I love, love, love Math Work Stations! (freebie)

Where were you this morning? I saw a lot of familiar bloggers along the Blog Swap and Hop. Wasn't it fabulous? I found useful freebies, new blogs, and just enjoyed reading what other bloggers are up to. I told myself I'd stay off my computer for a while when I was finished hopping around, but I got the creative bug and made some things to go in my jungle/animal print themed classroom next year. 

The first is for Math Work Stations. People, if you haven't read this yet, you may want to. Last year was my 15th year teaching (11 years of that in 1st grade) and this was one of the best things I've ever introduced to my classroom. In our district, or in all of California (I'm not sure), were supposed to have 15 minutes of "math intervention." Work Stations were perfect for this. I used them at the start of math time and kids did them while I pulled a small group. Depending on what I needed to do with my group they may have switched and done 2 work stations, but this was rare. Often the group I pulled were students I thought would struggle with the lesson. My thought was to intervene before students had trouble rather than after. So I pre-taught and had the kids do some of the problems on the math worksheet. When I taught the lesson to the whole class I could see little light bulbs appear over the heads of the students who'd been in my group. Well not really. But you know what I mean. And they'd smile. I could see their confidence building. And they were much more successful every day.

If you want to read more about Math Work Stations, I found a lot of good information on Mrs. Parker's blog

Warning: once you start, you'll probably have a new project on your hands. I mean I love, love, LOVE math work stations!

Here is a picture of the tubs I used for Math Work Stations and some of my earliest work stations.

How can you get the cute stars in the pictures? Graphics by The 3AM Teacher
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/The-3am-Teacher
http://the3amteacher.blogspot.com/

So to get ready for my jungle theme this year, I made some labels with numbers 1-12. The animals with numbers will go on the front of each tub and the larger numbers will go around the room so students know where to take their activity. If they'll work for you, just click on the picture and you should be able to download them. Just please leave a little note if you do.

Both sets of numbers are in the same document,

The numbers will also go in the pocket I use to keep track of which stations are being done each day. I put each students name on a card and slip that in next to the number of the station they'll be doing that day. At the bottom of the chart I put "Work with Teacher" and put names there as needed. I change theme daily. One things I did was duplicate some of the stations so I didn't have to create or teach so many games. Sometimes station 1 was the same as station 6 but the kids didn't seem to mind.

I'm curious, what do you do for "intervention" with your struggling math students? Leave me a note, I'd love to hear.

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You'll Want to Win This!

Thanks to my sweet bloggy friends who chimed in on which classroom theme I should pick. I've decided on a jungle/animal print theme... oh, wait, the beach theme... oh, wait.. ugh! I still can't decide. But I need to soon so that I can start buying what I need and creating the rest. The jungle will probably still win out. I'll let you know.

I also wanted to let you know that Amanda over at Teaching Madness is having a giveaway to celebrate having 300 follower! And one of the things you can win is a Macy's gift card. You can click on her button below to enter, but you probably shouldn't because I'm going to win it. Just kidding! I've won 2 things I can remember. One was a few cute butterfly bowls from Heather at Heather's Heart and the other was a flat of bottled water at a baseball game. Maybe I'll get lucky again, who knows? Anyway, you should definitely check out Amanda's super blog!

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Summer Shopping ... Isn't it fun?

It feels like summer here today. The sun is out and its beautiful. And here I am at my computer blogging- go figure! I'll get up and get some other things done right after this later.

Right now I'm trying to decide on a classroom theme for next year. I'm tossed between jungle and beach. I have a tree that lends itself perfectly to a jungle theme and I could use animal print borders for my boards, etc. But the tree would also work for a beach theme and I found a cute bulletin board set and could use lots of bright colors  to decorate. I also stumbled upon super cute surfing projects on Brooke's blog Perspectives and Deanna Jump's blog.

This is driving me crazy! What do you think I should choose? I'd appreciate your thoughts. I need to make up my mind.

