It's Appletastic!!!

Happy Friday!!! Are you doing the Friday dance, too??? Woohoo!!! This week was a *bit* of a short week for me. We had a Professional Development Day Monday and worked all day on our Professional Development Plans and then spent the rest of the week celebrating Apples!! 

I had asked each kid to bring in 2 apples to help in our study! I started off with

If you haven't heard of this story or read it, you need to!! Click on the picture to take you there! Then 

we talked about describing words for apples and wrote about them. 

We also worked out of my 

We made little doctors who who gave advice... "An Apple a Day will..."

    

"An apple a day will keep weakness away!" Yay! for healthy!!!

"An apple a day will keep books coming my way!" *LOVE!!*

"An apple a day will keep bad smells away!" LOL!

"An apple a day will keep dinosaurs away!" Roar!!!

We also worked on telling and asking sentences.

They did a GREAT job! This pack is available in my TPT store. It's on sale ($2.00 off!!) for $5.00 all weekend! Click on the cover page to take you to my store! 

One project I really like to do this time of year is also my "Seasons of the Apple Tree" science painting. We read 

and then we discuss how an apple tree grows and paint the seasons! It is always such a beautiful project that I love to do every year with my class. Click on the first picture below to grab your labeling pieces for FREE!

Click on picture above to grab labeling pieces! 

Johnny Appleseed's birthday was also yesterday-- he would have been 239 years old and what a legacy he has left! We made Johnny Appleseed pot headbands (*insert your own joke here! LOL!) with the cycle of the apple tree going around it! They loved it and were so excited to wear it! 

Click on the picture to grab your copy for free!

Also, don't forget that Educents is offering our First Grade Bundle at a HUGE, discount!!!! Buy it while it's HOT! 

Hope you all have a fantastic weekend and check back with me soon for some corn-y ideas!!! It's that time of year that I LOVE!!! 

Amazing First Grade Bundle and a Pin-It to Win It!!!

Classroom routines are settling a bit, students are getting into the groove of things, and we are really starting to dig deeper into our curriculum!  So I have teamed up with Educents and some other bloggers to offer you this great First Grade Literacy Bundle at a huge discount for a limited time!  (And keep reading for an opportunity to win an item from my store!)

You get 18 amazing literacy items to help your learners become better readers and writers!  Included are centers, printables, posters, readers, and even a little science and social studies because those are literacy too!

Here are some pics of this pack in action (it's not just literacy but some fun, learning math, too!)

And a teaser math one because it is one of my favourites!!

AND.....There are 17 other products in our bundle to get your kids learning!  Hop along to see all the goodies you will get!  

Your next stop on this hop is the AMAZING Laura Martin from Peace, Love, and First Grade! Click on her button to take you there and see the amazing product that she has to offer!!! I am a little biased as we collaborate together on The Primary Chalkboard but you will LOVE her!!!  

But that's not all!   I am giving you a chance to Pin It to Win It (well you win any item from my store.)  Pin any image from my blog or TPT store and enter below to win!

Click on the image above to take you to my store to pin away!!! You can pin (leave your link) and enter once a day for the duration of the contest!!! 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

So head on over to Educents when you are ready and stock up on amazing literacy resources for first! If you want to go ahead an purchase it, click on the picture below to take advantage of this steal of a deal today!!! Totally worth it!!!

It's Skippyjon Jones Week and some Freebies on the Chalkboard!!

Happy Friday eve everyone!!! I got some exciting news today (well, exciting for me as I am a *newer* blogger and seller on TPT (Teacher Pay Teachers). Look who was on the homepage of TPT today!!

 So, back to business....WOW!! Another week of GREAT learning has gone by so let's get down to it!! This week we were immersed in short i word families. As well as learning about sequencing activities (Say WHAT?? That is such a hard skill for some of them! SO many can verbalize it but putting it to paper is a whole other story!). When we last met, I introduced my Short /i/ Adventures with Skippyjon Jones

OMG!! They are having such a blast with these centers and I have to say I fell in love with my class a little but more!!! They were so engaged and so excited about learning and they really got to the heart of learning this phonics skill. I think when I have more time (who does at this time of year??) I am going to add more pages for sequencing but for now the kids just did great with these centers. 

Here's some pictures of the "Spill the Frijoles" Center! They couldn't wait to get their hands on the frijoles!

They loved playing, "Hey Dude! Go Fish with short /i/ words"!

Tomorrow we will be working on the Kitty-Boy Fix It Sentences and making Skippyjon Jones Masks! Ole!! What a fun way to end our fun week with Skippyjon Jones!! 

If you'd like to join in on the Short /i/ Adventures with Skippyjon Jones, it is available in my store. Click on the preview picture above to take you there! It's only $5.00!!! 

Next week we will be working on Fall centers (so super excited to this as I LOVE LOVE LOVE Fall even though Fall feels like summer in FL) and I will be sharing some centers that I do with you sometime this weekend!!!

This week we also worked on subtraction sentences! Zoinks! I don't know about you but subtraction can be so hard for them. Especially when we work on key words and strategies they still struggle! We have been singing:

If you haven't played this song for your class to help teach subtraction, you are totally missing out. Other than the corny pirate voice, it really is cute and it has words like "less" and "difference"! Brilliant! The kids were getting it when I was talking about subtraction and how we always end up with less and I would sing the song and they sang right along with me! We have also been working really hard with part-part-whole mats and finding the missing parts. If you work out of enVision Math then you would be very familiar with this. Here is a quick assessment that I will be using tomorrow. It's nothing fancy, just something I whipped up to see what they knew and were applying. Click on the picture to download it:

Speaking of freebies.... we, the ladies of the Primary Chalkboard are offering you the Best Freebies we ever made!!! And who doesn't love FREE, QUALITY teaching products??? We offer you these freebies with all the love and as a show of all the great work we do! And if you are a fellow blogger of know of another great freebie, you can link up on the Chalkboard to other great freebies. Let's all share the wealth! The post will be up tomorrow so stay tuned. You can click on our Chalkboard to take you there!

Ok, well, I am off to *try* and work on lesson plans. I have them in my head but have yet to get them in lesson plan format. You, too, right?? LOL! Happy Friday tomorrow! Yay!!