Summer School Weekly Themes

Summer school is four weeks this year and I love the idea of integrating writing with some beloved read aloud books. Since my SS principal really wants this to be a fun experience for the students I've chosen to do a different theme for each week. Here's my plan:

Week 1 - Dr. Seuss unit inspired by What the Teacher Wants.


Week 2 - Mo Williems unit inspired by First Grader...at Last!


Week 3 - Fairy Tale Unit inspired by First Grade Awesomeness


Week 4 - Ice cream unit from Cara Carroll's (from The First Grade Parade) awesome unit on TPT.


I hope this makes summer school fun and memorable for the kiddos who are giving up part of their summer to review the first grade. I'm excited to meet them! Anyways if you haven't checked out the sites I've listed please go there now!

{small} Parent Gifts

I've really enjoyed seeing all your cute and creative ways to say thank you to all the special helpers in your room. I especially like Rachelle's play on words ideas. Since my budget is thistight and I have about a million different things to get done this week, I decided to keep it simple. I'll be writing each volunteer a thank you note and then give them one of these:

With this label on it:

Click here to get your copy of the labels.

I have, Who has - Telling Time

If you've never played the game "I have, Who has" with your class, you really need to! This is such a fun game and a great review of clocks / time. We focus on telling time to the hour and half hour, so that's what I put into my game. I'm using this as an end of the year review game, but I'll be playing it a lot with my summer school kiddos who really need the extra review.

Click here to download your copy of the game (directions included!).

Let's Keep it Up!

Does anyone else feel like the last couple weeks of school are the hardest? The kids are ready to move on, you're just about burnt out, and the warm weather is just too tempting (not always in Idaho!). I'm trying super hard to not get too excited since I'll be teaching another month for summer school, but I am pumped for a week off to play with my little boy.
If you need some inspiration (like many of the teachers this time of year) please click here for some great teacher quotes.
So, let's do our best to still be great teachers for this next couple of weeks to these kids. They totally deserve it!

Friday Fun

I saw this today on facebook and had to share:

How about Blogger being down yesterday? Did that drive anyone else crazy? Although it was nice to have a night off my blog stalking obsession. Also, I'm assuming my post from yesterday that disappeared will show up again soon...

End of the Year Writing - Part 2

I noticed that there are a lot of people on the web who have been looking for ideas for an end of the year project, and so I've decided to include the labels I use for this writing project. I used the Avery Template 5160 for this and I just print them off, stick them in the students' books and off they go! The Bare Books are so wonderful too, because they are such great quality (and ship pretty quickly!).

Click here for your copy of my labels.
* These labels are in no special order and I do change them around for the student's books.

***I know that MY labels are probably not a perfect fit for your classroom. If you'd like the word document (so that you can rewrite or delete some of them) I'd be more then happy to email that to you sometime this weekend (it won't have the cutesy fonts though). Just leave me your email address in the comments section. Please consider following my blog if you'd like me to email you that copy :o)

Describing Words and Poetry

We've been focusing on using describing words to better enhance our writing so I decided to combine it with poetry (let's face it - isn't everything better when combined with poetry?).

Here's how I begin:

First I showed the students a picture of an animal and had them describe what the animal looked like in one column and then what the animal was doing in the next column (see student sample below).

Then, I had them put the two columns together. I also let them mix and match to make the poem stronger. Then they

just rewrote their poem.

Voiál! Easy peasy. Click here for a few copies for you and your students.

One Funny and One Awesome

Here's probably one of the funniest things I've heard for awhile, and of course it came from one of my first graders.

"Did you know tomorrow is Star Wars Day? May the 4th be with you!"

(This is dedicated to my sister-in-law Taylor who LOVES Star Wars!)

How great is that (get it, because tomorrow is May 4th?!?!) I laughed so hard.

Also, check out my awesome door. Every year the PTO has the room mothers decorate our doors for Teacher Appreciation Week. This years is too cute and the students wrote describing words about us on the cookies (I have two aides for a special needs student).

I hope you're getting spoiled during Teacher Appreciation Week!

Sound Muncher - sound review game

I know that the sound muncher idea has been around for quite some time, but I wanted to share my version of it. As you can seefrom the post below, I just quickly decorated a trash can from the Dollar Tree. Here are some cuter ones I found on google.

Here are my instructions and game cards for the activity. It's a great way to review some of the vowel sounds.

Also, guess who I got to hang out with today? Janae from First Grade Fun!

Turns out she literally lives three blocks from me and she's such a fun girl. I went to try to help her for her upcoming musical, since my students have done the same one in the past, but the majority of my time was spent trying to prevent my little guy from destroying her house. Her poor roommate was such a good sport and didn't get too upset as he smashed food into their carpet or when he totally stunk up their place with his dirty diaper (great timing, kid!). I'm thinking we should have an Idaho Blogging Friends lunch one of these weekends (before you move, Nicole!) and of course we'd love if you Utah girls want to come too...just an idea.