I did some shopping for next year on TPT and found thesegreat activities so I thought I'd share.

I love what Kelly and Diane have going on at Made for !st Grade and their pictures on their blogs convinced me this was a must have! I can't wait to change up the beginning of my year with this.

With our district starting Common Core, I really want to integrate math journals. I've thought about it before but just didn't get it going. So I found these Back to School prompts from Anna at Crazy for First Grade and I think they'll help me kick it off nicely. I'm thinking of binding plain white paper with a cute cover as their journal. It might work to have that on the desks as children arrive in the morning and they can glue in the prompt so we'll be ready to go at math time. If you use math journals, how do you do it?

I bought this packet from Abby at The Inspired Apple. She is amazing! I bought her Hot Chocolate packet last year and loved it! So I thought I couldn't go wrong. There are a lot of fun things I do at the beginning of the year but I'm looking for ways to change it up.  This will be a fun change.

  For math I bought Six in the Fish Tank from Mrs. Arnold at Oceans of First Grade Fun. It will be perfect for learning ways to make six and it comes with adorable fish the kids can use as manipulatives. She's my math inspiration for sure. Last year I used her Nine Little Ladybugs activity and will definitely do that again.

So those are my purchases so far. There will be more when I decide between a jungle theme and a beach theme. What to do, what to do?

You can link up and share your summer shopping fun at Ladybug's Teacher Files. Just click on the picture below. 

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Giveaway Winner!

Thanks to everyone who entered my giveaway

(or even just stopped by to look around). 

Congratulations to the winner (ta da!).... 

It's Angela from The Daily Alphabet! 

She won a $25 Amazon gift card. Be sure to check out her spectacular blog.

Angela, please email me your address so I can send the gift card out to you. Thanks!

Have a super weekend!

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Giveaway central!

 Hey all! Hope you're enjoying summer or your last few days of school.

There are so many giveaways going right now. Such fun! It's not too late to enter the one I'm having to celebrate my new blog look. But there are several others too. Just check below.

I really love my blog's overhaul so I'm giving away a $25 amazon gift card. We can all find an easy way to spend that, can't we?   You can check out my post *here*.

I'll use the random number generator thing-a-ma-jig to select a winner so leave me your email too!

The giveaway lasts through Thursday night, June 21. Thanks for stopping by!

Mary is celebrating 600 follower- wow! Check out here great blog by clicking on her button. Her giveaway is for an Amazon card too.

Jennifer has several things you can win to help her celebrate her one-year old blog!

And Sarah has 100 followers (well, more by now). Check out her adorable blog!

Enjoy your day!

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A Whole New Look! A Giveaway and freebie to Celebrate!

It's here... Ta Da! My blog has a whole new look thanks to Barbara at Ruby Slippers Blog Designs. I'm very excited!

So.... I'm having a giveaway to celebrate and here's a game you can pick up too.

Game first,

I love the "I have, Who has" games and my students do too. For the first couple weeks I play one about the names of letters. I'm thinking of having a jungle/animal print theme for my room next year so I made a game to match. My game was just hand written on large index cards- not so pretty. So I made this to replace it. I also like the cards a little bigger at the start of the year, so there are 2 per page. Clicking on the picture should get you the game.

Giveaway time! I really love my blog's overhaul so I'm giving away a $25 amazon gift card. We can all find an easy way to spend that, can't we?  

There are several ways to enter:

1. Leave me comment letting me know that you are now following or already do follow my blog.

2. Blog about this giveaway and leave a comment with the link to your post. I'd love to read it!

3. Add my new blog button to your sidebar or buttons page (or my button if you already had it). Just leave me a little note to let me know.

I'll use the random number generator thing-a-ma-jig to select a winner so leave me your email too!

The giveaway lasts through Thursday night, June 21. Thanks for stopping by!

