Last Minute Thanksgiving Resources {Including a FREE Directed Drawing}

Happy almost Thanksgiving. :)
I love this time of year.  The holiday season is just getting started. It's not yet December, so my kids aren't too crazy yet. Best of all, some delicious holiday eating is only days away.
To help take advantage of this special time, I thought I'd share a few Thanksgiving themed resources. I'll started with a quick and simple Turkey Directed Drawing.

This directed drawing is a favorite of my students. They always seems so surprised with their directed drawing creations and this turkey is no exception. These directed drawings make an adorable display that students are sure to be proud of.  Plus, this drawing is super simple to teach.

Click here for your FREE copy of my Turkey Directed Drawing.

Another resource I'll be using, during the days leading up to Thanksgiving, is my On Point Leaning Journal for November.  I've used these print-and-go math and literacy activities in a variety of ways over the years (depending on my group of students).  

In the past, I've made my On Point Learning Journal into a booklet that students work on at their own pace (if they've completed all of their work).  This year, I've been using the activities in small groups for review and reinforcement of skills from earlier in the year. Having quick-prep and meaningful, seasonally inspired activities makes planning a snap.

Click here for more details about the On Point Learning Journal for November.

One final Thanksgiving themed resource I'd like share is my Perky Turkey Fact Family Scoot. I actually created this scoot a few years ago.  Originally it was a subtraction scoot.  Well, this year, my students are in need of a little extra practice with fact families.

I tweaked the original Perky Turkey Subtraction Scoot so that my young learners can have a chance to work with fact families.

Students will scoot to each turkey card and write the fact family numbers on their recording sheets.  Then, students will write a fact family with each set of numbers.

My students love scoot and write the room. I know they'll enjoy practicing fact families with this activity.

Click here if you would like a FREE copy of Perky Turkey Fact Family Scoot.

I hope these resources are a help for you in the weeks/days leading up to Thanksgiving.
Thank you for taking time to visit School Is a Happy Place.
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

It's Raining, It's Pouring: Rain Themed Ideas and Freebies for Primary Classrooms

April showers bring...lots of indoor recess.  Rainy days are not always a favorite of teachers, but maybe it's time to rethink our feelings about rain.

One way to make the most out of a rainy day is with some great read alouds.  There are so many books about rain, storms, rainbows, thunder, lightning, and more.  Two of my favorite rain themed read alouds are Rain! by Linda Ashman and Raindrop, Plop! by Wendy Cheyette Lewison.

Both of these stories really lend themselves to activities with various comprehension skills.

One way we used these books was by doing little text-to-text comparison using a Venn diagram. For my first graders, I put together the Venn diagram printable pictured below, that includes cut and glue responses.  Not all of my students needed the cut and glue option, but it was really helpful to most.  Students completed the diagram on their own without glueing their responses.  Then, I went over the answers.  Students could make the changes they needed to and then they glued everything in place.  

Of course, higher flying students can come up with their own responses and write them.  Or, they can use the cut and glue option and then add some additional responses of their own.

For a FREE copy of the Venn diagram we used with Rain! and with Raindrop, Plop!, you can click here.

After reading and comparing these two texts, my firsties had lots of ideas about fun things to do on a rainy day.  It was the perfect time to make a cute writing craftivity to brighten the hallway outside our classroom.

Students wrote about what they would like to do on a rainy day.  They could also write about a rainy day they experienced in the past.  The read alouds really helped students generate some great ideas for their writing pieces.

Click here if you would like more details about this Rainy Day Kids writing craftivity.

Another rain themed activity that my students absolutely loved was Raindrop Adjectives (a write the room activity).
I printed 16 raindrop words on blue paper and cut them out.  I placed them around the room and gave every student a recording sheet.

As students rotated around the room, they wrote each of the words on their recording sheets.  After they had all the words on their sheet, they returned to their desks and colored the boxes that had adjectives.

I picked up all the raindrop words while the students were coloring the adjectives at their desks.  After a few minutes, we gathered together to discuss all the words and which words are truly adjectives.  We taped the adjective raindrops to our anchor chart.
While parts of speech are still pretty tricky to many of my students, they have come a long way in their understanding of these concepts.

You can click here if you would like a FREE copy of Raindrop Adjectives to use with your class.

My students also enjoyed some rain inspired math activities during center time and during guided practice.  This week we started work on telling time.  I put together this simple digital time/clock matching activity for students to complete with a partner.

Students matched the digital time card with the clock cards and then wrote the times for the clocks on the recording sheet.  They did a great job!

Click here if you would like a free copy of Time for a Shower (a time to the hour activity).

Rain doesn't have to spoil your day.  It can be a fabulous jumping off point for some thematic learning.  I hope some of these activities are helpful to you as you make each day count with your young learners.
Thanks for stopping by.

