Sight Word Candy Land

My students LOVE playing this during Word Work.   Below is a picture of the edition I made.

  The original idea came from the blog "First Grader.... at Last!"  Mrs. Cooley has some really great ideas, so you should check her out!

http://firstgraderatlast.blogspot.com/2010/11/candy-land-sight-word-edition.html

Organizing my Classroom Library

So I know that it's been a while since I posted. What can I say? Things have just started to slow down and get into routine.  I have LOTS of things I want to share about what I have been doing in my own classroom. I am loving first grade!

My mega project that I focus on during my weekends is growing my classroom library. I've been going to budget book places, resale stores, garage sales, etc. looking for books to fit my WIIIIIIDE range of readers in my classroom.

If you are trying to grow your classroom library I HIGHLY suggest heading over to Half Price Books and asking for a donation form.  When you fill out the form accompanied with a letter on your school letterhead telling what kind of books you need, they go through their overstocked and clearance books and hook you up.  They provided me with 4 HUGE boxes of books!
Thank you Half Price Books!

Now, I sorted through them and had to take out the ones that weren't appropriate for public school and then considered what my classroom needed About 60 books were a perfect fit for my class. All for FREE! :)   As the other books, I'm sharing with other teachers on my campus so they can build their libraries as well. 

As I was sorting through all the books, thoughts kept coming to my mind if I were to see a child looking at a book. I was thinking, I wanted to tell my kids something about a certain book, but I can't always be there when they are book shopping, so what could I do?

I came up with this idea- To put a sticker with me and a speech bubble saying what I would if a child picked up a book next to me.  I'm pretty stoked about it and might have made a few from my dog recommending some dog books.....

They say things like
- Can you make a text to text connection?
- I recommend this book because the experiments are really neat.
- I recommend this book because it was a favorite when I was a kid.
-This book is great for practicing your sight words.

 


I was really stoked about how I have organized my library so far, but I now realize that I didn't leave enough space for growing. So here's my library now. In the next few weeks bins will be replaced with some larger ones and some of my categories will become more specific. I'm pretty sure I'll change the shelving too. Stayed tune to see how it will look!

Where are you? Chart

I created this chart and put it by the door of my classroom. When the students come in in the morning, they move their clip from "Absent" to "With Ms. Y".  I keep my hall passes close by and when my students leave the room, they are responsible for moving their clip to the respective spot.  I printed the sections out on cardstock and I reinforced the "Absent" and "With Ms. Y" with some light cardboard from a box since most clips will be on either of these days. The other ones such as "nurse" and "restroom" I just reinforced with another piece of cardstock. I laminated them and used a hot glue to attach it to the pink craft ribbon.

I am all about making class jobs for the most basic of tasks so I made a class job be the "Clip Mover". This person's responsibility will be to move the clips back to "Absent" so we can start the next school day there.

End of Year Reading Gift

I don't know about you, but I'm always trying to come up with an end of year gift that my kids will love and somehow will remind them throughout the summer to keep learning. This year, I made these pinwheels to my kinder kids.

The label says, "Keep your brain spinning this summer! Read every day!"

I made them promise that they were going to read every day by repeating, "I promise that I will read every day. I know that I'm a good reader and am smart!"

Then we all blew on them and made them spin.  I suggested that they could keep it next to their bed and when they woke up, to blow on it and think about what book they want to read!

I found the pinwheels in a pack of 3 at Dollar Tree (steal!) and used mailing labels to print the message.

Mason Jar Sewing Kits

Not my original idea, but below is the link to the page on how to make these cute mason jar sewing kits!


http://www.momtastic.com/diy/168161-diy-mason-jar-sewing-kit

They are great gifts and you can really fit them into any theme. I made them for my team I left this year to say "I'll miss you 'sew' much" . For my my parent volunteers, they had a note that said, "Thank you 'sew' much."


Credit::  http://www.momtastic.com/diy/168161-diy-mason-jar-sewing-kit

Say it like a Turtle/Rabbit Pointers

When teaching my students how to read, I often say "Say it like a turtle" to stretch out sounds in a word.  When I want them to put all the sounds together, I say, "Say it like a rabbit."
For example I would teach,

"Alright, lets look at this word. I see the letters "c" "a" and "t".  Let's sound each of them out like a turtle would because turtles like to be cautious and go real sloooooooow. Say it like a turtle: /c/ /a/ /t/. One more time, /c/ /a/ /t/. Now, this time when we read, we want to put the sounds together fast like a rabbit. Let's read it like a rabbit. Cat!"

I wanted to help them visualize it so I made these super duper cute pointers for cheap.

First you need these items:
*wood cut out of the animals (found these at hobby lobby for 67 cents each)  You could even use paper cut outs/images and laminate them. 
*acrylic paint & brush
*Super glue, (I LOVE Goop. It works so well on all my crafts)
* wooden dowel rods

I painted the dowel rods and let them dry. Then I super glued the rod to the wood cut out.  

So that the glue didn't show, I put a piece of scrapbook paper over the glue & stick while it was still wet.

Let dry according the super glue instructions and then you have cute pointers to use to help your students visualize segmenting and blending words! 

You can be as creative as you want make as many pointers maybe for reading centers or to match themes! I'm might not be that ambitious. :) 

Mod Podge + IKEA

One thing you have to know about me, I love decoupage and scrapbook paper. Perhaps a little too much.....

I had a friend give me a small depressed white side table from IKEA last summer. I've been using it my classroom as a printer stand, but I wanted to use it to put my CD player and other teaching things for group instruction next year.

So I grabbed a can a of spray paint, my beloved Mod Podge, a brush, 5 sheets of scrapbook paper and a clear finisher and went to work!

(obviously not the patterned paper I used, but it's the same size (12 * 12)

I sprayed down the table, legs in all with the spray paint. Then decoupaged the scrap paper on. I used a total of 5 sheets. I REALLY hate cutting straight so this is how I layed it down.

Here is the birds eye view of the table. The shaded area represents the piece of scrapbook paper I layed down. 1-4 I aligned a piece of paper to each corner, overlapping them. 5) I placed a piece in the middle to make it look a little better.

I did about 3 layers of decoupage on top. After the decoupage set and dried overnight, I sprayed 3 times with the clear finisher to make a permanent, protective coating.


And here's the finished project!


top view: 















Tip: Check out the different types of finishes in decoupage and finishers to get the look you want (matte, glossy, antique, etc.) I like shiny so I used gloss Mod Podge and a gloss sealer.

Hello!

I love summer because I get really crafty! (Seriously, I need to make some room in my budget dedicated to Hobby Lobby alone.) 


Since I've become a teacher, I've incorporated what others have done in their classrooms into mine.  I'm appreciative of everyone who shares with me and would like to start sharing somethings that I've come up with or that I have found are really helpful.  I don't know how much I'll keep up with this, but I thought I'd start some where! We shall see!

Enjoy & happy crafting!