Our HMH Journeys reading story this week is The Garden from Frog and Toad Together. I LOVE this story! Frog and Toad are possibly my favorite characters for first grade readers. The story Cookies is my all-time favorite. We could all use a little of Frog's will-power with those cookies, the struggle is real!

Helpful Tip: Several of these stories, including The Garden have FREE videos available on You-Tube.

This story comes at the perfect time of year. I created this packet with supplementary resources to use for this story. I use many of the quick Print and Go pages as Lit Stations.

This week our grammar skill was subject pronouns and prefixes. We worked specifically with the re- prefix. We discussed what the prefix re- means and brainstormed words with that prefix. We wrote the words on our anchor chart and added this to our interactive notebook next to our suffix page. Later in the day the kids found the word RECYCLE on our blue garbage to add to our anchor chart, I am not going to lie I did a little happy dance - Yay! 

Since Frog and Toad is a fictional story I wanted to bring in some non-fiction text. I chose to use Seed to Plant as our companion text this week. I am obsessed with National Geographic KIDS books and this one might be my favorite. With this book we learned the parts of a plant, plant needs, amazing plant facts, about how plants are pollinated and so much more. 

We found a few great BuzzWords in our Seed to Plant book. I love hearing the kids add these words to their speaking and writing.

The end of the book has step-by-step instructions to planting lima bean seeds. We set-up a little assembly line in our class on Wednesday. Fingers crossed that by Monday morning we have some sprouts.  

We have a subscription to Scholastic Weekly Reader and this April Crunchy Carrots Grow! was perfect for this week. We used Kroger's Kindergarten's Response page to accompany this reader and it really challenged my kiddos to dig back into the text to find their answer. THANK YOU Kroger's Kindergarten, you are amazing! Best part: Her response pages are FREE!  

It was a crazy busy week and I am just exhausted! This afternoon as I read through my emails I came across this:

 This truly made my day! Thank you for the sweet words! :) I will be posting the next 2 Journeys stories this weekend: A New Friend and The Dot. 

Next week we are working on Amazing Animals and I will be back to share our learning. Have a wonderful week everyone. 

From Seed to Pumpkin!

We have adopted Journeys Reading this year and part of Unit 2 is using the book From Seed to Pumpkin by Wendy Pfeffer. YAY, a "REAL" book! We were given a class set of the book so we will be taking a small break for our weekly reading stories to focus on this book. We have some fun activities planned and I am so excited to take a break from our normal reading routine. 

I have been working on creating this new little packet to help. Note: This is NOT a Journeys packet so if you don't have Journeys you will LOVE it! 

We are going to start with an Anticipation Guide. I love hooking the kids right away and getting a brief look into what they already know and what misconceptions we may need to address. My kids love Anticipation Guides because they compete for the best score! :) 

We are then going to work on this little Pumpkin Life Cycle Book. I included pages for seed, sprout, vine, flower, green pumpkin and orange pumpkin. 

I also have included several graphic organizers, writing templates, vocab activitiy, ABC Order, Pumpkin Parts, Sentence Shuffle and a fun Pumpkin Investigation activity.

I had to get his Giant Pumpkin Puzzle from Oriental Trading. It was cheap and will make a FUN October/November Bulletin Board. 

We are going to finish our Pumpkin Unit by making these cute little waterbottle pumpkins! 

My daughter and I made this little guy today, SO CUTE and so simple with very little materials needed. Here are the steps if you are interested in making this with you kiddos. 

 

After pumpkins we are on to OWLS! I ordered my Owl Pellets today! 

I LOVE FALL! 

Our Busy Week One

Week 1 is finished and although I had pre-first day nightmares that looked like this

I survived, they did not manage to tie me up, and we had an awesome first week of school. This is an exciting year for my family because...look at my big first grader! My oldest is in first grade and so that means I get to see her even more during the day. No, she is not in my class. (That would be REALLY bad.) But, she has the best teacher and she is loving school and she is right next door, YAY!

