Fun in First

A Teaching Blog by Jodi Southard

Blog

More Winter Centers

by 1 Comment

I posted two January centers a couple of days ago.  Here are two more that I have been working on. 
Snowflake Money
Students will match the snowflakes with the correct money amount to the snowman to make a winter picture.
Download HERE
Penguin Word Families
Students will match the fish to the correct penguins.
Download HERE

Winter Centers

by 2 Comments

Here are two centers I created for January.  I am currently working on more, but figured I would share what I have so far.  The first one is Snowman Fact Families.  Print off and cut out the snowman pieces.  Mix them all up and have students match the correct snowballs with the snowman heads.
Download Here
The next one is called Mitten Match.  Students will choose a pink (noun) and a blue (adjective) mitten.  They will have to use these two mittens to create a sentence.  For example, “The bear was cold in the snow.”
Download Here

Teddy Bear Day

by 1 Comment

In September, we had a Teddy Bear Day in my classroom.  Teddy Bear Day is September 9th and National American Teddy Bear Day is November 14th.  Don’t ask me what’s the difference?  Even though both of these dates have passed, you could do a Teddy Bear themed day on any day of the year, or save it for next year.  My students loved it.  Here are some of the activities from that day.
I passed out a handful of Ellison diecut miniature teddy bears in a variety of colors to each student.  They had to sort their bears and then graph them.  We discussed the graph and wrote the one they had the most and least of. 
I gave each student a handful of honey and chocolate Teddy Grahams.  Then they had to write an addition number sentence to tell how many they had all together and a subtraction number sentence to tell the difference between their two types of Teddy Grahams.
Their bears had a slumber party in our classroom overnight.  After the students left for the day, I moved their bears throughout the classroom for them to find the next morning.  When the students came in, they had to find their bear and then write about what they thought their bear was doing overnight.
Students traced around their bear and colored it to match.  Then they had to write a descriptive paragraph to tell about their bears.

We made teddy bear snacks using rice cakes, peanut butter, raisins, and pretzels.  The students had to write down the recipe and following the directions to make their snack.
We also read a lot of teddy bear books (Goldilocks, MoonBear’s Books, The New Bear at School, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, …).  We discussed new vocabulary, compared and contrasted the books, and made a tally chart graph after voting for our favorites.

Ice Cream Sundae Work

by 1 Comment

A couple of months ago I saw an idea on another blog about student’s that went above and beyond on their work and it was like a sugar cookie.  I cannot remember where I saw this idea.  I loved this and went to the local education store to look for some cookie border for a bulletin board, but couldn’t find any.  So, as I’m looking, I come across some ice cream sundae border and think “I can totally make this work!”  I put up some bulletin board paper with the ice cream sundae border and I look for student’s that have gone above and beyond on their work.  During writing time, I like to go around and say I’m looking for ice cream sundae work.  They instantly try harder to make their handwriting nice 🙂  I also put a special ice cream sticker on the papers that get hung on this special bulletin board.

Cool Resolutions

by 5 Comments

Even though I love Christmas Break, I dread taking down the Christmas decorations and bulletin boards in my classroom because it just looked so great with everything up.  However, I want everything Christmas gone so I don’t have to come back to it in January.  Our last day of school before break was today, so I decided to have the students write about their New Year’s Resolutions.  We discussed the word resolution and brainstormed some ideas.  Then we made penguins to glue our resolutions onto and titled the bulletin board, “Cool Resolutions.”  Now we’re all set for January.

I loved their resolutions.  Some of my favorites: “I will eat more fruits and vegetables”  “I will not fight with my brother.”  “I will try and behave.”  “I will always listen to my teacher.”