January Jumpstart (January Centers, Y as a Vowel, and Loads of FREEBIES)

Boy was it a cold start back after winter break.  I can take a few days of this weather, but I'm just about over it.  Of course the cold did not slow us down in class.  We made the most out of the 3 days and 5 hours that we had this week.  (Monday was an admin. day and Thursday was a delayed start.)
My goals for this week were to introduce our January math and literacy centers (all 21 of them), to do a little Daily 5 retraining, to launch Rocket Math (addition fact drills), to teach all about Y as a vowel, and to work in some fun New Year's activities.  Quite a list for a short week.  I'm happy to report that we fit everything in. :)

My students are all about getting new centers.  I change them out each month.  I intro all of them over a day (or two) during a few mini lessons.  After I explain and model all the centers, they are up and running.

I love the year long review these centers provide.  They also free me up to meet with students to do a little reteaching.

In math this month we are working out of my Baby It's Cold Outside {10 Math Centers for January}. This packet includes work with addition, subtraction, number comparisons, number order, nonstandard measurement, time to the half hour, missing addends, and more.  You can get a closer look by clicking on the picture.

Below is a FREE center from this packet, Snowman Comparisons.  With this center students will practice comparing numbers with the greater than and less than signs.  Click on the picture for your own FREE copy.

   

As for our literacy centers, we'll be working with the companion packet, Baby It's Cold Outside {10 Literacy Centers for January}.

This packet includes work with rhyming words, long and short a discrimination, sentence sorting, contractions, synonyms, antonyms, compound words, sight words, and more.  You can check it out by clicking on the picture.

You can have a FREE center from this packet by clicking on the picture below.  Hot Chocolate Blends provides your students practice with initial blends.  After matching all the initial blend picture cards with the word cards, students will write their answers on the recording sheet.

   

Besides our work with literacy centers and math centers, we also spent a bit of time practicing Y as a vowel.  We started off by going over our anchor chart and brainstorming words that end with y.

If you would like this anchor chart to use with your students, click on the picture.

We talked about how most one syllable words that end with y have the long I sound.  While most two (or more) syllable words that end with y have a long E sound.

Students applied their vast knowledge of Y as a Vowel by doing various sorts, reading, and writing activities.  We primarily worked out of my Words at Work {Seven Word Work Activities for Y as a Vowel}.  You can learn more about this packet by clicking on the picture.

If you would like a free copy of one of the activities from this packet, click on the picture below.  It's a word sort with Y as long E and Y as long I.

With all of this learning going on, we had to fit in some time for a little creativity.  Plus, my walls were bare after all of our Christmas craftivities went home.  We really needed some student artwork to liven the classroom.  

So . . . after reading some favorite New Year's themed books, we discussed resolutions.  Students thought about personal resolutions and wrote them down.  Then we made our New Year's Resolution Kids.  

Using the party blowout was certainly not an original idea, but I love it.  The kids love using them too.  I'm a little worried that the blowouts will be ripped on the Resolution Kids as soon as I send them home.  For first graders, blowouts can be just too fun to resist.  Maybe I need to get another set of blowouts to give my students when they take their projects home.

We had a great week.  Everyone seemed to be rested and ready to get back to our routine.  Next week we'll be celebrating our 100th Day of School.  I cannot believe we are already at the 100th Day point in the year.  Time flies when you're having fun.  Time also flies when you are super busy.

Thanks for stopping by.