. They enthusiastically said NO!!! I then asked them if they would ever go and order two desserts…some actually said yes to this one! :) {Don’t judge!!!} I told them that they could each ‘order’ {choose} an item from the main course AND the dessert menu every day!

The main course choices are :

Math Journal

IXL {www.ixl.com – a great website that our fab PTO purchased a subscription for}

Data Detective {see more info below!}

The dessert choices are:

iPad

Math games

Number Work

We wanted to incorporate more data into our math block. So…enter Data Detectives! We will rotate different activities, the first of which is SPIN AND GRAPH!  I will modify graphing activities as the year goes on to make it more challenging and to keep it fresh! Coming soon…pumpkins and leaves! :)

The first five people to comment on this post will get the Spin and Graph {Apple Edition} activity for FREE!  Leave a comment with your email address and how you will use the activity in your classroom! :)

Have a GREAT week!