Crafty fun for moms

Earlier in the week we had a wonderful visit from the mum of a former student of mine. She now runs a local Crock A Doddle store and offered to come in let the children paint a ceramic item for their mom.

                                          

We are waiting for them to be fired.   I think the mom's are going to love them.

Beginning, Middle and End

We finished up "Big Chickens Fly the Coop" by completing our beginning, middle and end activity.

All the activities can be found in my unit Big Chickens Fly the Coop Shared Reading Plans.   I'm featured over at teacher2teacher Thursday round up,  so this unit is on sale for 3 days only.  Head over there and check out the other great products on sale by some other wonderful sellers.

More Big Chickens

Today we did a review of the book "Big Chickens Fly the Coop".  I wanted to see if the children could remember the story and retell it to me.  We used the story boards we made last week.  First I took the children one at a time and had them retell the story to me.  Then as a big group, I re-read the story and had the children move their chickens along the story board as we went.

Flowers

We needed to make some flowers to decorate our room for some visitors that are coming on Thursday and Friday.  So we decided to make some big ones.    Really big ones.  What do you think?

Justin Bieber Fans Anyone???

A former student of my school, Tori, is selling her autographed Justin Bieber Guitar.

Tori suffers from SMA or Spinal Muscular Atrophy, a progressive neuromuscular disease. Children that are born with this genetic disease are missing a gene that produces a protein. Without this protein the muscles die off and atrophy.

Tori had the pleasure of meeting Justin back stage just before his Tampa Bay concert Dec 19, 2010. Justin donated a signed left handed Gibson Epiphone guitar to her. Tori would now like to auction the guitar so the proceeds can be donated to the fight against SMA.

If you or anyone you know would like to have this, please pass on the link.  With your help a cure can be found.

Justin Bieber Guitar

Free Resources

Charity Preston is celebrating 500 followers on FB.  She has put together a list of  50 FREE educational products from GREAT Teachers of all grade levels and subjects from TpT! There is some great stuff at this link (including mine LOL).  Head over there and check it out.

Big Chickens Fly the Coop

This week our Shared Reading book was "Big Chickens Fly the Coop" by Leslie Helakoski.  This a wonderful book about 4 scared chickens who really want to visit the farmhouse.  When they leave the coop the chickens get scared by the dogs, the tractor and the horses but keep braving the outside in their attempt to find the farmhouse.

I didn't take pictures of everything we did but here are some highlights.

We started out by making predictions about what we thought to "fly the coop" meant.  We made a graph of the predictions and checked back on our answers after we read the story.

 I made some large interactive pieces which we used throughout the week to discuss the book, characters, setting and to act out the story.

 I made some communication boards for my children with severe communication difficulties to aid in their ability to retell or answer questions about the story.

We talked about characters and setting



 Using eye gaze to place the characters and settings in the correct spot.

We also did beginning, middle and end of the story and talk about being brave and trying again even if you don't succeed the first time.

If you are interested in "Big Chickens Fly the Coop", I have it available at my TpT store.  It includes all the lesson plans, communication boards and worksheets for 5 days of activities.

My Button

I finally made my very own button.  With the help of Megan over at Shabby Blogs I now have my very own button for you to grab and put on your website.  You can find it on the left hand side.

Teaching Blog Addict

Head over the the teaching blog addict and get your card.

Little Sheep Sight Word Game

I had such a good response from the Little Bunny Sight Word Games I made, that I decided to make a farm version.


All the sight words are printed on barns and a picture of a sheep is hidden behind a word. The children have to say the word on the barn in order to look under it. The person who finds the sheep wins.

I am offering a free sample version of the game Little Sheep Sight Word Game.

or if you are interested I also made full versions of all of the Dolch Word Lists


Little Sheep Sight Word Game Pre-primer

Little Sheep Sight Word Game Primer

Little Sheep Sight Word Game Grade One

Little Sheep Sight Word Game Grade Two

Little Sheep Sight Word Game Grade Three

How much are eggs these days?

Wrapping up our Easter activities we did the "Down at the Bunny Shop" pocket chart poem.  I had the children print their name on a piece of paper.  I picked them each randomly and placed it in the pocket chart.  As we read I changed the number, s/he if necessary and the colour.  When the children came up they picked their egg (there were two of each colour with different prices on them) and then had to count out the right amount of money to "buy" it off me.  They then put the egg in their basket and "hopped" away.  Their favourite part. 

Egg Decorating

Today we fun and decorated some eggs for Easter.  I can't remember where I got this egg spinner but it is wonderful for children.  They only have to press down on the button.

Easter half price sale

To celebrate the upcoming Easter holiday I am offering all my Easter activities for 1/2 price for 24 hours.

You can find them here at my Teacher Pay Teacher store.

Piggies in the mud

Today we made muddy pigs.  We started by painting a pink pig.

 And then we cut him out.  For some of the children I made the line around the pig thicker so that it was easier to cut.

 This is a child using an adapted pair of scissors to cut out his pig.

 The children drew faces on their pig and glued him together.  We then dabbed him with chocolate pudding to make him look like he was in the mud.