Peek At Last Week AND a Math Game Freebie!
It’s Sunday! I am oh-so-grateful for a brand new week. Last week was crazy with a capital C. I am officially done with my formal evaluation and observation though! Yay! Since my evaluation soaked up all of my time, I didn’t get a chance to share what we’ve been learning and doing with y’all! 🙂
Here’s a peek at last week for you:
We made applesauce on Friday! It was delicious!!
Well, at least I think it was.
I never eat it. But the kids devoured it!
See, my kids help me make the applesauce.
Yes, I have them all wash their hands but that still does not make me want to try the applesauce. So I just take their word for it. 😉
I like to use our applesauce activity as a good time to teach them how illustrations and pictures for their writing need to be detailed. We focus on making our illustrations realistic and we label our pictures.
We practiced writing complete sentences as we wrote our applesauce recipe together.
P.S. This little one’s older sister (4th grade) showed him what a quotation mark was on Thursday night. Thank you, older sister. #I’mnotreallythankingyou #nowhe’sconfused
(These printables come from my Apples to Applesauce unit HERE.)
I introduced our retelling ropes as we focused on retelling a story with the setting, characters, and main events. We read a new Pete the Cat book every day to practice and they had SO much fun singing the Pete the Cat songs with me.
We practiced our fluency with my Short Vowel Fluency Spinners.
I have a parent helper that comes in once a week now to help with our intervention time. These little stories are perfect for her to work with the kids! My kiddos are engaged and the directions are simple for volunteers.
For writing last week, we started working on informational essays. We used Teri from A Cupcake For The Teacher’s Johnny Appleseed craftivity pack to make the apple trees.
They look so cute hanging in the hallway!
Here are some close-ups of the writing essays. Since you know I like to “Keep It Real,” none of the papers below are from my advanced or high writers. I want to show you what writing looks like at this point in the year from my struggling writers. I think it’s important that as bloggers, we show ALL dimensions – not just the ones that “look pretty.”
–My camera cut off the sides of the paper so you have to use your imagination a little.
“I will teach you about the apple orchard. We went on a hay ride. We picked apples. We went in the cooler. We saw them sort the apples. I hope you learned about the apple orchard.”
“I will teach you about the apple orchard. I picked apples. We went on a hayride. We went in a hay maze. I hop you learned about the apple (orchard).”
Are we the perfect, model first grade writers yet?
No, we have a long way to go. But if you look closely (and I know it’s hard, because the pictures are cut off) my students have a some working sense of what a complete sentence is. They also have their capitals and periods mastered already. For the 6th week of school, I am very proud of them!
Now, I have a FUN math game freebie for you!! My kids are in love with this game! It is a strategy game, similar to the game “Poison.” Students learn how think ahead to make decisions as they subtract the apples from the tree. My firsties could play this over and over again all day long!
To download this freebie, click HERE or click on the picture above! 🙂
Have fun and enjoy!
In my non-teaching world, I had a wonderful weekend catching up with some of my close blogging friends for a girls shopping weekend! We had so much fun shopping, laughing, and chatting!
Here are some snapshots of our trip! We even got pedicures – it was so much fun!
Pictured above is:
Jessica from Second Grade Nest
Lisa from 4th and Ten
Sarah from Permanently Primary
Thank you so much for catching up on my week with me!
Have a wonderful Monday!
I love this strategy game…we used to play with toothpicks in fourth grade, so this will be much safer for second graders. Plus, they could try starting with different numbers of apples to differentiate! Thanks for the reminder!
I'm with you on the applesauce tasting reluctance. 😉 I might take a bunch of vitamins both before and after 1 small spoonful. But the unit looks great and the writing is awesome!