Valentine Centers and a Couple of Freebies

Our Valentine centers are up and running and I thought I would share a few pictures of the centers we are working on this week.

Finding the Missing Part/Fact Families:

Students used Valentine erasers as manipulatives to find the missing part and then wrote the corresponding fact families.

Valentine Sentence Scramble:

You can grab this activity on one of my old blog posts:

Valentine Sentence Scramble

Suffixed -ed and -ing:

In this center, the students roll the cube to see if they need to add suffix -ed or -ing to a base word.  Then they had to use their word in a sentence.  You can grab a copy of this activity HERE.

Counting Dimes and Pennies:

I put plastic dimes and pennies in little heart containers.  The students simply count the money and record their answer.  I think I got this recording sheet from Sheree Peterson's blog but I couldn't find the link on her blog.  If I do, I will add the link later.

 ipads:

At this center, my firsties were using Splash Math.

I made this little noun and verb sort for review this week.

I gave each student a piece of manilla paper.  They wrote "Nouns" on the left and "Verbs" on the right.  They then cut out the pictures and glued them under "noun" or "verb."  After getting the pictures glued, they then wrote the words on their recording sheet.  You can grab a copy by clicking on either picture below.

The cute graphics are from My Cute Graphics.

Happy Teaching!

Valentine Holders

 

I got our Valentine Card Holders  made and they are on the wall waiting for those sweet Valentine cards to be placed inside.

Here are the directions if you want to make these:

To make big holders, I used two 12x18 sheets of construction paper (2 colors) and folded it in half and made a crease where the middle would be (see my finger)

Then I opened it up and made two folds (see picture below)

Take the pink at the top and fold it over 

Then fold the corners over and tape to the back.

Then draw lines to make a heart shape at the top 

(see picture below)

Cut out the lines and write names on the holders.

You could have your students decorate these with Valentine stickers or cut out hearts if you wanted to.

Happy Teaching!

  

Groundhog Fun

Friday afternoon, we spent some time learning about Groundhog Day.  We read some books, made predictions on whether the groundhog would see his shadow and graphed those results.  We then made some observations about our graph.  We also did a little groundhog craft and made groundhog cupcakes.  After the students made their cupcakes they had to write a few sentences telling how to make the cupcake.  

One of my firsties declared it to be "The best day EVER!"   

And, of course, that was enough reward for me.  Those are the moments that keep me plugging along looking for fun ways to enrich learning in ways that will be memorable for the littles.

Happy Teaching!

Moon Study

"Let's Go to the Moon!" is one of my favorite stories in our reading basil.  There is so much to do with this story and I've included some of the activities we did this week with our story.  

Since identifying and writing questions was one of our skills this week, we wrote "Did you know" questions that had to include a fact about the moon.

We also wrote 5 sentence paragraphs about the moon.  This was a 2 day process.  On day 1, we made our class circle map about the moon and did our prewriting. On day 2, we wrote our final draft copy.

We made a model showing how the moon orbits earth while the earth orbits the sun. 

 

You can grab a copy of the pattern free at Once Upon a First Grade Adventure along with some additional moon ideas.  BTW, Mrs. H's anchor chart is way cuter than mine.

I also added our science TEKS "Objects in the Sky" to our moon study.

Brainpopjr has great videos on the sun and moon.

We also completed the "Day or Night" sort shown below.  The card pictures included objects you might see during the day or night but also includes activities you might do during the day or night.  You will notice that three cards are in the middle.  My students have done enough Venn Diagrams that they placed those cards in the middle because you can do them either day or night.

If you are interested in these cards, you can get them in Sheila Melton's store.  

We, of course, did all the activities included in my Let's Go the Moon unit.  I wish I had gotten pictures of my students working in centers on some of the activities.  Here is a preview of what's in the pack.

On Friday, we tasted real astronaut ice cream that I ordered from HERE

We graphed our results:  

This activity is from Abby's Amazing Astronauts Activities! Pack

I hope you can find one or two things you could add to your moon study.

  Happy Teaching, Friends!