Down on the Farm!

This week is one of my favorite weeks of the school year! This Friday we go on our annual field trip to the local dairy farm. Sometimes field trips are more stress than fun, but I really enjoy this one. :)

To prepare for our trip, we're doing a farm theme in our classroom this week. I made this little center activity to reinforce our recent study of nouns and adjectives. It's FREE at my TPT store, so feel free to go pick up a copy. If you like it, be sure to leave a rating and follow my store!

Flip Flop Addition

Last week our first grade team introduced the commutative property to our students. Now, I am a strong believer in teaching students the correct terminology for things, but I also know that at this age they sometimes need something a little more fun to help them remember. Because of this, the commutative property has always been known as "flip flop addition" in my classroom. I've found that this really helps the strategy "stick" and I FINALLY decided to create some activities to go along with the name we use. (Probably because I am really not digging our new math series...anyone else using Go Math? Not my favorite...)

I uploaded my activities to TPT, so if you're teaching your firsties (or seconds!) about the commutative property, too, feel free to check it out!

For a Friday bonus, I'll send a copy to the first three people to comment for FREE. :) Just leave a comment with your email address and I'll send it your way!

It's been too long!

Hello friends!

I can't believe it's been over a year since I last updated this blog! I miss the community of teachers here and have resolved to pick it back up for 2012-2013.

Question - This year I have three ESOL students in my class. I don't have any experience with ESOL and want to make sure I am doing the very best I can for these kids. Can anyone point me in the direction of any great blogs/websites on teaching ELLs?

I though y'all would appreciate this... :)

Today two of my girls were having a little disagreement. We're working a lot on problem solving in our classroom, so I decided to just sit back and watch them work it out. I could see that they were not making any progress, so I started moving in their direction to help them. When I got there, I could see that one of the girls was getting pretty angry.

She stomped her foot on the ground, crossed her arms and shouted,


"If you keep on being mean like this, when you grow up...you...you...YOU WON'T GET IN TO A GOOD COLLEGE!"

I died.

I l.o.v.e. first grade. :) :) :)

WOO HOO!

I signed my contract for 2011-2012 today and am thrilled to report that I will be spending another year in first grade! I love this age and am SO happy to be staying. :)

On a sadder note, 8 teachers from our school did not have their contracts renewed due to budget cuts. Please keep these teachers and their families in your prayers and keep your fingers crossed for employment opportunities for each of them!

MeasuremANTS

Hey ladies,

We're about to start non-standard measurement, and I put together these little activities to help us practice. Selfishly, I put it on TPT (but still for FREE!) because I want to know how many people are downloading. :) Hope this is something you can use!

 

Download by clicking here. :)

What's better than a giveaway?

A double giveaway! Head on over to KindergartenWorks for a fantastic double giveaway co-hosted with DeeDee Willis!

...or don't go because I really want to win this one. ;)