Monday Math ~ Fact Families

Happy Monday!  I thought I would quickly share some fun math resources for teaching fact families that I found recently!  As you may already know, I love www.TeacherTipster.com, so it will come as no surprise that I found yet another awesome tip on his website.  This video is made for teachers to watch and shows us an interesting way to teach students how fact families work.

Watch the video, but it basically using the color wheel as a way to explain the reciprocal property.  The idea is to use student's knowledge how they can mix primary colors to get secondary colors; yellow + blue = green just as blue + yellow will also equal green and if you could magically take the blue out of the color green you would be left with the color yellow...  Again, watch the video because he does a better job at explaining it than I am but I tried this lesson with my class as a way to introduce fact families and they LOVED it!

Now the next video is a cute puppet show that is made to show directly to students.  Krys and Kai's Math Minute Fact Families is about 9 minutes long and is a great mini lesson between the teacher and a cute blue puppet.  There are other videos made by Krys Tina which look promising but I have only used the fact family one so far!  

My last fact family share is from Teachers Pay Teachers and is a great freebie made by Beverly Clore.  Check out her Fact Families Unit, it has fact family worksheets, addition and subtraction practice pages and some crayon themed math center/station activities.

As always, thanks for stopping by! Please leave a comment and let me know some of the fun ways that you teach fact families!

A few great point of view books

Hi there!  This week in class we have been working on understanding point of view.  I have found a few fun books that seem to really engage my students while clearly showing them point of view.
The first series of books are the Chester books from Melanie Watt.

The Chester series of books features a rascally cat named Chester who battles with the author Melanie Watt to turn her stories into books all about him.  He uses a red marker to scribble over her typed words and they battle back and forth in the most humorous way.  My students have loved every one of her Chester stories.  

After we read a few of the the Chester books we tried our hands at being "Chester-like".  Students used  a book that I wrote about my dog Dewey and had the best time scribbling all over the pages as they changed the story to be about another character (some created their own Chester story and others used their pets as inspiration.)

Check out my Chester Point of View Activities over in my TPT store.

I found another fun book for teaching point of view in a comical way!  A is for Musk Ox  by Erin Cabatingan is a super funny book where a musk ox hijacks an alphabet book from a zebra.  I found a fun alphabet book on www.enchantedlearning.com and students had to turn the plain old alphabet book into an alphabet book that was all about them. It was a nice point of view follow up activity and it was great adjective practice for them.

I just love finding new mentor texts.  What other books do you use to teach point of view??

Happy St. Patrick's Day

I can not believe it is March already.  The weather here is not cooperating and we are having yet another snow storm today!  It's crazy!

I'm sorry I have not blogged in so long!  My Dad got really sick at the end of December and that totally threw me off my schedule.

Thankfully, after almost a month of hospitals and rehab, he is mostly recovered and getting stronger everyday!  

School has been crazy too, especially since we have a had 9 snow days!!  I mean, I like snow days as much as the next kid but 9?  At this rate I am afraid we will be in school until July!


Anyway, Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone!  I hope you have some fun things planned for your class!  We are reading one of my favorite St. Patrick's Day Stories, The Luckiest Leprechaun!  What a cute story about the friendship between a cranky old leprechaun and a scroungy dog!

Usually, a leprechaun makes his way into our classroom  and leaves a few signs of his mischievous visit.  He leaves  some cute little green footprints, scatters chairs, books and leaves use a hidden pot of gold (Rolos).


We will also be doing some fun word work activities from my Word Work Unit for St. Patrick's Day, Easter and Spring.  Usually our word work consists of a weekly list of 1st grade word wall words where they practice spelling them and using them in sentences but sometimes I like to switch it up for them and give them some extra word work with a fun theme.  They love it; they especially love creating words using the letters from other words.  How many words can you make using the letters in Saint Patrick's Day?  I have other theme word word packs in my TPT store, feel free to hop over and check them out!

Here is a fun math Freebie from my TPT store! It's a place value matching worksheet where students match up the place value clues to the matching shamrock. There are two versions; numbers to 120 and a challenge with numbers to 250.

