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

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Mother's Day Finds and Freebies!

My moms this year are getting the five star treatment this year!

I went searching on TPT this year and found tons of cute and unique ideas for our momma's!

**If you happen to be a mom of one of my kiddos this year TURN AWAY NOW! Do not scroll down!! You will get your gifts on Thursday!**

Okay... back to business...

First up, we are making a book of poetry for our moms!

I whipped up this little cover:

I glued these on pink construction paper and laminated them for the front covers of our books! Inside our books, my students chose lots of different poems from my poetry pack to describe their mommas. Shape poems, acrostic poems, cinquain poems, sensory poems... whatever their little hearts desired!

Inside the book is also one of my favorite little questionnaires that can be found everywhere:

Click on the image above if you want my free copy!

These always crack me up.

After all the poems, my kiddos made made their little hand prints on the bottom of a Mother's Day poem and I laminated that as the back cover. I plan to bind all our poetry books tomorrow so they are ready to go home Thursday!

Another fun thing we did was create these little accordion fold mini-books:

 

My friend, Lisa created these and they were super easy and they came out really cute!

Click on the link above to see what the final product will look like!

The next Mother's Day project required a little help from our 4th grade buddies (Thanks KT!) This freebie was found on TPT and it really let the kids be as creative as they'd like!

 

We are going to laminate these signs, hole punch each side, and add some ribbon so the students can hang them up as a banner for their moms! Each letter has specific directions for the kids to follow and they came out pretty darn cute if I don't say so myself!

Lastly, I am going to have my students complete this "Recipe for a Mother's Love." It is a freebie I made last year and essentially the students fill in the blanks on how to "make" a mother's love!

 I also include a tried and true sugar cookie recipe that I make each year! I make enough for my students to bring some home to their moms and some for us to try in class. I usually print the cookie recipe back-to-back with the mother's love recipe and send it home with the cookies! You can see my old (read: ugly) version from last year HERE.

Okay... that's all... I think!

I hope you all treat your mommas well this weekend!!

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Happy Mother's Day and Giveaway Winner!

First things first....

Happy Mother's Day to all the beautiful mamas and grandmas out there!!!!

Here is what we did in our class for our moms:

Sorry for the last minute, horrible, iphone pic, but it was a bit hectic this week! 

This was my free download, Mother's Day Recipe. On the back of the little recipe card is the recipe for the yummy sugar cookies we had. I made one for each student and one for them to bring home to their momma! The kids came up with some pretty adorable recipes!

We also made this little craftivity:

On the back, I we did a Mother's Day Survey which are always a bit hit with the moms. I favorite is... "My mom weighs about _____ pounds" 

Man, oh man, we had quite the variety of answers!! The mom's took them home at the end of the day and they were loving the answers their kids came up with :) 

It was so sweet!

And now the winner.... 

my first ever giveaway for my addition with 3 addends packet...

Drum roll please....

The random number generator picked...

Lucky Comment #4 --->>  Kelly Dolling at Teacher Idea Factory!!

Congrats!! Check your e-mail because I am sending it over now!

Thanks to everyone that entered :)

If you still would like to get my 3 addends packet, it is only $2 in my TpT store! 

You can get it, here!

Happy Sunday and have a great week!

Susan

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What we're up to this week...

First off, let me say a big THANK YOU to all my new followers :) I am now blogging to real people instead of just the wide... open... scary... internet world.

Our butterflies hatched over the weekend and my kids could not contain their excitement! I found this fun life cycle project on Pinterest which was loads of fun to make. It was originally posted here on Somewhat Simple, but when I look now the pictures are gone :( The directions are still there though!

After we made the pasta version, the kids drew the life cycle with the names of each stage in their Butterfly Observation Booklet, so I could grade it.

We also started some of our Mother's Day activities. We are finishing up poetry and we made list poems about our moms. After looking through them, I had the kiddos put them into a heart shape and highlight 5 of the most significant adjectives that describe their moms. I love that this student wrote "the boss" and highlighted it! Hilarious! Oh, and... he wrote huge in the bottom right corner, lol.

We are also learning the 3 sounds of ed! Tricky for 1st graders, but they are doing great! I made this fun little board game that is in my new Swimming into Summer packet. My students played it today and loved it!

That's what we're doing in Room 41B! What are you up to?!

And again, thank you for the sweet comments! I really appreciate it :)

Have a great night!

Susan

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Testing & Mama's Day!

Our 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders just began taking their CRTs here in Nevada. High-stakes testing... ahhh!

We knew how stressed out they were about the test so grades K-2 threw an adorable pep rally for the kids yesterday afternoon. We cheered, danced, and wished them well! We also paired up with a 5th grade class and we have a few surprises for them each day of testing. Tomorrow we are giving them these treats I found on Pinterest! The free printables are here: Smartie pants!

Aren't these just the cutest?!

On a different note...Mother's Day is coming up soon and we will be making these little "Mother's love" recipes:

See an example of how to fill it in at my TpT store: Mother's Love Recipe

Last year I baked these sugar cookies and brought them into school to share. Then I printed the cookie recipe back-to-back with the "Mother's love" recipes on card stock. We gave the moms the recipe card (laminated), a cute letter, & a place mat craftivity. I am on the lookout for a new, cute, craftivity for this year! What are you all doing for the holiday?!

Susan

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