Elf in the Classroom (Ideas and Free Activities)

At dinner tonight my daughter started up a conversation about holidays and explained that Christmas is her number one.  I was not surprised in the least.  Then she proceeded to tell me that getting visits from our family elf is one of her favorite parts of Christmas.
Our Ms. Joy arrives tomorrow and so does my class elf, Anderson.  At the moment I have an"E" written in Sharpie on my hand.  That E stands for elves...the elves that I better not forget about or else.
I should probably just keep a Sharpie E on my hand for the next 24 days, just in case.

If your class gets a visit for an elf, here are a few activities (old and new) that you might want to use with your students to take advantage of all the elf-induced excitement.

First up is a fun Elf Glyph.
These glyphs make a very festive display.  As part of this project, there is a little data collection/analysis activity, if you want to extend the activity a bit.  A writing prompt is included as well.
Elf Glyph:  A Fun Holiday Creativity is available at my Teachers Pay Teachers store.  You can click here for more details.

Next up is an elf themed scoot (or write the room or math center).  My firsties have been working on fact families.  I made this simple activity for students to complete in small groups.
You can click on one of the picture below for a FREE copy of Elf Friends: A Free Math Activity (Practice with Fact Families).

Another elf inspired goody for your classroom (or even for home) is my Diary of an Elf:  A Free Writing Activity.  Your students can get in some extra writing as they chronicle the adventures of their elf with this daily journal.  

For a FREE copy of Diary of an Elf, click on the picture below.

I have one more elf freebie before I wrap things up.  It's my Elftastic Rhymes.  This quick, print and go sort features rhyming words for the book The Elf on the Shelf.  I like to use it after I read the book to the class.  

Students read each set of words and determine if they rhyme or not.  If your students are anything like mine, they can always use more practice with rhyming words.

For a FREE copy of Elftastic Rhymes, click on one of the pictures below.

I hope you've picked up some ideas that will help incorporate elf into some of your learning activities.  If you have a favorite elf in the classroom idea, I'd love to hear about it :).

Thanks for stopping by.

Thanksgiving Tidbits (Activities and Freebies)

It's a little less than a week until Thanksgiving.  I cannot believe it.  It seems like Halloween was just last weekend.  Craziness!  We'll have a couple of days in school next week to wrap up some of our Thanksgiving activities, then we're off for a little break.
Traditionally, my first graders get a little (let just say) spirited the week or two leading up to a holiday/break.  Being prepped and ready with plenty of engaging learning activites is super important.  Here's a peek some at a few Thanksgiving inspired math and literacy activities we stayed busy with this week.

We started off by making our Pilgrim Writing Craftivity.  Our class cabinets have been embarrassingly bare for the past couple of weeks and these little Pilgrims look great.
On the backs of the Pilgrims, students wrote about what they are thankful for.

Some of our literacy time has been devoted to Thanksgiving themed literacy centers.  I am so happy to see how much independence most of my students are gaining as we work through our year of math and literacy centers.

Speaking of math centers, those have been Thanksgiving themed as well.  Math centers are an awesome way to provide ongoing review and to lay the ground work for upcoming instruction.  The fact that they can be seasonally inspired makes them even better.

Another Thanksgiving related resource we used during our math time was my It's Turkey Time Math Mini Book.  I made this book a couple of years ago and have been using it ever since.  It includes word problems that review several of the skills we've been working on so far this school year.
If you would like to have a FREE copy of this math mini book, click on the picture below.

We wrapped up our week with a fun round of scoot.  When I say fun, I mean FUN!  My firsties think scoot is awesome.  They love moving around the room or in this case switching from desk to desk.  They get a huge kick out of scoot.
Since we have been working on subtraction the past few weeks, our scoot focused on basic subtraction equations.

If you would like a FREE copy of my Perky Turkey Subtraction Scoot, you can click on the picture below.
I addition to using this freebie for scoot with your students, it also works great as a math center or as a write the room activity.

Hope some of these activities are helpful to you during these last few days before Thanksgiving.  If you are among the lucky teachers that have the entire week of Thanksgiving off...enjoy your well deserved break.

Best.

Short Vowel Solutions: Ideas and Freebies

A quarter of our year has come and gone.  The first four to five weeks are really devoted to procedures and routines in the classroom.  Of course we've also been working on some of the standards.  A big focus during the beginning of the year is always short vowels.
One area many of my firsties struggled with this year was phonemic awareness of medial sounds.  They were awesome at hearing the initial sounds in words, but hearing that vowel sound in the middle was tricky.
To get more practice correctly identifying the vowel sounds in words, we did lots of listening oral segmenting of words.  We also did (and continue to do) lots of picture sorts.  Students need to be able to identify the sounds of the words, without having them written down.  Oral segmenting and picture sorting really helps with phonemic understanding of short vowel sounds.
If you would like a free set of my short vowel picture sort (seen in the picture below) you can click here.

