Nouns

This is the start of the Nouns. We learned about all kinds of nouns, and here are some things we have done in the past couple months! Here is another example of a way that we used a flip book. I forgot to take a picture of the kiddos work but here is my example that I showed them.

Then we did a chart in nouns. My firsties love post it notes. We used this not cute, but easy post it note chart on the whiteboard.

 Next we learned about singular and plural nouns. The kids cut out examples in a magazine of singular and plural nouns. Sometimes I wonder about their choices, so I had them write the words as well.

When we learned about pronouns, they made another flip chart. (I swear they love them too!) They wrote down several examples under the flaps. 

Addition Fun

I am trying to catch up on my posts, so here are some activities we made a couple of months ago.. (Where has the time gone?!?!?)

Here are some of our adding three numbers flip books. The kids loved this and I LOVE flip books. They are easy to make and the kids use them for everything in my classroom.

How cute are the lipsticks???

 I told the kids to choose three numbers and add them together. Look at this example! This student picked three random numbers so he could draw as many stars as he wanted, and came up with 22. Let me also say, we were only going to add up to ten...after I saw this, I was SO glad I let them pick their own numbers :)

I also had the kiddos make this. The each got a triangle and picked three numbers. Then they had to write the fact family on the rectangle. The loved this, and it was super easy!

The low down on my ABC chart

A couple summers ago, we started a curriculum mapping team that learned about curriculum mapping and made our maps for the county. I volunteered, and actually enjoyed it! I got some great new ideas from fellow teachers AND our new friend Sue Ellen. She was spearheading the "conference" and she had some amazing ideas that she shared with us. One of the ideas was an ABC chart. The idea was to close out your

 lesson by giving each student a post-it note or piece of paper with a letter on it, and they had to think of a word that related to the lesson. Wellllllll, I knew my little firsties wouldn't be able to handle that by themselves, so I turned the ABC chart into a whole lesson. I got some ABC sticky letters from Walmart and glued them on a large piece of paper. I had it laminated and voila, an easy way to review a LOT of things. One good thing about the letters, there are several sets, so you can share with your teacher friends! Recently we used the ABC chart to talk about nouns. Each student got a letter on a sticky note and since we are still having phonics issues, I told them they can draw and write the noun. The kids LOVED the activity and they came up with some great nouns.

Here is the whole chart with our nouns on them.

Here are a few examples of what the kids did!

         

This one is my favorite! I just love the cute turtle, tree, and his attempt at spelling!

What can YOU use this chart for? Happy brainstorming :)

Rainbow Nouns

Just a quick post! One of my teachers I work with found this idea on line. You break the students into groups and give each one a piece of construction paper. Each group brainstorms nouns of that color.  My sweet darlings did a great job! They came up with some creative things :) I traced over their writing with a sharpie.

grass, crayon, shirt, paper, box, balloon

apple, flag, wagon, marker, shoes, bucket 

grapes, candy, plum, purple folder, mat, flowers, card 

 an orange, sucker, paper, seat, cord, tape, skate, shoes

car, toy, shirt, ocean, jacket, dolphin, bucket, pens

banana, lemon, pencil, egg yolk, paper, sun, book, pen, chair, bee

I was really impressed with them! The kids did a great job, and I loved their brainstorming tactics. It was cute listening to them talk to each other! I put them all together and made our "Rainbow Nouns" Chart.

Roll Tide Board

 I don't have too much today, but I wanted to upload pictures of my new board that I keep behind my desk. It houses bus notes, busy duty schedules, school calendars, and other random things that don't belong on my desk :)

If you get a chance, head over to Abby's Blog, she posted what is in her teaching bag. I wrote about this is August, so if you haven't checked it out, you should!

Have a good rest of the week :)

Fact Families

Teaching fact families has been better than ever this year! Normally I teach addition for a couple weeks, then subtraction for a couple weeks, but not this year. I decided that this year I needed to try something different. I taught addition for a week and subtraction for a week, then I taught fact families to merge the two together. Although the first day of fact families was rough, the kids actually understood the concept better than any other year I've taught. I was so excited and proud of my kiddos! One of the days, I had the kids split into two groups and work on these fact family rainbows that I made. I cut them and wrote the fact families on them, then I wrote the three numbers on the cloud and the kids put them together. There are about 22 of them that I made, so they had know the fact family to be able to use them.

The kids really enjoyed it, and now I have another center for them to work on when they need extra practice!