GoNoodle

We are absolutely enthralled with GoNoodle! This program is excellent for all ages. It is so important for the kids to be active throughout the day. there are many students who do not have the opportunity to be active when they go home and the only exercise they get is when they are at school in Gym Class. It is so important for the students to be given the opportunity to get up and move throughout the day! This is vital for their academic success as well. Brain breaks are conducted in our classroom throughout the day.

I space them out so that they do 2 in the am, 1 after lunch and then 2 before they go home. This has proven to be quite successful! My kids stay on task more. They are completing their assignments, behaviors are manageable and they are just plain happy!

Here is a video of my kids doint the I Like to Move it brain break on GoNoodle.


Go visit gonoodle.com for an amazing site full of brain breaks that will increase the academic success and the happiness of your students during the school day!

And the winner is......

Constitution Day!

Can I just say, I Love Constitution Day! I love History!!! Every year, I teach my children about the Constitution on this wonderful day! well, then they moved me to First Grade and I am team teaching! Well, I teach Math and science! So in order to teach this I decided we will create a Math Class room Constitution so I was able to justify it in my lesson plans and I taught this amazing unit!!!

First we read the book, We The Kids! Love this book! We talked about what the Constitution is and why it is important and related it to our real life! Click below to be able to purchase a copy of this
book!

Then we watched a couple videos on the Constitution on You Tube. Here they are:

and here is the book on You Tube if you do not want to purchase it!

Then we wrote our Math Class Constitution!

and we made ourselves as Mathematicians thinking about our favorite thing to do in Math and hung these around the Constitution in the Hallway! The Children loved it!

The kids loved Constitution Day!!! 

Tuesday Book Talk on a Thursday

I am linking up again with Deanna Jump for her Book Talk Tuesday! In math class, we read the book Tally O'Malley written by Stuart Murphy! The kids loved it!!!!

Thisn is a story about a family going on vacation to the beach. they are the typical family who plays car games and games to keep the kids occupied. Well, their favorite game is the Tally Game. They choose an object and color and find as many as possible in a certain amount of time. The kicker is they have to keep track of their items using tally marks.

The book explains and shows how to make proper tally marks.

Here is their first game with the tally marks. They chose color of cars. The brother named Eric won because he always wins! or so he thinks! The winner is called Tally O'Malley and they receive the tally medal!

here is the little sister named Nell who finally won and is now called Tally O'Malley.

Here is a sign I use to teach tally marks to my students!

They craeted themselves and we discussed what important numbers about us could we use and represent by tally marks. they brainstormed and came up with: My fingers, My age, My class and My family. here is the sign that I created to display themselves as a Tally O'Malley in the hallway!

 Here are a few examples of themselves portrayed as Tally O'Malley!

They loved this book! I Loved this book! I recommend this book to all primary math teachers!!!

Click the link below to see some more awesome recommendations by some more amazing educators!!!

Open House!

Wow!! What a day! Today was our open house and I just want to give a great big THANK YOU to all of my parents who came in tonight!

Attendance was out of this world! I had 17 out of 19 families represented! That is amazing.

Here are a couple of pictures of what my parents received tonight! Of course, I will send this home tomorrow with those students who did not have anyone present!

Here are my class handbooks and my business card
magnets! The parents seemed to really like these!

Here are the postcards that I sent home with the students.
This is a picture of the front and back!
I got these from Creative Teaching Press!
Thank you, CTP!!!

Here are the magnets we made for the children
to bring home and hang their work on the
refrigerator! The parents loved these!

Along with the items you see in these pictures, the parents also received a folder with information regarding the Common Core Standards, Guided Math, a parent survey to fill out and return and information to sign up for remind- a safe text messaging and emailing system for parents and teachers!

The night was a success! Again, thank you to all of the families who attended!

Monday made it with a giveaway

Hello all!!

I am linking up again with 4th grade frolics for her Monday Made it linky party.


I made a ten frame out of sitspots! My kids loved it. Sitspots made me a special strip to cut to make the ten frames. I then got two different color circles for the kids to place in the ten frame. I also made a number sentence shell out of the sitspots strip!

The kids rolled the die and then placed the appropriate number of yellow circles into the ten frame. They then rolled the second die and put that many black circles in the ten frame. They then created the number sentence at the bottom.

They loved it.

Here are the pictures!!!!

Click on me to go to the giveaway page

I just wanted to share this and a giveaway that is happening. If you visit my blog there is a giveaway for a 60 dollar gift certificate for Sitspots! Please check it out.

Also click on the picture below to see what some other awesome educators have made this week!!!

Sit Spots not just for sitting and a giveaway

Hello!! Can I just say I LOVE my sit spots. Yes these are excellent for placing spots on the floor for the kids to sit. They do not come up when the custodians vacuum. They come in such a variety of colors and designs. They are amazing. Here are my sit spots on my carpet for my first graders to sit upon.

My sitspots are the shapes in four different colors. Now to write the kids names on them just write it with a permanent marker if you do not want to reuse or I found that by using a label maker you can put it on the spot that way and it stays better then masking tape.

My kids love these!!!