Brain Pop Jr.'s Short Vowels video chip was an inspiration for another one of our activities to practice correctly identifying short vowel sounds.  In the clip, Annie labels objects in her classroom that have short vowel sounds.
I paired my students up to label short vowel objects in our classroom as well.  Students wrote their words on post-its and stuck them to the short vowel objects.  Then we gathered at group time to share what objects were labeled.  The class determined if the labeling was correct with a little thumbs up or thumbs down voting.

Of course we worked with actual short vowel words as well.  After we covered all of the short vowel sounds, we did a little differentiated Write the Room short vowel word sorting.   

I printed the short vowel words cards on two different colors of paper and posted them around the room.  My below level readers read and sorted the words that were printed on the red cards.  (The red cards include picture support.)  My on/above level students sorted words on the yellow cards.

My students always love Write the Room activities.  If you would like a free copy of my Sort It Out {A FREE Write the Room Activity}, you can click on the picture below.

During our word work time we did quite a bit more independent practice reading, sorting, spelling, illustrating, and matching short vowel words.
Click on the picture below to learn more about the independent tasks students completed to round out their understanding of short vowels.

Next week we'll start our work with digraphs.  We'll proceed with many of these same types of activities.  Listening for digraphs, reading words with digraphs, and spelling words with digraphs. 

Hopefully next time I check back in, I'll be writing from my new computer.   My dependable little MacBook is past its prime.  After making an update this summer (big mistake), any work I do on her (like this bog post) takes way longer than it should.  I'm not a big fan of change, but the time has come.  Fingers crossed all goes smoothly.  If you don't hear back from me for a while, you'll know why. ;)

Have a great week.

Just a Pinch of Grinch

Just unloading some pics from this week and wow, these past five days have been busy.  Christmas programs, parties, crafts, assessments, the flu, presents, special books, class visitors, and lots of repeating myself.  The week before winter break is crazy, but of course lots of fun.

Some of our time was devoted to the mean one, Mr. Grinch.  Most of my students know the Grinch, so they were super excited when I had "Grinchy Activities" up on our class agenda.  We started the day with a read aloud of How the Grinch Stole Christmas.  Then we moved straight to our craft.

Our Grinches were inspired by a Glyph Girls' project I pinned a few years ago.  I love how they turned out.  The kids loved making them and were totally cracked up when they realized their Grinches would not be wearing any pants.
We did these first because I wanted to pop them up around the room to Grinch-it up a bit before our other activities.

After finishing our Grinches, we moved on to a little literacy scoot game I put together.  I placed a Grinch word card at every desk, face down.  Students had to read the word on the card and determine if it has a long vowel sound or a short vowel sound.  Then they wrote their answers on a recording sheet.  When I gave the signal, everyone scooted to the next seat.
Since we just wrapped up the basic vowel, consonant, silent e pattern for all long vowel sounds, this activity was a perfect informal assessment.

We broke up the morning with a yummy pinspired snack one of my dear moms sent in.  The kids were really happy to get a treat.  (Maybe next year I'll let them put their Grinch treats together on their own.)

For math we got moving again with a write the room fact review.  I put addition and subtraction facts around the room.  (Some of my kids need lots more practice solving addition and subtraction facts when they are mixed.)  Just like in scoot, students started at one card, solved the problem, recorded their answers, and then moved when I signaled.
Since it was the week before winter break and my kids were a little more lively than usual, I built in another element of movement besides moving from card to card.  I printed a set of "Max cards" to help get out some of the wiggles.
The Max cards have various exercises on them.  "Do 4 squats."  "Do a plank and count to 12."  "Do 10 jumping jacks."  (You get the picture.)  After about for or five equations I would announce that it was time for a Max card and then I'd read the exercise.
The kids loved, loved, loved the Max cards.  It was something just a little different in our routine and it worked great.

Another activity with Grinch was an entry into our Elf journal, Diary of an Elf.  The kids wrote about what they thought was going on between the Grinch and our class elf.  They wrapped up their entries by telling what they thought might happen that evening, when it was time for our elf to return to the North Pole.  I got some very interesting responses.

We ended our Grinchy learning by watching the classic cartoon version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas.  After spending much of the day learning with Grinch, my sweet students were extra interested in watching the story unfold on screen.
Our time with Grinch was just what we needed this week, a high level of engagement with a beloved character and plenty of chances to move around.

Thanks for stopping by and enjoy your well deserved break.