Octo-Bear FUN

Next week we will be welcoming Octo-Bear with one of our favorite units.  All week long we will be doing teddy bear themed activities with our kiddos that reinforce and review all of the skills we have been working  on since the beginning of the year.  We will wrap up the week by inviting everyone to bring their favorite stuffed animal teddy bear from home on Friday.

Here’s a {sneak} peek at the math & literacy centers we will be using . . .

AND the literature, writing, math and art activities . . .

This unit and all of our other October themed activities will be on sale through the end of the month . . . don’t miss out on these Fall savings.

       

Speechless

What teacher doesn’t LOVE Carson-Dellosa . . . right???  Do you get as giddy as we do when their new catalog arrives in the mail and you get to look through it for the first time???  Well you can imagine how excited we were when we found out that our little ol’ blog was going to be featured as one of their Blogs of the Week.  What a honor!!! 

Head on over and check out their NEW {improved} website . . .

Make sure you do a little shopping while you’re there.  After you fill your basket with all of your must haves you’ll kick up your heels when you find out that they now have $5.95 flat rate shipping on ALL online orders!

Happy shopping teacher friends!!!  And make sure you check them out on Facebook.  That way you won’t ever miss out on any of their hot deals.

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Fall Word of the Day

With Fall just around the corner we thought we better get our new set of Fall Word of the Day worksheets and posters ready to go.  They are now available to purchase in our TpT store.  We plan to use them throughout the months of September, October and November with our thematic units to introduce new vocabulary.

Let’s Get it Started

We wanted to give you a little {sneak} peek at the way we start each and every day in our classrooms.

  

We always feature one of our basic sights words as the “Word of the Day”. 

Students pick up a worksheet as they arrive each morning and complete it independently.  This quick activity reinforces proper letter formation, spelling, sight word recognition and the mechanics of a complete sentence.

       

    

If you are looking for a simple activity to use with your students each morning as they arrive head on over to our TpT store and check out our Word of the Day worksheets and posters.

   

Here is a complete listing of the words that are included in this set. 

We also have several thematic sets available to go with your monthly classroom themes.  Head on over to our TpT store and click on the Word of the Day custom category tab.

Coming Soon – Fall Word of the Day Set

Interactive Calendar

Each day we begin with a fun interactive calendar routine on our Promethean Boards.  It’s one of our kids very favorite things to do.  What makes it so fun are all the songs that we have incorporated into the colorful slides.  We thought it would be fun to share a few of them with you as well as the template that we are using at the beginning of the year.

Click {here} to download a complementary copy of our beginning of the year calendar template.  We created the template as a pdf and then added moveable elements and media links using our ActiveInspire software.

During the month of September we added several red, yellow and green apples in the right hand column that we will use to create a pattern each day.  There are also a few birthday cakes that we can use to show when students will be celebrating their special day.  There is also a link to Starfall at the top so we can log on each morning and do their calendar routine before we write the new date on our calendar.

  

Click on the picture to download a free YouTube downloader to save the videos as files to your computer.

   

Here are some fun songs that reinforce the days of the week and months of the year.

click {here} to view video

click {here} to view video

click {here} to view video

click {here} to view video

click {here} to view video

Throughout the month we always track what the weather is like.  We begin by checking the daily forecast on WeatherBug that has a live feed from our high school.

We also use this time to reinforce the seasons.  This may be our kids favorite song of ALL!!!

click {here} to view video

At the beginning of the year we begin tracking our days of school in an effort to get to our big 100th Day of School Celebration.  Each day we use the highlighter tool to shade in the day of school and we use this time to talk about number patterns and counting.

Here are some great songs to use at the beginning of the year that reinforce counting to 20 and those tricky numbers in the teens.click {here} to view video

click {here} to view video

We also keep track of how many days of school we have had by using base ten blocks that we have added to this slide.

Even though coin recognition and values are no longer part of our assessed standards we are still incorporating them into our daily calendar routine.  It’s one more skill that we feel like is important to be exposed to and it reinforces counting by 1’s, 5’s and 10’s.

We have added piles of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters in the empty space to the right that we can slide onto the hand to make different amount of money.

This slide was inspired by this catchy video.  If you are an American Idol fan you may notice that it was created by the song Pants on the Ground.  Luckily our kids are too young to remember that now!!!

click {here} to view video

click {here} to view video

We’ve been learning to spell all of our color words and number words so on these slides we have inserted media files to all of our favorite Dr. Jean songs.

So there you have it . . . everything we do each morning to make learning fun!!!

We promise to share additional slides and links to videos that we add throughout the year as we introduce new skills.

Common Core CATS Galore

When we return to school on Tuesday we will finally begin teaching our kiddos how to build, decode, read and write short a words.  Throughout the week we will be incorporating some of our favorite cat themed literature and art activities into our lesson plans.  To go along with all of the fun we have made a new set of Common Core Cats Galore Math and Literacy Centers that we are looking forward to using.

  

Here’s a little {sneak} peek  . . .

We hope you are all enjoying a safe and happy holiday weekend with your friends and family.  What better time to have a sale, right?!?!  So, until tomorrow every item in our TpT store has been discounted 20% . . . including this new set of math and literacy centers.  Make sure you head over and check it out if you are looking for something new to use in your own classroom.