My New Blog Design

I am super duper excited about my new blog design.  I ♥ it! 
Jen over at Finally in First  and  Dream Team Designs designed it for me using a scrap kit that I picked out (Fly Lady Bug by Artgal). 
Jen used her expertise and put it all together in a creative, super cute way and it turned out better than I expected!  I am such a lucky gal to find these creative people!  I ♥ my blog!

Scarecrow, Skeleton and Halloween Stuff

The last couple of weeks have been super busy!  We have been learning about scarecrows, pumpkins, and skeletons. We took a field trip to Disability Resources Pumpkin Patch where we went on a hay ride, listened to a story and picked out the pumpkin that we carved on Fri.


 I am going to share some fun activities we have been working on.  (My personal favorite is the pasta skeleton that was in the art center this past week.)

We had our Halloween parties on Friday so I am hopeful for a calm Monday, however, "with Halloween only hours away", I am sure that's wishful thinking on my part.  "Drat", said the teacher. 
If you don't recognize my play on words, you need to check out the book  Big Pumpkin by Eric Silverman.

A great book for a story elements activity:

A closer picture of each part:

setting

characters

problem

solution

We have been learning the attributes of

pattern blocks in math.

So we read the book

Harriet's Halloween Candy by Nancy Carlson

and then we sorted pictures of Halloween candy based on particular attributes.  Then students finished the sentence "I sorted my Halloween candy by . . ."  I think they turned out well and they showed some serious first grade thinking going on.

On Monday, I will be doing my "Thinking Activities Using Scarecrow Attributes" that I have posted on TPT.  You can check out more info. about it HERE.

Graphing and Addition

Here are a couple activities we are doing this week that involve graphing and addition.

Grab a copy of the BooMallow graph HERE.

Grab a copy of the GhostMallow graph HERE.

Fire Safety

We learned about fire safety this past week.  On Thurs.,  members of our local Volunteer Fire Dept. and Texas Forest Sevice came to our school and shared some important fire safety information.  We saw firefighters, Smokey the Bear, and fire trucks.

If you are looking for a free resource for fire safety curriculum, you need to check out Fire Safety for Texans.  Fire Safety for Texans is a series of fire and burn prevention curriculum guides (K-12) developed by the State Fire Marshal´s Office.  You can find the curriculum HERE.      I especially liked the story of Careful and Harmful (in the second grade curriculum) and the stick puppet activity that went with it.

We also did some art and followed a recipe to make edible fire trucks.

For the edible fire trucks, you need:

mini oreos

pretzel sticks

ghram crackers

red icing (or white that you dye red with food coloring)

and gumdrops