Then I thought wow these would be awesome to use interactively in math with the kids. So I called Joyce of Sitspots, who is absolutely amazing may I add, and asked her if we could create something to use in my Guided math. I wanted to do ten frames. So the idea was discussed and we came up with the strips of black and I asked for circles in two different colors. May I just say once I cut the strip to the sizes that I wanted and created my ten frames on the carpet, oh my, the children went bananas. They absolutely loved it! I then cut the strips to create a number sentence shell beneath the two ten frames. This was exactly what I was hoping for. An interactive math center using sit spots. Here are my kids with the interactive ten frame!

Here is the ten frame and the number
sentence shell! I made number cards
to fill in the sentence on yellow copy paper

Here is the bucket with the yellow and black
sitspots for the kids to put in the ten frame!

                                                 

Here they are in the center. They are to roll a die and
place the correct number of yellow circles in the ten frame.
Then roll the second die and place that many black circles in the
ten frame. They then read the ten frame and create
a number sentence that represents the ten frame!

Here are my kids interacting with the ten frame!

They love this center!

Not only can you use it for ten frames and number sentences but you can use it to create graphs and much much more!

Sitspots are great for sitting but they can be used for soooooooo much more! I love sitspots! And this is even more exciting!!! Joyce from Sitspots will give one of my lucky bloggers a gift certificate for 60 dollars! WOW!! Just enter the rafflecopter below for your chance to win this amazing product!!!!! Keep watching my blog because there will be more chances and I will be sharing many more ways to use this awesome product in the classroom!

Visit sitspots.com to view her awesome selection!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

First Grade: A Fan-stache-tic Change and Classroom Reveal

I have been a kindergarten teacher for almost half of my lifetime.  I thought I would die a kindergarten teacher and then I got moved to first grade. I thought oh my! This is not going to work!

So I spent my summer doing a lot of pep talking to myself and pinning. I looked at a lot of things on pinterest. I checked out a lot of first grade blogs. I did book studies on guided math. Click on the books below that I read to purchase these two amazing resources for guided math.

I reread Teach Like a Pirate and Teach Like a Champion. Click on the books to order these two awesome resources if you do not already own them!

Then I began doing what I love to do....... I visited Amazon and began to buy books focusing on first grade. Here are some I bought and they are linked so you can purchase them also!

I focused on changing my classroom and making it less kindergarten and more first grade. I chose the mustache thing and just went wild. Thanks to Creative Teaching Press for all of the awesome mustache products as well as stickers and much much more. Click on their name to go to their website to order these awesome products and much much more. As you can see from the pictures below:

My bullying focus area. Chalkboard posters are from
Creative Teaching Press! I love my Pete the Cat
Garden Flag, like we say in my room, If you mustache
It's All Good!

My Math Map Wall. I love the mustache border
from Creative Teaching Press. The children are from
Melonheadz and Graphics From the Pond.

                      

My class expectations poster!
I love the mustache chart!
It is from Creative Teaching Press

                                    

My Math Alphabet and number posters.
I made the punctuation posters using

We are counting with Pete the Cat to
the 100th day!

This is where they put their work.
They feed it to the gators and put them in
the pond. I made the gators from giant clothespins.
The border and letters are from Creative Teaching Press.

I love my small group area. Behind my table I
have my math CCSS. They are the GNOM.
This is from Creative Teaching Press.
The black pockets next to it is my lesson organizer.
It is from Thirty One. the folders in each pocket are the
Mustache folders from Creative Teaching Press.
I made the day of the week labels using the turquoise dot name tags
from Creative Teaching Press.

My Math Vocab and manipulative area.

My door I made. The mustache is
from Creative Teaching Press!

I love my clock hands from
Really Good Stuff.

 

How we go home chart
Large circles and border is from
Creative Teaching Press. The
Dots on Turquoise circles are
velcroed on the same pattern border.

My pencil area. The letters, pencil cut outs on
buckets that say sharp and broken and on poster,
and the poster are from Creative Teaching Press.

Love our birthday area. The letters
are from Creative Teaching Press. I
took a picture of each child holding up a
mustache and bow tie prop and attached
their picture under their birthday month.

My character expectation wall.
The mustache border and the letters are
from Creative Teaching Press.

I am a Scentos addict! This is just a third
of my stache!

Our science board and section

My journal and small
supply area. I made this with
crates from Walmart

My space! I love my
signs. I spray painted an
old book case to display my
teacher gifts from former students.

The rest of the area behind
my desk. I made the plate at
ceramics. The drawers are spray painted
and I made the labels.

Finally, my math area! The drawers hold clipboards and
white boards. I spray painted them and made the labels.
The hamper holds pool noodles I use to teach place
value. The pink basket holds yes and no sticks. I used
my cameo to make the letters and dots. The crates contain
my math tool kits. These are from Deanna Jump and Dee Dee Wills
Guided Math Unit. Oh and on the Smart Board is my timer from Visitimer.

Needless to say I began to have fun with the move instead of dreading the move.

The first week I used bits and pieces from Babbling Arby's Fun with Firsties product. I loved the survey and the back pack. I added a little twist to the backpack and made it a homework pal. We included things we would need to complete our homework and I added a little tag and voila we had a homework pal. Here it is:

We made self portraits and made a Pete the cat project by doing a follow me activity. We completed this after we read the new book: Pete the Cat and the New Guy.

First Grade Jitters was a book they loved! Of course we had to have jitter juice to get rid of our jitters.

And I have to end with my banner I made on Vistaprint!

I have been just writing away and realized wow this is a long post!

Thanks for reading and hanging on until the end!

Have fan-stache-tic school year!