Fancy Nancy Splendiferous Christmas

Joyeux Noel!!

Wow...I can't believe it's here! The last week of school before Christmas Break. One of my favorite books to read this time of year is Fancy Nancy Splendiferous Christmas.  I'm Fancy Nancy obsessed anyhow so combine that with Christmas and voila...you end up with Fancy Friday!!! This is our second year to have Fancy Friday with our firsties and they just LOVE it.  We begin the week with your typical story elements, catch some amazing vocabulary along the way (aroma, improvise, heirloom), focus on the objective of sensory details in writing, and end the week with dressing "fancy" and writing a sensory poem about "fancy cocoa." It is simply SPLENDIFEROUS! Our students wear standardized dress every day so to be able to wear their Sunday best or blinged boa to school is an automatic hit. 

Here are my fancied firsties! Oooh La La!! You'll notice we are not lacking in the personality department! The instructions were actually to pose fancy or fabulous...apparently to some that means look tough...hence the crossed arms and intimidating faces!

These fancy firsties brought fancy cookies (oh my isn't he dapper!) and fabulous marshmallows (pinterest inspired of course)!

And on to the work...here is our fancy cocoa...hot chocolate, whipped cream, and peppermint! (glitter!)... and splendiferous cocoa graphic organizer.

Up next...Grinchmas at Walker! I hope that everyone has a fabulous last week.

Farm Fun and Freebie

Hello blogging friends! It's been a while! I've LOVED stalking all of the amazing Thanksgiving ideas and activities the last few weeks.  My firsties had their little hands in many of your wonderful ideas. Just before Thanksgiving we actually had a "farm week" this year.  Farm day is something that our campus typically does for the Kindergarten Cuties but for the first time, we were asked to participate as well! Then the challenge...ok farm theme and the objectives sequencing and retelling, writing effective leads, even/odd numbers, and soil. Alright I'll admit, the soil part wasn't that much of a stretch because it fit mud perfectly but I did have to flex my creativity muscles for the other objectives! Here's a bit of we what did...

We used Mud Walk by Joy Cowley for Shared Reading.

We sequenced the story.

We created characters to act out the retelling. (Thanks Pinterest!)

We also retold Mud Walk by using animal crackers as our characters and chocolate icing as our mud!

We used a barn graphic organizer to focus on writing leads and wrapping up our stories (endings). We used the story Giggle, Giggle, Quack for our writing.

 For Math I created an even and odd gameboard. My students rolled the dice, moved that number of spaces, stated the number, and identified the number as even or odd.  Click below for your copy of the game.  I actually created 2 versions of this game to share...one has numbers...and the other is blank. Feel free to write in your own numbers, addition sentences, word wall words, etc...

                            Click here for Even/Odd Game.      Click here for the blank farm gameboard.

(Graphics by DJ Inkers. Fonts by Kevin and Amanda)

And lastly, a couple of pictures from the actual farm day! My firsties had a BuuLAST!

Wooo...that was ALOT...now on to Fancy Nancy Splendiforous Christmas and a Campus Wide Grinchmas!!!



Gameboards Galore with a Freebie

This year we've introduced Daily 5 and I'm loving it.  It's not perfection but I really enjoy it more than creating stations every other week.  I was inspired to create a set of gameboards for my firsties to use during work on words.  The gameboards are blank and my kiddos use dice, game markers, and their individualized word rings to play. Y'all they have been RUNNING to grab a gameboard when it's time for work on words!! In my previous post I talked about doing Abby's Oz unit...my Oz board was the first gameboard that I introduced to them. They fell in love and so did I.  It was actually a word wall review week so I just plugged in our words for that six weeks and had an instant review game. Easy Peasy!! Just fabulous!!!

Gameboard themes include Wizard of Oz, Smurf themed, Wonka/candy, Peter Pan, Superhero, owl, Paris, cowboy, and pirate. So much fun!

Visit my TPT store to get your set! Even better, click HERE to get a free galaxy themed gameboard! Check it out!

I hope you get as much use out of these as I already have.  I even made an owl board for my kindergarten cutie to practice her word wall words and number recognition at home.  She is fired up to do homework! Oh my...giggles!!

