TpT Sale!

Since it is my birthday tomorrow, January 31st :)

I am throwing a sale at my TpT store to celebrate with you! 

It will last tomorrow until midnight!

Thanks so much for all of your support throughout the last year! Your comments on my blog and all of the ideas you have shared on your own blogs mean so much to me! It has been such a blessing in life and in my classroom!

100th Day Burn Out!

Yesterday day we celebrated the 100th day of school and my kids were all kinds of excited! 

18 excited kids all day long = exhausted teacher by 3:00!

My students were greeted by this banner...

We decorated our 100th day crowns to wear for the day! 

We decorated our pizza with 20 mushrooms, 20 pieces of pepperoni, 20 pieces of cheese, 20 pieces of bell peppers, and 20 olives.  

We also decorated a gum-ball machine using 10 pieces of 10 different colors!

Decorating our hundreds sheets with 100 sticker *note to self BUY more stickers*!

Our end result displayed in the hallway, including our "Me today vs Me at 100" pictures: 

The pictures of them at 100 came out so darling! I loved them. 

Hope you have a great 100th day of school too!

And it is the time of year in Louisiana again: 

MARDI GRAS! 

Although I love Mardi Gras season and Mardi Gras Balls, and even our Mardi Gras Break :)

I am 100% looking forward to afterwards so I can SLOWWWW down a bit! Geez. 

Last weekend we attended a Mardi Gras ball. Brett's mother was the Queen of the Ball and looked fabulous! So happy for her! 

 

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Here is Brett's sister Ellie who is adorable and has a blog as well! Y'all have to go look at it, she has the cutest style! Love her. 

http://postagious.blogspot.com/

In other news its my bday next Tuesday (January 31st)… look for a little surprise to celebrate it with me!

Day 1 after Work Station Re-vamp!

Before you look at any picture please excuse the poor quality of my camera phone pictures! Ugh. Forgot my camera at home... and let's say the floor has become my phones best friend. Oh to remember when I first got her and she took clear pictures. Wamp wamp. 

Anyways, I tried to snap some shots of my littles in works stations today! I decided to circled the room today to make sure the students were on task and understanding what to do at their work stations. 

Pocket Chart Station with Silly Sentences… can I just say my kids LOVA LOVE this activity. The girls were creating sentences, reading sentences aloud, and then recording the sentence. They were trying to find the perfect word to make the sentences funny. *AND most importantly they were reading words I did not expect them to know! Whew… happy teacher day.*

 Writing Station: Completing their Sloppy Copy (Pre-Write) which is their must do activity. This week our topic is: How to Make a Penguin dance via Ms. Thomas at First Grade Jungle! This idea is brilliant! It really holds my kids accountable for their writing. 

ABC/ Word Study or Word Work Station: Making words with scrabble tiles. 

The tiles are a clip art from Scrappin' Doodles. 

Library Station: with the new organized system {which I organized a few weeks ago}.

Listening Station: New books WILL be added tomorrow! 

 Work on Words: Type it

Look at that focus… my boys were SO into this! Typing away their sight words! This was definitely a hit! *They would also get really excited when they saw a spelling word or sight word from the previous week/ this week, so cute!*

All in all I am very pleased with how our work stations went today. I love to see that look of excitement in my students eyes when they are having fun learning!

I am going to a Mardi Gras Ball for the weekend, so I will be back next week with more updates! 

Hope you have a great weekend,

As I said yesterday… I am in the midst of a Work Station re-vamp. Trust me, we needed a little oomph put back into our Work Station routine. 

Below is my set up for my Word Work Station (and on the right is my Math Stations). 

 I explained to my littles that when their work station card said work on words they were allowed to choose for themselves how they would like to do so!  

Options:
- Type it- students can type their spelling words, high frequency words, word wall words, or grab a ring of sight words to use!  My kids were so excited about this one!

- Create words using Magnetic Letters

-Create words using Scrabble Tiles

-Create words using Glittery Letters

- Create words using the Blends and Digraphs Word Work Center

{Below is a picture of what is inside the drawers...on the back of the card is a fill in the blank spelling activity}

I am hoping to have this completed and running by Monday. Fingers crossed! 

Moving on...

To celebrate MLK day we did this fun activity using a brown egg and and white egg. We first described what the eggs looked like on the outside, and then had a discussion on what we think would be on the inside! A lot of the kids thought the brown egg would be brown on the inside.

I cracked the eggs and showed the students. *Gasp* They were the same on the inside!

This lead to the neatest discussion on races and equality… even for first graders :)

We also created these MLK's from the TLC website! I did this last year and was *hoping* they would be just as cute this year! AND they were!

Seriously, they kids personalities shine through in these types of projects! *Smiles*

Workstation Revamp! {& Silly Sentences}

It's about that time of year again where my students {and I} feel *blah* about workstations. Although the kiddos are still excited to go to workstations (duh), their attention span is minimal and some of them seem to forget the rules. 

What to do? 

 - Introduce some new and exciting things into the workstations.

- Review rules of workstations.

- And if it's not working... change or omit it.

Enter here Silly Sentences!

I always like to introduce these into the pocket chart when my students are independently reading! The kids go *bananas* for this work station! 

I keep all of the parts of the sentences in one container. {Now let me be honest, this took a while to cut and laminate, since its such a big packet. However, you could pick and choose which words you would like to add to your Silly Sentence Work Station*

My directions are hanging beside the pocket chart and, I place the colored numbers at the top for students to use to make their sentence! This makes it SUPER easy to follow the directions! Which is what my bambinos need!

Below you can see some pictures of the constructed sentences using the color coded strategy! 

So simple, yet TONS of fun! It's a great opportunity not only to construct the sentences, but to read as well! My students create the sentence, read the sentence and then record the sentence! The best part about this is their are SO many possibilities for sentences! 

If you would like to check it out at my TpT store click here!

I also finished up my new writing station re-do. There is now a must do sheet which you can learn more about at First Grade Jungle. Ms. Thomas shared these fill in the blank pre-writes with me which I LUSH! The Littles have been having the HARDEST time staying focused and producing quality work from this station. It was time for a change! 

via First Grade Jungle

 Monthly words for writing via Busy Teacher Cafe

 Do you have the writer's eye? via Cara Carroll at The First Grade Parade

Now I have NO idea where those charts came from or the ones below! But whoever did them, THANKS I love them! If you know please let me know! They have been saved on my computer for a while (before pinterest)! 

*Update: these posters can be found here: 

http://mrsgilchristsclass.blogspot.com/2011/08/writing-center.html

Now I have more for my revamp of my ABC/ Word Study, Work Work, Word Wall Station…. check back for that tomorrow! But here is a sneak peak of one of my new Work Work Stations, found on pinterest! Hopefully this excited the littles!