This week flew by, we were crazy busy trying to squeeze in as many rules and procedures as possible. I always forget how young they are at the beginning of the year. On Monday at about 9:15 (45 minutes into the day) I had a kiddo ask me if it was almost time to go home. Oh honey, its going to be a LONG day! HA! 

Here is a little look at our week, I tried to make sure I took lots of pictures so I could share with you. Monday we began our Back to School book. I LOVE this book and students/parents do too! 

The first page is "Meet My Teacher" where the students draw a picture of their new teacher and write something they have learned about him/her. I created a little Around the Room activity to help. Great first day activity since they are so WIGGLY! 

On Tuesday we began Readers Workshop. We read for a whole 5 minutes, WOO HOO! We are going to build up our reading stamina slowly. My book boxes are from Really Great Stuff, my teaching neighbor showed me these awesome clear labeling pockets from Lakeshore and I created this editable PDF for the labels. These labels are FREE for Facebook Fans. Simply like my page to download them, click on the tab on the right to get there. 

My week started to get a little blurry on Wednesday, it was 113 degrees so that means no outdoor activity. 

No outdoor activity = rainy day schedule = NOOOO!!!!!!! 

We made the best of it and started working on our No, David art. 

Thursday, oh Thursday. My little one had enough by Thursday, we slept in over the summer and she is having a hard time changing her sleeping schedule.  

Thursday was another hot one at 114 degrees so again, no outdoor activity. Oh my! We finished out Back to School book on Thursday and sent it home. 

Friday was crazy hot again but I can put up with just about anything because IT IS FRIDAY! We brainstormed the classroom rules and did the writing to accompany our David art. They turned out so cute! This is by far one of my favorite bulletin boards of the year. The David art and Writing page is a free download in my TpT store. Several people have asked about the poster, I am trying to clear this with David Shannon because I don't want to violate copyright. If/When I hear back with permission I will make it available. 

Next week we get to begin our NEW Journeys Reading Series and we are starting with the story "What is a Pal?" I am super excited about this new series. I have created a ton of stuff to use next week. We are going to begin our Interactive Notebooks and Literacy Stations. I am looking forward to sharing more with you! 

Now I am off to bed and I am looking forward to enjoying my Sunday with my family. 

Journeys Reading

Hey All! Happy Summer! Between pool time, going to the gym, art lessons with my oldest daughter, catching up on house stuff, enjoying playtime with my sweet baby, catching up on my Netflix and enjoying some lazy days - our summer has been just amazing! 

Of course, I have spent some time working. I have been working on Second Grade CORE Math Units and that is just exhausting! I had to give myself a little break from math to check out our newly adopted curriculum. Our district has adopted a new Language Arts curriculum and I am really excited about it (we have had Trophies FOR-EV-ER). We now have Journeys by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (2014) and although I am just getting into the first few stories, so far so good :)

I am creating these packets because one of my favorite parts of the day is small-group reading time and that time will not be possible if I don't provide my kiddos with some fun and engaging station activities. I need students to know what to do and what I expect at each station so I try to keep the activities as consistent as possible so that my students are not interrupting my reading groups with the awful "What do I do?" question. 

I have created a Print and Go packet for the first few stories (more to come). These packets include Anchor Charts, Interactive Notebook Printables, 8 Literacy Stations for the spelling and high-frequency words, 5 Daily Edit pages (LOVE!), Grammar Printables and MORE! I am thrilled to have engaging, consistent station activities so I can start training my students right away. The best part is, no cutting and laminating endless games and pieces, simply Print and Go! 

This year I am most excited about diving into the world of Interactive Notebooks. I have seen some amazing ideas and I am so excited to begin these with my students. I am loving the idea that these notebooks provide students with a resource that they can use to review and practice. Having a tool that enables students to go back and refer to previously taught concepts is amazing. These notebooks will be a great way to show our mastery and learning of each of the CORE standards. 

You can check out these packets by clicking on the pictures below. Enjoy! 

If I am missing any spelling/sight word games that you would love to see included please don't hesitate to let me know. I am happy to add anything that will make our lives life easier :)