What fun things are you all going to do to celebrate the holiday?

Gingerbread Crafts & Freebies

Every year I like to have my students create a special holiday present for their parents and for the past few years we have been making these super cute gingerbread ornaments. 

The first step is to cut the men out using sandpaper from the dollar store.  I usually cut these out ahead of time because cutting sandpaper can be very challenging for those little student scissors.  

Once they are cut, I have students rub a cinnamon stick over them to give them a yummy smell and then glue them to a piece of brown construction paper.  

I let the gingerbread men dry overnight and then students can cut out around the brown construction paper and begin the decorating!  

Gingerbread men can be decorated with crayons, puff balls & goggly eyes.  To finish them off you just have to punch a hole in the top & add a ribbon to hang it from.  It takes us a couple of days to finish these adorable gingerbread ornaments but they are so worth it! 

Now for the FREEBIE!  Gingerbread Adjective Craftivity!  Check this out in my TPT store, you can  have students create their own gingerbread person using construction paper and then use adjectives to describe them. There is also an alternative follow up Create Your Own Gingerbread Person adjective practice worksheet included!

Thanks for stopping by!  What are some of the fun things you make for parent gifts this time of year?  What do you you give your students?  

Holiday Linky Party

It's been snowing here all day and as far as I can tell, it has switched over to an icy rain mix now!  Brrrrrr!  It is beautiful to look at, I'm just hoping to get a snow day tomorrow so I won't have to drive in it!!

I just want to write a quick post today to share some holiday fun!   While I was surfing my favorite blogs today, I found this great linky party over at My Kinder Garden Blog.  Hop over there and check out all the amazing and cute holiday ideas in the linky!

Gingerbread Fred & Gingerbread Sally are back!

I can't believe it is almost December.  When we go back to school it will be December 2nd!  Wow, this year is flying by already!  Anyway, December means that it is time for Gingerbread Fred and Gingerbread Sally to make another appearance in 1st grade.  Each year they come and visit 1st grade and we have loads of gingerbread fun with them.

As soon as we get back to school, I will introduce our new gingerbread friends and share the exciting news that Gingerbread Fred and Gingerbread Sally will be going home with each of my students to spend an evening with them.  Students have a blast taking the gingerbread friends home, taking pictures of them and writing in their journal.  Check out the the whole unit here in my TPT store!  I bought these cute little friends at CVS a few years ago but you don't even have to have the cute fluffy versions, just print the gingerbread friends in the unit and laminate them for durability like the rest of my team does!!

 Gingerbread Fred and Gingerbread Sally really kick off my month full of gingerbread fun!  We love reading different versions of gingerbread stories, making gingerbread fact families and check out my Gingerbread Adjectives Freebie!

 What fun holiday activities are your favorites?

My favorite activity for Thanksgiving!

Hi and happy almost Thanksgiving!  I wanted to share this fun Pass the Turkey Please Thanksgiving craft with everyone.

I started this activity last year in my classroom and will do it every year from now on because it was so wonderful!  We have been learning all about culture and what makes our families special so this was a perfect activity to tie things together before the holiday.  We created turkeys in class and then they had a class meeting to talk about all the things we were thankful for.

My sweet kiddos each wrote one thing they were thankful for on one of the turkey's feathers and then I explained what they were going to do with their special turkey creations.  Their job was to take the turkeys home,  bring them to the table on Thanksgiving day and ask their family what they were thankful for.  I sent a letter home to parents explaining the project and reminding them to have students bring turkey back to school on Monday.

On Monday morning all the turkeys came back to school and everyone got a chance to share what everyone in their family had written.

The responses were wonderful and filled with love.  I was totally crying by the time we were done sharing!  A few parents told me at the end of the year that the turkeys were one of their favorite projects all year and that they planned on bringing their "thankful turkey" out each year.

I can't wait to do this with my class this year!  Hop over to my TPT store and grab the project that comes with a parent letter and all the templates you need to create your own "thankful turkeys".

This year I have so much to be thankful for!  I thankful for my friends, my wonderful family, my amazing team at work and all of the amazing teacher bloggers who help me become a better teacher every day!