Been a while----

Wow, I feel like I've neglected all my fabulous followers!  I haven't posted (other than the TpT sale) for almost a week.  Where has my time gone? Quick update....My kiddos are healthy now...the baby rabbit (the one we were trying to save) didn't make it :( .....and I've been pooped since the week of Valentine's Day...so pooped in fact that I haven't spent more than 20 minutes on pinterest in the past week! EGADS!! I know, right?  Bear with me wonderful people--I hope to get back to a routine by summer soon.

OHHH, guess what????? I purchased a freebie license from Scrappin Doodles!  YAY!  More goodies to share with you Soon! :)  But in the meantime, if you wanted to visit my store and see what I'm posting, that would be FABULOUS (okay that sounded so much cooler in my head!).  While you're there, if you wanted to click that little follow me button, I won't be complain' ;)  Don't forget there is also a GREAT sale going on for Leap Day. 

Okay, about a week ago, I posted a little spin and graph game---I, unfortunately, made a couple mistakes. I fixed them and you can grab you a new set by clicking on the picture below.

For my Treasures followers, here is a simple story review sheet for Little Rabbit.You can click the picture below to grab it.

So many people are doing GREAT Dr. Seuss stuff and have so many wonderful ideas, that I didn't make any.  However, since tomorrow is the last day of February, here's an activity you may want to do.  I hope to be making lions and lambs tomorrow in class, and having the students make predictions about March weather.  Here's a graph to go with it! :)

Leap Year Sale! :)

If you get the Teachers Pay Teachers newsletter every Sunday then you have heard that there is going to be a HUGE Leap Day sale Wednesday.  Many teachers are offering 20% off and with the 10% off you get with the Promo Code: L2P9Y--well what a deal!!.  This sale only comes around every 4 years and will be the last big sale before teacher appreciation day in May.   My store will be on sale Wednesday at 20%.
****Don't forget to use the promo code to get an  10% off.  Here is the link to my store.

Here are some great stores to visit from my bloggy friends!!  Take a look at their stores and blogs! I guarantee you will find something that you like! :) 

 

A Special Kind of Class TpT Store

                                    

                      Sharing Kindergarten TPT Store   

           

 Teaching With Style TpT store

 Teaching 4 Real TpT Store

 Kindergarten Lifestyle TpT Store

 HoJo's TpT Store

 JD's Rockin' Readers Tpt Store

 For The Love of Teaching Math TpT store

 Teaching Tales TpT Store

 Corkboard Connections TpT Store

 Mrs. Lirette's Learning Detectives TpT Store

 Kids Cog Works TpT Store

 DillyDabbles TpT Store

 Minds in Bloom TpT Store

 Fisher Reyna Education TpT Store

 Mrs. Miner's Monkey Business TpT Store

 Nyla's Craft Teaching TpT Store

 First Grade Blue Skies TpT Store

 Teaching in Room 6 TpT Store

 The Lesson Guide's TpT Store

 Wise Guys TpT Store

 Kreative in Kinder TpT Store

 Small Types TpT Store

And the winner is.....

If only you could hear my awesome drum roll that's playing in my head! :)  

MELANIE

Melanie, I will be emailing CTP with your email address.  They will forward it on to you! :)

Okay---so in Treasures this week, we are working on the story Meet Ben Franklin (which I really enjoy) and long E with ee and ea (which I don't enjoy).  My students are doing pretty well with reading the pattern, the spelling--ahh--well reading them is half the battle! :)  Below you will find a simple long e sentences for a read and draw, and a riddle page.  Click the pic to grab yours.

I have story questions that I typed up, but they are the computer at school.  Here's the story quiz though.

 

Thanks for the comments you all have left me.  They cheer me up.  One thing I want to leave you with---another quote that I found floating around on pinterest.  It's similar to the one from yesterday, but it really does make me stop and think.

 

I have a lot to be thankful for.  I need to focus on the positives, not the negatives in my life.  Enjoy your evening! :)

(oh and if you wanna leave a comment---I won't be hatin')

One of those Days..and a Giveaway Reminder

Yep, one of those days and I wasn't even at work.  I was home with my little dude (AGAIN). We swore he had strep---little white spots, sore throat, fever-----nope ANOTHER viral infection.  We just did this 2 weeks ago.  The doctor said "First  year of Kindergarten?" (and it is)  His sister was sick this weekend with some type of flu bug...so hubby and I are poppin' the Vitamin C Drops.  Neither one of us have time to be sick if we're taking care of kids (and we're both teachers).  BUT, that's not all we're taking care of...nope...did I ever mention about the time we got a rabbit for a pet (After the market rabbits were sold?) Well, then little dude wanted one too--but it was "crippled", so they exchanged it for us, but let us keep the crippled one too. I said as long as they were all girls--no biggie. Well, we kept them all in one of those cool cages where they could run up and down ramps---big fun, right?  Okay--long story short........ONE was NOT a girl.  Oops----baby rabbits!  Yep...not once, but now twice!  UGH!  One litter is almost ready to go away---and we are trying to "mother" the one from the last litter. The momma wasn't wanting much to do with them.  Hubby is REALLY loving all these animals too, but hey, what am I to do?  I gotta try right?  It's just been a crazy couple weeks around here and I was getting all stressed...you know how that is.....but then I saw this:

And while my problems aren't major---more like nuisances--how true is that?  Then I saw this great saying (I've never heard/seen it before)

 

How awesome is that?  Puts things into perspective for me sometimes.  Okay, anyways...on with school.  First of all, my giveaway for this wonderful product (below) ends 10:00 PM EST...so there's still time!!  Click the picture to see how to enter---it's SUPER EASY!

