Candy Trees

For the past two years, I have made Candy Houses with the students but this year I switched over to Candy Trees and they were so much fun to make!  I found that the students had much more independence making the Candy Trees and they were able to use their imagination!  I had sent home a letters asking parents to bring supplies and also invited them to come join us!  Here are the results of this years Candy Trees!

To make matters easier, I put the candy into a cupcake tray and lined it, then each tray got filled with the same candy so that there was no fighting!  This concept made it easy for the students to get the candy and it also made it easy for me to refill the candy!

Parents were invited to join their child, making for a fun time!

Very creative, love what they did with the pretzels!

How cute are the candy canes, turned into a heart!

Love the walk way made with Twizzlers and Hershey's Kisses!

Christmas in Class

I absolutely LOVE Christmas and it definitely is the best time of the year!  Here are some of the projects we have done so far to decorate the classroom with Christmas spirit!

I used my Cricut to cut out circles to make snowman name graphs, so cute!!!

We made Christmas trees by ordering the tree from longest to shortest and made snow using Q-tips

Candy Cane thumbprints sealed with a ribbon.  I found that making a line for the students t follow made it much easier for the students.

I have a ghetto Christmas tree from a previous teacher, so I decided to make a ornament tree to replace my old one.  I found this idea on Pinterest and love it!!!

Every year, I make my whiteboard into a mantle and students make stockings and I hang lights to make the front of the classroom look like a fireplace.

Daily Language Arts Centers

Today's Language Arts Centers, please see pictures below to find description of each center.

Students working on filling in missing letters.

Here, the student is consulting their pencil box to them figure out the missing letter.

This is our alphabet find center.  I put letter beads inside a pencil pouch and filled it with rice.  Students need to find the letters in the pouch and then color the corresponding letter on their sheet.  

Here, students work on independent reading with their "reading buddy".  The reading buddy is meant to make reading fun by helping point to each word and they also will the student turn the page.  These are pre-decodable books that we have read throughout the year already.

Daily Language Arts Centers

Everyday, students learn Language Arts through the use of centers.  I have 5 groups, that rotate every 10 minutes, with 2 minutes of transition time.  We started practicing rotating back in August and now students have no problem rotating between centers.  Some times an occasional pencil box will spill, but students love to help clean up a spill!  I have accumulated a whole bunch of activities for students to engage in, and I'm still making and collecting as the year continues,  Here is today's Language Arts rotation.

I found this online timer and for each rotation, I set the timer for 10 minutes and then students can look and see how much time they have left at each center.

I use sign holders to display an example of the work that students must complete, incase they get stuck and to show them how I would like their work to be completed.  

I had recently blogged about this center.  Here, I use my word family cards and verbally give students a word to spell.

Everyday, students must practice writing and blending in their binders and this is where I would post the sign holders, for students to follow along with.

At this center, students are working on their vocab folders.  I recently posted about this too :)

This, is probably the students favorite center.  Here students are at the listening center and working on the letter "Dd".  I bought listen and learn cards from Lakeshore Learning and I absolutely love them!

Students are working on syllables.  They have to write the word from the card and then circle how many syllables the word has and circle the answer.

Word Family Chart

I have been working on word families for my students using paint chips, scroll down to see my previous blog.  As I am making each word family, I was going through the alphabet to make use I have each letter to correspond with the word family.  I thought, wouldn't it be easier to write it all down and reference my chart?!?!  So, that's exactly what I did and you can download the file here: Word Family Freebie.  You don't have to use all the words in the word family but all the words are there :)

CVC Practice

I went to Wal-Mart a few weeks ago and I saw these plates in the baby section, which has some great stuff for the classroom!  When I saw them, my mind went crazy and I thought how great these would be for word building.  On the left I put the constants and on the right side I put the vowel.  Once we learn more letter and vowels, they will be added to the plates.  During centers, I work with a small group and give students cvc words for them to sound out and they have to put the finished word on the bottom section.  This activity not only allows students to sound out the words but they also have to identify the letters.  I bought six plates, so each student gets one and I also use one incase I need to help a student.

Vocabulary Folders

Here is a new center I have created for Language Art Centers.  These are vocabulary folders for the letter that the students have learned.  I am not expecting students to know how to spell the words.  I just want them to get exposed to words that they know which start with the letter they know.  This also help reinforce beginning sounds.  My covers have the Alpha Friends on them, since I use them to introduce a new letter and the students love them!  I spent hours on Google finding cute clipart to put inside of the folders.  I got this idea from another coworker but I wanted to put the words inside a chart, so the picture and words were evenly lined up and easy to read.  I had to cut the tabs off the file folders and cut 1/2" off each side of the paper to make everything fit.  Then, I laminated them and now they are good to go!

Common Core Standards

Here is an update of my Common Core Standards.  Like I had mentioned in my previous post, as the year goes on the more standards go up!  I keep these standards up all year because we are always working on them such as one to one counting, or reading high frequency words.  You can find these on my TpT site.

Numbers in the Teens

Students having trouble with teen numbers?!  This is the best video out there, we watch it a couple times a day and has really helped my students with writing and recognizing the teen numbers.  It also helps cure teen number reversals!

I also stumbled across the numbers in the twenties and it's just a good.  We are learning the teens now but when we get to the twenties I'll definitely be playing this video as well!  

Word Families

I have been wanting to make word families for quite some time but I didn't really know where to start.  I looked all over Pinterest and saw some ideas that sparked my curiosity!  I wanted to make the word families easy to use and colorful, of course!  I raided got a whole bunch of paint chips to start with.  I started to write the letters on the paint chips but it didn't come out the way I was hoping, so I had a new idea to use alphabet stickers instead.  So, I went back into town to get some new supplies to start all over.  I am going to make word families for all the vowels as the school year progresses.

This is how I started out, what a mess!! 

 Lots of sorting!!

Language Arts Centers

So, I have been so busy creating and researching new center ideas for Language Arts.  I've never done centers, so I was very nervous about starting them this year.  I tried it for a week last year and I decided that whole group instruction was better at that time.  I had all last year to think about centers and this year I am so glad that I started!  I am loving centers and so are the students!  I feel that the students are getting so many more opportunities to practice new skills than any other instructional strategy would allow for.

I will post more pictures in a few but here are two centers that I just love!  The first one is our listening, I wasn't sure how I was going to get this center going since I didn't even have a CD player!  A few of my parents made generous donations which allowed me to make a purchase from Lakeshore.  I bought the CD player and the holder.  Then, on Pinterest I saw this idea to make a bench.  I am in LOVE with how it came out!  The students love it as well!!!

My next center was made from an oil drip pan!  I found this alphabet fabric in Seattle last year and it's just been sitting in my closet.  I had the brilliant idea to cover the drip pan with the fabric and students would use my magnetic letters and match them to the letters on the fabric.  So awesome!!!