Pumpkins..check! Parent Conferences..check! Nap Time..check!

Holy Cow it has been a busy week!  I have no idea how I was able to fit it all in!  Pumpkin activities first and  I just finished with my last Parent-Teacher Conference!  I am talked out and ready for a nap!

We started the week with Spookley the Square Pumpkin.  The students have been learning about Characters, Setting, and Main Ideas of stories so I created a fun activity with Spookley to go along with their learning.  We made a class pumpkin patch and they wrote about the story on the leaves and glued everything together to make a pumpkin vine.

Next project was inspired by the book "How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin?"  I was at Barnes and Noble during Teacher appreciation week and found this book.  It was perfect for introducting the students to Place Value and a little pumpkin fun!!  They had already learned to count by 10's and 5's so this was really fun for them to count higher than 100!

I was just getting ready to type up an observation sheet when, lucky me, one popped up in my Google Reader!  Big thanks to Mrs. Bainbridge's Class for those Super Cute Pumpkin Observation booklets!

I started out by reading a little from the "How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin?" then had them make predictions on how many seeds might be inside their pumpkins.  We used 3 different sizes to see if there are more seeds in the biggest pumpkin.  We ended up with the smallest holding the most, 455!

We wanted to know if it will Sink or Float?

It Floats!

How many Ribs?

How many seeds? Slimy!!

Time to Count!  I had them use small Dixie cups to count the tens, then they exchanged 10 Dixie cups for a Styrofoam hundreds cup.

 

Our 1st Grade Character Pumpkins!!  They are soooo AWESOME!

We had a blast!!  Click the link below if you are interested in our Spookley activity and more! 

Character Masks Make Reading Fun!

My first graders just finished their first Readers Theater!  They had so much fun!  The best part of Readers Theater is how it makes the students feel about reading.  Even my lowest readers felt more confident about reading when we finished.  The plays we did were differentiated so that every student could participate.  What I have done in the past is written plays from familiar books to the level of the students.  We would end up doing about 4 different plays to accomodate all the students.  I created the mask templates used in both these plays and are available at the link at the bottom of this post.This year we just did 2 plays.

My highest readers did "The 3 Billy Goats Gruff".  Rather than copying the templates on construction paper, the students wanted to color the masks themselves.

 Some of the masks I used popsicle sticks as handles.  For bigger masks, I used skewers for the handles because those are only about $2 for 50. Just cut off the sharp end.  Loads cheaper than craft stores!

The others students did a play from our Reading Street Readers Theater Anthology because it had the reading skills and vocabulary that we had  been working on the last 8 weeks.  I changed it a little to accomodate my struggling readers.  They came to me afterwards and said, "Mrs. Johnson, I am a great reader!"  That made my day!

You can visit my store at Teachers Pay Teachers and download the masks for free for the next 24 hours only!  It includes17 masks for The 3 Little Pigs, The 3 Billy Goats Gruff,  and many other farm and zoo animals for other stories you can use with.

Click Here To Downlaod

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Rosemary Wells Author Study: Free Max and Ruby Activities

It is so hard to find some good Max and Ruby activites to go with our Rosemary Wells Author Study, so I made a few of my own that I'd like to share with all of you today.  I enjoy offering activities you may find useful for your class. I do work very hard on them and even drew the Max and Ruby clip art myself (so please don't copy).  I do love the feedback on some of my products as well and would love to hear from you.   Thanks!

Here are some of the books I used with our "Making Predictions" worksheet

Word Work Center Game

Beginning, Middle, Ending books that can be used with any Max and Ruby Story.

My students have been learning how to make predictions so they filled out this sheet with a Max and Ruby story I read to them, then we made Max and Ruby Glyphs to add to it.

Download this FREE today at my TpT store!

Winners, Freebies, and More!

Hello fellow bloggers!  The time has finally come to announce the 3 winners of my Fall Giveaway!  Thank you all so much for taking the time to visit my blog and taking advantage of some of the things I offer.  In fact, you can walk away today with something FREE!!

Congrats to the winners!

Here is some Free stuff in celebration of Fall!  Since the math game is one of my new products, you can find it at my Teachers Pay Teachers store as a free download for the next 24 hours!

This Pumpkin activity is a fun one to do with the students!  All you need is tissue paper!

 My first graders are so excited they are learning to read so I made these bookmarks for them to celebrate Halloween.

And finally, I wanted to share another new product that can be found on my Teachers Pay Teachers Store!

I can't resist...I have to share a picture of my little cowgirl! Her Preschool class built a farm float for Homecoming. It was the highlight of our week!!