Mother's Day, Math Stations, and Mo Willems!

My, oh my! Life has been busy lately.

Us Joneses have moved to a new house and traveled to Seattle the past few weeks! It has been crazy and fun and I have plenty more to share on that, but right now I wanted to share what's been going on in my classroom!

This week back from break we have been getting our Mother's Day presents ready to go. I am all about EASY these days and this quick, and I thought this meaningful gift would be a great keepsake for our special moms:

We used the directed drawings from First Grade Blue Skies to make our moms and then we filled out my questionnaire on the back (FREE, here). These seriously crack me up every year and this year did not disappoint!

We also introduced some new, May math centers this week - Camping math is the theme!

Here we have "fill the fire." Students have to find the missing addend, fill it in, and record. By this time in the year, I want my students solving addition and subtraction problems within 100, so these missing addend problems allow my kids to work on those skills!

I also had some students practice graphing data with "Catch 'em & Graph 'em"
Students had to pick a card, graph the data, and answer questions

These centers are from my new Camping Math unit with 4 other themed centers.
You can also snag the discounted, year-long bundle HERE!

and Mo Willems...

this week we kicked off our Mo Willems author study. Like many other teachers around the world, I L-O-V-E me some Mo! We are starting by diving into some Pigeon books, then Elephant and Piggie, and lastly we will read the Knuffle Bunny trio.

For more Mo Willems activities, check my posts here.

As we are wrapping up another school year, I will have plenty more to share with our end-of-the-year fun, but for now, I am going to enjoy some time with this guy:

xoxo

0

Tacky the Penguin Activities

If I can find one reason to be bummed that I'm on maternity leave, it's that I don't get to teach TACKY! My students l-o-v-e reading about that silly Tacky and I love teaching all about him! Last year I created my Mo Willems author study and I wanted to create a similar unit focused on Tacky.

I scoured through the six Tacky books that I own and read each year and came up with comprehension, vocabulary, and opinion questions for each text. I also made a little Tacky craft and some general Tacky activities that can be used with any book.

Here is a little look at what's included:

and there is lots more!

Click on the cover below to see if this unit works for your students :)

1

We Love Pigeon! Mo Willems Author Study

We have been learning alllllllll about Mo Willems this week and what author study would be complete without Pigeon?!

We started the author study on Monday learning a little bit about Mo Willems and then throughout the week we read *almost* all of the Pigeon books (Pigeon Needs a Bath is still en route via Scholastic Book Clubs)!

We completed a bunch of activities to help us dig a little deeper into Mo's funnier than funny books. I snapped a few pics:

The kids were pretty darn good at coming up with things Pigeon was thinking in "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!"

Then we summarized "Pigeon Wants a Puppy!" ^I just loved this little one's illustrations!

and in "Pigeon Wants a Hot Dog" we thought of some adjectives to describe Pigeon and provided evidence from the text to support our answers.

Today I thought it would be fun to make our cute little pigeon crafts!

Next week we will be diving into Elephant and Piggie and Knuffle Bunny with more fun!

All of the fun we did above is from my Mo Willems Author Study that I uploaded a few weeks ago:

0

Mo Willems - An Author Study with Pigeon, Elephant & Piggie, and Knuffle Bunny!

Do you LOVE Pigeon?! Do your kids LOVE Pigeon?!

I cannot get enough of that silly pigeon and my kids agree. He is a read-aloud favorite and my kids begggg for me to read a pigeon book at least once a day! 

I'm not a pigeon-only type of gal either. I think all three Knuffle Bunny books are just amazing for students in so many ways.... and those Elephant and Piggie books?! They are also class favorites.

Basically, I love Mo Willems. My class loves Mo Willems. and I think he is a literary genius! All this being said, my 1st grade team and I are finishing up our year with a few author studies. I knew my kids would SO enjoy studying Mo Willems and all his fantastic books, so I wanted to get started on this unit right away!

If you can't already tell... I am SO excited about this unit :)

I made a better preview so you can actually SEE some of the pages and types of activities in the unit... if you want to check that out... click HERE!

Here are some examples of activities included:

 Letters to write to Mo Willems!

Making inferences, comprehension questions, text-to-self connections and more with Elephant and Piggie! 

 Character changes over time, making predictions, looking at dialogue and more with all three Knuffle Bunny books!

Adjectives, text-dependent questions, opinion prompts, vocabulary and more with Pigeon!

A fun, creative writing activity looking at the unique photographs/illustrations in the Knuffle Bunny books!

Click on any of the images above to get a closer look :) The unit is on sale through tomorrow night (Wednesday 4/23).

PS- If you want to win a free copy... make sure you head on over to my facebook page!

;)

3

Artwork in the Classroom

It is Nevada Reading Week and our days are JAM-packed with "mystery readers," book reports, author studies, and lots and lots of reading!

On Monday, we learned all about Ezra Jack Keats! We had read Snowy Day about 15 times this year, so my students loved to learn more about him and read more of his stories. We read Whistle for Willie, Dreams, and Goggles.

We also learned that Ezra Jack Keats was famous for his illustrations, more specifically for his collages. I thought it would be fun to create our own collages using colored pencils, markers, crayons, and lots of construction paper. I gave each student a blank piece of paper, loads of art materials, and I just let them loose!

   Their goal was to create an illustration that had a clear setting, character, and event. When we were finished, we shared our stories with the class using "illustrator's chair."

Next time, I would certainly go buy some paints to make this little project even more fun!

Even without the paint, they were so engaged and really enjoyed the creativity of the project. It made this teacher happy.

Speaking of being a happy teacher, I received the SWEETEST gift the other day from a student. He went to a painting studio over the weekend with his family and made this... for ME! I couldn't believe it! I was overwhelmed that he would even think to give something so special to me. 

 It is hanging proudly in our classroom!!

:)

2 more days until Spring Break!

0