IT IS ALMOST MAY! The end of the school year is quickly approaching , YAY! But first we need to show our amazing moms some love. Here is a quick look at our Mother's Day books and Treat bags. I had MANY laughs reading what they wrote about their moms! I know that moms treasure these books forever, and I was so proud of what my students created for them. 

Here is a little peek at what our Mother's Day book looks like!

We did a guided drawing lesson to create the art for the front cover of our book. Here are a few samples of what that looks like.

The first page is titled "Meet My Mom"

 I put four blank writing pages in our book this year and we wrote the following prompts:

1. My mom likes to....

2. The best thing about my mom is...

3. My mom is happy when... My mom gets mad when...

4. My mom and I like to...

Then we finished our book up with a coupon page (I love getting these coupons!) and a treat bag full of Hershey Hugs and Kisses because what mom doesn't LOVE chocolate? 

 

I hope this little project can help you in your class! Happy Mother's Day to all the mommies out there!

Wow! Take a look at our week!

Exciting News! Doodle Bugs Teaching shared my Free Tooth Fairy Craftivity on her blog this week! I love Kacey and her awesome blog and was thrilled when I saw that yesterday. Her pictures were too cute, she used the project for teaching the phonics skill "TH". Many people have asked for a writing page to accompany this project and you can find that here in my Totally Teeth Printable Unit. 

We have been working so hard on writing our ZooPals Animal Reports this week. Before I set the kids loose to write their report we write a whole-group research report on the desert tortoise. I have a pet tortoise so he came to visit our class last week. This is little Shelldon meeting my students. 

(For the record he has had that name long before the TV show The Big Bang started)

We wrote our tortoise report last week to read more about our desert tortoise report click here. This week, I put my kids in small groups and they wrote their own research reports. Because I was really bad at remembering to take pictures this week I am going to recycle a picture from last year. To read more about this fun project click here. 

We took our projects one step further this year and created a large diagram for each animal. Here is the diagram and report that the giraffe, cheetah and elephant groups created. LOVE!  

On Monday, each group is going to present their Zoo Pals Animal Report to the class. To be sure kids are engaged during their peers presentations, I have created a little Wild About Animal Reports Book that students complete while their peers are presenting. This just revised my ZooPals Packet on TpT to include this book. Please re-download if you already own this packet.  

Y'all know I live in Arizona, right? Well there was a GroupOn for horseback riding and I couldn't resist because my oldest is six and has never been riding so this morning at 8 a.m. we were horseback riding! She had a blast and asked the guide if we could come back tomorrow. :) 

Next week is all about EARTH DAY! Have you read this book?!

I LOVE Todd Parr! His books are incredible! This is one of my all time favorite books for Earth Day. In this book, Todd writes about some of the small things that we can do to make a big difference for our EARTH. His kid-friendly language and art is so engaging to first grade students. 

After reading the book, I challenge the kids to give the earth a helping hand and make their own Earth Day Pledge. 

Here are a few picture from last year, click here to download the Writing Template for FREE! 

It is official - I registered for the July TpT conference in VEGAS this week! I am looking forward to meeting some other sellers and thrilled that I am going with two of my favorite colleagues at my school. I am sure it is going to be an amazing weekend!