The chore game!

So I know I haven't posted in a while. Things have been so busy and I have not had time for blogging (which is way down on my list). Tonight I was inspired to make a chore game for my oldest daughter and I. The game includes punch cards, a chore bank, and a reward bank. The directions are on the punch card. With the banks I will not return a card until the banks are empty. I will print the cards on card stock for durability. I know it isn't overly cute, but hey it is a start!

Write the house

So my oldest started kindergarten this year and has come home with all kinds of learning! It has been wonderful. She came home one day with work she had done in class that was called writing the room. The point of the activity was for the children to look around the room and write words they saw around the room. It helps them to learn to read, write, and spell. Not long after her grandmother sent her a set of journals. She loved these and started "writing" in them right a way. She walked around the house and told me that there were no words for her to write the house.

This lead to this idea!

 

 

 

I used post it sentence strips to write lables for things around the house. Then she used her journal to walk around the house and find words to write in her journal. There were some words in all the rooms in the house.

The 3 Questions

Wow! The first 6 weeks of school have flown by! I haven't had time to post any thing for a while. But I have been taking pictures of things I have been doing! This post is again something that was all my idea!
During the first week of school I read my students the book The Three Questions. Before we read the story I ask them the three questions from the story:

1. When is the best time to do things?
2. Who it the most important one?
3. What is the right thing to do?

I ask them the questions first because I want to know what they are thinking. They give really funny, sweet, and thoughtful answers. They write their answers down on sticky notes and I post them on a anchor chart.



This is the book

 

Here is our anchor chart

 

Question 1

 

Question 2

A student comment

 Question 3



A student comment

An idea that was all MINE! Well mostly...

This year I am the team leader for my grade level. It is a job I am enjoying and having fun with. As a grade level we share a lot of items. One of the things we have done in the past is to put a sticky note of the stack of things we are sharing with a note and a place to check off that you have seen/gotten the information. This year I got the idea to save us some time by making a folder to pass these items in. I started by writing all of our initials on the tab portion of the folder and a line to check off after receiving the folder. Then I had the folder laminated. Since it is laminated we can use a Expo Vis-A-Vis Wet Erase Markers, 8 Colored Markers (16078)  to write on the outside of the folder important information. Then one of my team mates made the folder even better by velcroing (not sure that is really a word) the marker to the folder. Here is the finished folder:

Sorry for the glare on the picture.

Place value

So I have not posted anything in awhile. School started so I have been doing a lot of actual work and less time on the computer for fun. I have actually used some of those great teaching ideas I pinned on my boards. (Here are links to my teaching related boards: writing, science, language, reading, and math)

Here is an anchor chart I made the first week of school to teach place value:

Here is the link to the pin I was inspired by and this is the blog for the original idea. Mrs. Sims and Ms. Mathis are way more artistic than I am. My charts aren't pretty, but they get the point across!

Back to school photo op!

So I don't really have time for this. I am trying to get my classroom ready for school to start (which is always stressful), I am trying to clean out my house and get rid of 7 years worth of superfluous (my favorite word) crap, and get my oldest child ready to start kindergarten! But I saw this pin, and had to do this! I made a frame for my daughter to hold while I take her picture on the first day of school. The idea came from Christie over at First Grade Fever! and an activity she is doing with her students. I started with four 12" long rulers. I hot glued them together to make the base of the frame. to the frame I added some honey bee boarder I had left over from years ago. Then some flowers and this is what I ended up with:

I was so excited to find this boarder because my daughters first day of school dress has a HONEY BEE on it! How lucky was that!

If you read the blog leave me a comment to let me know you stopped by. I would love to know if there are other people out there like me!

Have a great school year everyone!

What time do you have?

Tonight I ran across this GREAT telling time idea on Pinterest.

 I loved it and decided to whip up a printable activity sheet to use this year in my classroom.

Here is a link to the pin for the activity.

Also a link where you can download it to use.