Spider Schema!

This week my students and I will explore spiders! This time of year is perfect for studying these cool creatures! I have found so many awesome ideas for this theme on Pinterest and other blogs!

I usually start each theme by asking my students what they already know about the topic, also known as their schema! It's great to see their little minds at work! I made a sheet for the children to illustrate and hopefully label some spider schema.

Then, we will spend the week reading a ton of non-fiction and learning new, interesting facts about spiders. Here is one of my favorite books to read with the class:

Once we have read a lot of books and gathered a ton of facts, I will have each student write a new fact they learned about spiders. I also made a sheet for this activity.

Click on the first image below to grab your copies! The clip art and borders are from DJ Inkers and Scrappin Doodles and the font is MTF fonts.

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Bats: Fact or Fiction?

I am going to start one of my favorite themes this week: nocturnal creatures! I love learning about bats and owls and other cool creatures of the night! With the new Common Core Standards, we have all noticed the greater emphasis on non-fiction texts. Thankfully, I have a ton for this unit.

I decided to make an activity that would help the children identify important facts about bats. I  also want them to be able to compare/contrast non-fictional texts to fictional books.

Here is a sheet I just created and thought I would share with all of you! The clip art is from DJ Inkers.

I also made a short ten frame math sheet for a quick review. Enjoy!

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Falling For Math - Five Frame Freebie

Hi everyone! I am currently reviewing numbers 0-5 with my students. We explore other numbers and concepts during math work stations, but our main focus during our whole group lessons has been 0-5. Before introducing the ten frame, I have been using a five frame. We use the Envisions math series, and there are a lot of five frame activities.

I made this sheet this week as a basic review for them. We counted the number of objects in the five frame and wrote the answer in the blank box next to each frame. We also talked about how many more pictures we would need to get to five (we did not write that down on the paper). The clip art is from DJ Inkers. Click on the picture to grab a copy. Enjoy!

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Let's Celebrate October Sale!

I love the month of October! I love visiting pumpkin patches, decorating my house for Autumn, and getting ready for Halloween.  I just loaded some new items to my TPT store, and a few of them are perfect for this time of year.  To celebrate, everything will be 20% off for the next few days!  Here are a few sneak peeks:

Tons of activities across the curriculum

Cute little beginning reader

A really fun math game aligned to the Common Core and perfect for a math center

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Happy October! Poetry Freebies and A New TPT Store!

Happy October everyone! I am sorry it has been so long since my last post. I have been very busy with my fantastic group of kindergarteners. Plus, we have a lot of new assessments we are using and I think I may soon have an advanced degree in data collection, ha!

I just made four new poems for October. I use a poetry binder with my students. Sometimes I enlarge the poem and use it for shared reading while all of my students have their own copies. I also have a poetry station during literacy stations. I hope you enjoy them! The clip art is from DJ Inkers.

October Poems

Also, I recently discovered a new store on TPT and her stuff is AMAZING! She is a reading specialist and her lessons and ideas can really help you differentiate your instruction. As you know, I love using poetry in my classroom, and her creations work really well for classroom teachers, reading specialists, etc. Check it out!

Poetry Activities for the Elementary Classroom

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