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Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes On The Way

Big changes are coming! My blog is getting a complete overhaul. I've been wanting a new look for a while so I contacted Barbara from Ruby Slippers Blog Designs and Grade ONEderful to see what she could do. She's almost done now and I just love it! It's just about ready, so please come back in the next couple days to check out my new look. Be sure to check out the great things on Barbara's blogs too!

  This is my first post from my iPad, so the buttons and text are lined up funny. I tried it several ways and nothing changed. Oh, well. I'm glad to be able to post from this. Woohoo!

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Amazing Giveaways!

What a great day! It's cloudy and chilly outside so I'm here -and have been for longer than I should admit. What am I saying, you understand : )   -blogstalking like crazy! And I stumbled on these 2 amazing giveaways from two incredible teachers. I've used items I've purchased from both of these teachers and many of the other teachers included in the giveaway. I just had to share. Hop on over!

Pete the Cat fans- check this out!

 I'm off to have lunch with my sweetie and one of our favorite lunch spots! Hope you get to blogstalk a lot today too. That would be my "you know it's summer when." I love summer!
 Chrissy

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Ah, summer vacation...

 Wahoo!! It's going to be nice to relax, sleep past 6 a.m., and spend some quality time blogging. It was sad to see my little kiddos go though. They were such a wonderful group! And one of my little guys coming next year has been known to run across the tops of the tables in his kindergarten class. I'm a bit worried about that, I must say. Right now, however, I'm enjoying the thought of not working so hard for while. I just have to go back Monday and finish do my cums and turn in my keys.

 What do you do with your class on the last day of school? Do you have any favorite activities? Does your grade level do anything together for the last day?

On the last day I take my class out to play with bubbles and frisbees. After that I let them shaving cream paint on their desks. That is great fun! It cleans the desks well and makes the room smell good too. My class had time to have classmates sign their memory books and then we went outside for our traditional pizza picnic. I thought I'd cry, but I made it through okay.


Do any of you use Houghton Mifflin Expressions for math? I'm going to training on Tuesday and we'll be using that next year. I'd love to hear your opinion of it or read any posts you'd like to share about it.

And I feel really dumb asking this question, and I've tried not too, but while I was gone from by blog a bit ago, the "follow" button at the top of blogs disappeared. How do you follow a blog now? I tried Google Friend Connect and that puts a blog in my reading list, but is there something else? I really feel silly asking, but if you can help, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks for reading, thanks for sharing. Have a wonderful weekend!
 Chrissy

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Dinosaurs Part II and T-Rex freebies

Today was so much fun! Even with a class as ready for summer as this one. Our class theme yesterday and today was dinosaurs. Today we talked about Tyrannosaurus Rex.
First I showed the kids a T-Rex footprint I'd made from butcher paper. They traced their feet and them we taped them onto my footprint to see how many "first grade feet" fit inside one T-Rex foot. I wasn't sure how many would fit so I had each child trace one foot. Hint for next time: have them trace and cut out both feet. It took almost thirty feet to cover the T-Rex footprint. I took a quick picture of some kids pretending to put up their feet. These two thought it was hilarious to "pretend." First graders are so easily amused sometimes, aren't they?

The next activity was to find out how long the stride of a Tyrannosaurus was and how many steps a first grader would have to take to equal the same distance. A T-Rex's stride is 12-15 feet. Did you know that? I didn't know that until I looked it up. Can you imagine? I'm glad there's nothing around like that today. I started by showing the kids how long 15 feet is using my tape measure. They had to estimate the number of steps it would take them to go 15 feet and record it on their paper. Then went outside to find out exactly how many steps were needed. My class had a great time! I hope your will too if you try it. Just click on the picture to grab this freebie!

Aren't the little T-rex so cute? They're from Kirsten at KPM Doodles. I love her stuff! And I adore these Scrappin Doodles borders.

