March 2011 - Queen of the First Grade Jungle

You Know You Teach First Grade When...

Babbling Abby is hosting this fantastic Linky Party--
You Know You Teach First Grade When...

1. You want nothing more than your students to LOVE reading as much as you do!
2. You hear your name screamed from across Walmart... don't forget you just spent 8 hours with this child and she acts like she hasn't seen you in a month (or maybe she is surprised because you left your nest that the students think you built under your desk).
3. You don't think you could EVER have too many picture books.
4. You will sneak downstairs in the middle of the night to search for cuter fonts or adorable clip art for your next creation.
5. You spend all day like the ring master in a three-ringed circus... I like to call it controlled chaos.
6. You start eyeing the kindergartners about mid-September...
7. You explain 300+ times a week what No Talking means. 30 seconds of quiet isn't too much to ask for, is it??
8. You go to soccer games, basketball games, and cheerleading competitions to see your "kids" bright and early on a Saturday morning.
9. You see the potential in every child that walks through the door... and I mean EVERY child.
10. You think your job is more of a hobby than a job- except for the week before Spring Break!
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Wildcats


Now trying to figure out ways to work anything Kentucky basketball into my curriculum...or I could just wait for Abby to come up with something :)
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Animal Classification

Soo... I know I promised I would be sharing about poetry night soon, but I am little distracted by Kentucky's amazing win last night and I am sure I would not do the event justice if I tried to post about it now... so more to come. I promise. In the mean time, here is just a little something that I made for classifying animals. I am all about tying my science into my literacy centers so here is just a little something my kids will be doing independently.



Hoping for more inspiration and another Cats win! Let me know if this was helpful for you!
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Poetry Night

Panic mode here. Tomorrow night is our first First Grade Poetry Night. We are having a coffeehouse style evening where our kids are going to do Reader's Theaters and Poetry for their parents. So exciting-- every one of my kids is coming! Miracle! I know it is so hard for parents to sneak away from work during the day so we decided to make a big evening deal of it. Our kids will be wearing black and ready to snap for each other. We will be serving hot chocolate and cookies (coffeehouse). I am a little be freaked about getting my kids ready... I will share more after the successful event!

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Blog Makeover!

I LOVE my new blog look. Thank you sooo much to Kristen at http://ladybugresources.blogspot.com/ I can't wait to figure everything out and be a real blogger :).
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African Safari


Sooooo...worst nightmare. I created this unit once, and when I went to save it in google docs, I couldn't find it! I am embarrassed to admit, I had to create the whole thing again. I hope that some people are finding these posts useful, because I have absolutely LOVED teaching these units! In years past we would just spend a day on each and then teach migration, animal adaptation, camouflage, and other elements separately. One of my teaching partners suggested we do one massive unit. Our kids have had so much fun. I included the large papers for the anticipation guide that we use in class. I glue them to butcher paper, and then we can refer back to what we thought we knew throughout the unit! Thank you so much to JoAnn and Dawn for their super sweet emails. I think it is only fair that I share with everyone since I have gotten amazing freebies from Rachelle @ What the Teacher Wants, Ms. Arnold @ Oceans of First Grade, and adorable ideas from Sarah at First Grader at Last (not to mention the MANY others)!
Towards the end I included a few literacy activities including a -ump word sort. I apologize if there is a clipart overload---sometimes I just can't help myself!

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African Safari

Okay thanks to Ladybug Teacher Files http://ladybugsteacherfiles.blogspot.com I may have figured out how to show my documents on my blog... I am working on my African Savanna learning log now! Here is a sheet that I use when my kids are reading from the browsing box during centers:


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Deserts

I was so happy with my learning log for Oceans that I created one for Deserts this week. I also made four writing pages for my literacy centers- two are visualizing, one is reading passage, and the last page goes along with the book The Three Little Javelinas.

Click the link below to find my document. Please let me know what you think!
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Splash! Ocean Unit


So we are beginning a week long unit on oceans tomorrow.  I decided to take the dive myself and make a learning log for my kids complete with cute font, clip art I bought, the whole shi-bang.  I really hope everything works so I can share.  I hope someone can use this, because I feel really greedy stealing all of your amazing units, printables, and ideas!!!Splash
I am also working on literacy center ideas.  Let me know what you think
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