We will begin a money unit soon (we're not yet on Common Core---but ya know, I still think this is important--even when we go to CC next year), and we review coins veryday for calendar and we recite the money poems.  I've taken those money poems and put them into a cloze exercise.   You can click the image to grab you a set.

Recognizing the coins themselves is often difficult for students.  I know even my second graders had a hard time last year.  Here's a little spin and graph.  I tried to make it so that you can adjust it for abilities.  I know I will have to in my classroom too.  You can click the picture below to grab the 5 page Spin and Graph activity. 

(update---there were errors on this post---I've fixed it and changed the link, but the image shown will not look like the one you will get in google docs)

So, my questions for the day--
1) How do you handle stress?  (I bake.)
2) What helps you put things back into perspective? (Prayer goes a long way!)

EE and EA

Seriously? EE and EA together? For my firsties?  All in a 4 day week? Our basal is NUTS, but they didn't ask me to write it.  They just want me to teach it--and  have my students Master it so I can assess them on Friday?  WOWSA!  I know that some words they just have to memorize, so I will get off my little soap box because a girl's gotta do what she's told to do.  So here's how I plan on implementing it into my classroom. 

I'm not doing my regular picture sorts. We're going to work on the word this week.  The need to recognize the pattern.  My main focus will be reading the word, recognizing the "chunk".  We will be singing a LOT this week.  You know---we will sing green to the tune of Row, Row, Row your boat, and practice singing seat to Oh My Darlin'.  My students will think I need a recording contract by the time this week is over.  They don't know how lucky they are-- ;)

We use the Phonics Dance in my classroom, so there's a little blurb of the phonics dance on both worksheets.  I think these will be a good word fluency activity for my kiddos too.

Here's also a little sorting activity. You can click the picture to grab you a copy.

Also, if you missed out on yesterday's post--I'm having a giveaway.  You could win this great product in  an e-book form (which is super awesome because you can pull them up on your computer and do them together as a warm-up) 

You can click the picture to head to the post to see how to win! :)

400 Follower Giveaway!

YAY!  I got there!  Thanks so much to those of you who are following along with me as I am slowly learning this blogging process.  When I first started blogging this summer, one of my posts was about my favorite things.  Here is one of those products. Math Minutes by Creative Teaching Press.  You can click the image to go to their store.  

Math Minutes are an excellent supplement to any math curriculum.  I use them as a "warm-up" before my daily lesson.  I like them because I am giving my students a variety of math questions.  While there are some things on them that we haven't got to in our curriculum, it opens up discussion.  I have found that when it does come up in the curriculum, students are familiar with the concept, making it easier to teach the skill.  I have used them for the past 5 years for both my 1st and 2nd grade classes.  (I even own them in 3rd and 4th grade.)  My students will ask me, "Are we doing a Math Minute today?" Then they get excited when they get passed out.  They love them as much as I do.  You get 100 AWESOME minutes with 10 different questions on each page.  The minutes are designed in which the skills vary from reading and writing the number word to working on adding and subtracting 2-digit numbers without regrouping. There are a variety of ways you can use them, but however you choose, they are a great tool to help familiarize students with questions they may end up seeing on state assessments.

Here's the cool thing---I am giving away this AWESOME product as an e-book.  You have 3 ways to enter.  Each time you enter, be sure to leave your email address as Creative Teaching Press will email you the product directly.


1) Follow my blog, and leave a comment.  
2) Like Creative Teaching Press on Facebook and then leave a comment. 
3) Like First Grade and Fabulous on Facebook and then leave a comment.

That simple, but do it quickly though.  Giveaway will expire Tuesday at 10:00 p.m. EST.  Seriously though, this is an awesome product.  I'm not joking when I say my students get excited when we do them.....and disappointed if I don't do them.

Now, how about a freebie just for reading my post today? I wanted to do a simple sort without getting into a lot of heavy information on Lincoln and Washington.  Here's what I came up with.

Hope someone is able to use it!!  Have a happy Sunday! :)

Giveaway at 400!!!!

I'm almost there.  I will be giving away a GREAT item from Creative Teaching Press!!  Stay tuned, and follow me!! :)

Until then---here's a little something that I created that makes me happy!! :)

I've seen all the great Hey Girls floating around on pinterest....but this guy makes me feel like a 13 year old girl with a movie star crush!!  OHH MY! :)

Sugar High Continues

I thought MAYBE, just MAYBE things would be back to normal today?  But what the heck is normal?  This has been a very long week (and unfortunately not as productive as I wold have liked for it to be).  Monday (which seems like it was two weeks ago) was our hundreds day.  I had all these great ideas, but I most MAJORLY over plan, or my kiddos work slow.  It was still a good day though...(I had 5 kiddos absent -MAN was it quiet! lol).  Our food drive was a success.  Our building (K-5) has about 95% population on free and reduced lunch, so for our students to donate to a food drive was awesome.  The first graders set a goal for 100 cans per classroom and we would donate them to Good Samaritan on Valentine's Day for a gift of kindness.  We collected 594 cans!!  AWESOME! :)   We did go through and count the cans by tens and ones, and tossed out the old dates.  The kids had fun doing it.

Then yesterday was our party.  WOWSWERS I forgot how long it took for firsties to pass out Valentine's :)  We passed them out in the morning, then they partied in the afternoon with their substitute.  Yesterday was one of our crazy special days so they were at specials for an hour and a half. 

I'm finally getting around to posting our ai and ay work and the Treasures Homework/Tests.  Here ya go! 

Ai/Ay Sort

Ai/Ay Shape Boxes and Riddles

Ai/Ay Task Cards

Treasures Unit 4.3 Stormy Weather Story Questions

Treasures Unit 4.3 Story Weather Quiz

If you are able to use any of this, I sure love hearing about it! :)  I also just realized that I'm VERY close to 400 followers.....maybe it's about time for a giveaway? :)