If school's already over for you, I hope you're enjoying some sun and extra blogging time. If you're still in school like me, well then, I hope you're class isn't toooooo crazy! Have a great end of the year!
 Chrissy

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Dinosaur Freebie and Currently

I only have 2 1/2 days left! Woohoo! My class has been okay so far. I mean I could tell they were anxious for summer, but today.... oh brother! They couldn't sit long, couldn't focus long, and needed to MOVE! Good thing we were learning about dinosaurs today. I did something very different  (for me, that is) and set up the last 10 days to focus on different themes. So today and tomorrow are dinosaurs and Wednesday/Thursday is Summer. We've done space, Chris Van Allsburg (one of my all-time favorite kids authors), penguins, and "Cool Kids." It's been fun.

Over the weekend I made up a dinosaur measuring activity I thought I'd share. You can grab the freebie by clicking on the first picture.

 

I set up 4 stations (all the same) with the 6 "length" cards and 4 other stations with the 6 "height" cards. Kids worked with a partner, measured each dinosaur and recorded their measurement on the recording sheet. When everyone was done, they switched to do the other station. It worked out great and they kids had fun. Only one little guy had trouble measuring. He just couldn't get the hang of putting the beginning of the ruler on one line. He just laid the ruler wherever and wrote the measurement. After showing him many times, he finally got it. Yippee!

After school I went to visit my friend Kara. If you read my post over the weekend, you read about her unfortunate situation. I thought I'd have to try not to cry, but it was actually nice, pleasant visit and I didn't cry at all- yeah for me! It was wonderful to see her what was probably one last time. Even though it doesn't change the sadness at all, I'm focusing on the positive part of our visit and the time I've known her and her wonderful family. And as for losing our bunny, we feel the void but it's getting better. Thank for you all your sweet comments.

Now on to my currently...

 Chrissy

5

Too Much Sadness

I have left my sweet little blog alone for a while as I'm taking a break in the evenings. But school is almost over and I have big plans for creating things for next year (I'm smiling as I think of that). I can't wait!
But since I haven't been posting much I actually considered not posting this either but then thought again about how it might help to talk about it. You see, this has been a very sad week around here. We had to put our 12 year old bunny , Frankie, down this week. He just wasn't able to use his back legs quite right anymore and seemed like he was getting quite uncomfortable. For those of you who don't know bunnies, 12 year old is like a 25 year old cat or 110 year old person. He was such a joy for us and we'd had him since he was about 4 months old. He was a house bunny and spent his time hopping around the living room when we were home. He was still so happy to see us and be petted and given treats that the decision to put him down was hard. We'd been giving him some pain meds for his legs but they weren't helping too much anymore. He didn't make any noise really, but it still seems much more quiet around here.

My sweet little bunny

Then this week I also found out some sad news about a parent of two former students. She's had MS for a while now but about 5 months ago was diagnosed with a rare condition where an infection is attacking her brain. She's lost the use of one side of her body but had regained a little movement in her hand and foot so I was hopeful she could be one of the lucky about 2 out of 200 who survive this. I found out that this week that she's not. I'm going to go see her and just hope I won't cry too much. She came to visit me at school about 2 months ago and it was wonderful to see her. She's an incredible person and her family is wonderful. My favorite memory is when I first met her and her oldest son. I was teaching kindergarten and her son came to my class in January. We were learning about penguins and when it came time for writing he spelled "Antarctica" correctly! When she came to pick him up I asked her if it would be okay if I checked with a first grade teacher to see if he could join her for reading group time since he obviously did not need to be learning words in the -at family! She was thrilled that he'd be challenged like that. We've stayed in touch over the last 10 years or so and I was privileged enough to be here youngest daughters teacher as well.

It just breaks my heart that they are all having to go through this. It's going to be hard to see her now. Her speech is difficult to understand. And she's not able to get up.  But I'm going to go. They are such a wonderful family! If you pray, maybe you can extend a few to Kara and her family.

Thanks for listening. I promise my next post will be a lot happier.
 Chrissy

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