There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bell!

Happy Hump Day! Hope everyone is having a good week! My house is all decorated for Christmas, the new episode of Tori and Dean is on Tivo ready for me to watch, AND I am going out to dinner with my sweet hubs tonight…life is good! :)

Denyse at Scrappin Doodles worked her magic again and designed graphics for the book There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bell by Lucille Colandro. Love, love, LOVE! Click {here} to check out the There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bell mini unit on TpT! It includes sequencing cards, a sequencing printable, an alphabetical order printable, a sentence frame printable, noun and verb sort cards, a noun and verb sort printable, and a Spin and Graph activity with printable.

BELLS make me think of music!!! The first FIVE people to guess my favorite Christmas song will get the There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bell! {Mini Unit} for FREE! I will email the unit to the winners tomorrow! :)

***Congrats to Deborah, Gladys, awrinkleintime, Sandra, Kellie, and ruskieroo! You guessed it...my fave Christmas song is JINGLE BELL ROCK! Check your email for your FREE copy of There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bell! {Mini Unit}
Merry Christmas, ladies!

Stay tuned for some festive fun in December!  Beginning this weekend, I will be celebrating the 12 Days of Christmas! For 12 days I will post a freebie! Who doesn’t love a freebie…especially around the holidays??? If you can’t use the freebie, please pay it forward and tell one of your co-workers about the post! The more, the merrier! Some of the freebies will be holiday related for you to use right away, while others can be used later in the year!

WAIT! There’s more!!! Five Bama (that’s ALABAMA for you non Southern folk!) bloggers have teamed up to host a merry giveaway of 5 TpT units of YOUR choice {1 unit per blog/TpT store}! Details coming soon!

Enjoy the rest of your week!

 

Black Friday and Cyber Monday!

YAY! It's officially the most wonderful time of the year!!!!! CANNOT WAIT to decorate our house! :)

Everything in my TpT store will be 20% off today for Black Friday and it will 20% off again {plus 10% with TpT code CMS28} on Cyber Monday!

Happy shopping!

The Legend of the Five Corn Kernels {FREE!}

Happy Sunday Funday! I CANNOT WAIT for some DELISH sweet potato casserole in T minus 4 days!!!

This is a little activity I have done since my very first year of teaching. This is one of those things that had been passed from teacher to teacher…so I am not sure where the original idea came from, but I DO know it is not my original idea! :) This would be perfect for those of you {ME INCLUDED! :)} who have school Monday and Tuesday this week!

First, you read a paragraph explaining that during the first winter in America, the Pilgrims only had five parched kernels of corn to eat on some days! After reading, show the students a paper plate with 5 popcorn kernels glued in the center. This is SUCH an amazing visual for them! One of my sweet firsties said, “WOW! I would be STARVING!” I know, right???!!!!

You can give your kiddos a snack size baggie, with the The Legend of the Five Corn Kernels story and five pieces of candy corn, to take home. :) I also included a fill in the blank story page that the kiddos could fill out and you could simply staple a baggie with five pieces of candy corn to it.

Click {here} to download The Legend of the Five Corn Kernels activity for FREE on TpT!

I extended the 20% off sale {both units are $2.40} of the I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie mini unit and the Oh My, Pumpkin Pie! mini unit until Tuesday, November 22. These mini units would be great for this short Thanksgiving week, too!

I hope you and your family have a very blessed Thanksgiving!

I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie!

Happy Monday, y’all! I know many of you are in your final days before the Thanksgiving break {jealous!}. We go next Monday and Tuesday, BUT I am excited because my kiddos are performing in the CU-TEST Thanksgiving music program on Tuesday. Turkey Tango, anyone? :)

I absolutely LOVE ALL of the ‘Old Lady’ books!!! They have been one of my faves since I began teaching! Last week, we used I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie as we wrapped up our unit on the Human Body and nutrition. I contacted Denyse at Scrappin Doodles and asked her to create graphics to go along with I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie. She did an absolutely AMAZING job! Could they BE any more perfect {Chandler, anyone??!!!} Can I please be her???? She whipped them up in seriously, like, 24 hours. Now, THAT is service! :)

Click {here} to check out my I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie mini unit. It includes sequencing cards, a sequencing printable, an alphabetical order printable, syllable sort cards, a syllable sort printable, and a Spin and Graph activity…all about the foods the old lady ate! This unit would be perfect for those of you who have school Monday and Tuesday next week and need a little something fun to do, while reviewing some key concepts!

Please comment below to receive this unit for FREE! I will give away 8 copies in honor of my followers! :)

Enjoy your week!

Seashells by the Seashore

TGIF, my friends! Ahhh....Seashells by the Seashore! I SO WISH I was at the shore. Instead...I am in my fleece pajamas, Cherry Coke Zero and Bagel Bites by my side, and TiVo remote in hand! :) You know you’re getting old when…haha! But seriously, this is HEAVEN {if I can't be at the beach}!

Considering the climatic Halloween rush, quickly followed by the post Halloween meltdown that always ensues on November 1, we had a great week! Our word study was digraph /sh/. We read Shelly’s New Shoes {LOVE Phonics Tales ~ always so perfect for a sub!} and completed a word sort activity.

Click {here} to check out my Seashells by the Seashore Digraph /sh/ Word Work activities on TpT.

In Writing, we are still focusing on Descriptive Writing. This week, we focused on using color words to make our writing more interesting. We started off the week with Abby’s presh crayon box activity. Then, we used books such as My Many Colored Days, The Crayon Box That Talked, and A Bad Case of Stripes during our mini lessons, always pausing to point out and discuss color words.

Still pounding away on Fact Families in Math and the Human Body in Science…nothing noteworthy there. Can’t wait to wrap it up next week so we can begin busting out the turkeys!!! :)

Have a FAB, FALL weekend!

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! :)