(Graphics credit...digicute, springhill graphics, jd digi designs, peach pops clipart, pixel papers, kevin and amanda fonts)

We're Off To See The Wizard...(plus freebie!)

Lions and tigers and bears...Oh my! We had such a fun week!! I fell in love with Abby at The Inspired Apple's Wizard of Oz Unit as soon as I saw it last school year.  I've been waiting and waiting for the perfect time to plan the activities with my firsties. And then it happened...our scope and sequence called for us to introduce inferencing. Apparently all the stars aligned (or shall I say rainbows) because we'd also just finished Fairy Tales. WooHooo!!! Perfection! Here are a few pics from the week.

I just had to!! I adore Wicked. I was lucky enough to see it in London this past summer. Uhhh-mazing!!

One of my kiddos had a birthday this week and her mom was so gracious to stay with the theme. Fabulous!

Our ruby slipper/sneaker writing and craftivity focused on staying on topic and details. (Glitter!!)

I highly recommend checking out this math/literacy unit. We did adapt the math a tad because our math objective called for creating patterns.  Soooo...we just used the graphing characters in the unit to make character patterns.  Way fun!

And lastly...the freebie...I wanted to make a framed printable to fit along with our theme. I hope you enjoy! (Shout out to JW Illustrations for the graphics!)

Click Here!!! for your own copy of the printable.  Have a great week friends. On to Where The Wild Things Are for us...

Classroom Management...

This is one of my FAVORITE classroom management tools!! It can be soooo time consuming to answer the questions...Can we use markers?, Do we turn this in?, Is this a talking activity? I love using these assignment choice signs to answer those questions without me doing the work.  Once I give directions for an activity, I quickly place checks and X's by the cards and my students know exactly where to look for the answer.

If you'd like a set of these cards, just click below for your own copy. 

Here is the link for the blue dot cards shown above.  I also created a Pink Set and Zebra Set for some of my first grade teammates.  I hope that you get as much use out of them as I do!!

Graphics & Font Credit :
Teacher Karma, The Hazel Owl Graphics, Honeydew Digital Graphics, Scrappin Doodles, KPM Doodles, Kevin & Amanda Fonts

Have a fabulous week filled with glitter and giggles!!!

Blogspiration...

Thank goodness for the amazing blogspiration out there! Our district implements a program called Capturing Kid's Hearts. With this program, every classroom Pre-K through 12th grade runs on a class created social contract.  We have been using this for the past 2 years and it really works well.  We spend the first week creating our social contract with the kids.  In previous years, this has taken the place of classroom rules.  However, we were notified last week that we also need to have a separate set of class rules.  Thank goodness for blogspiration!! Right about the time we were trying to figure out how to back track and also create rules without our students being burnt out on the idea, I saw Cara @ The First Grade Parade's No David! Peacemaker Lesson! Voila...instant lesson plan! We adapted the lesson from the peacemaker idea to "Rule Breaker" and "Rule Follower" headings.  The kids adored the David books, of course (tons of giggles!), and had a blast with the craftivity.  Most importantly, we made our classroom rules with David's influence!!! Look how adorable they turned out to be!

A Few Things...

Just dropping by for a quick post about a few assorted items! Wow, what a busy year we are already off to. My class has done a nice job at getting their first grade year started and my new team is learnin' the ropes. Hopefully, we are almost to a point where I can give this blog a little bit of TLC. (Just need to get passed my formal observation tomorrow!)

There are a few items that I'd like to take the time to touch on today.

Thank you so much to my BFF Misty at 3rd Grade's a Hoot for honoring my glittery little blog with a Top 10 Blog Award.  I jumped into the game a bit late and many of my faves, well deservedly so, have already been awarded. There are so many wonderful blogs out there and multiple that I "borrow" ideas from. I am so grateful to you all.

I've also added a couple of new items to my TPT store that I'd like to share.  Several have asked about the book bin labels shown in my classroom library on my "Where It All Goes Down" post.  Take a look!

And for all of you Owl Lovers out there...check out my Owl Focus Wall Headers!!



I'm really trying to pace my time between lesson plans, creating for my kiddos, pinning, blogging, and making sure that my little kinder princess and her teacher have everything that they need. It's all SOOO MUCH FUN! Let me know if there is any glitter or giggles that I can send your way.  Enjoy the rest of your week!