circle maps galore...

We are a school who LOVES Thinking Maps!

We use thinking maps for EVERYTHING! 

Circle maps are so easy to implement into your lessons.  It is a great organizational tool for whatever you are teaching.  Here are a few I just found "hanging around!!"

For Kindergarden, Ms. Smith made a scarecrow hat to be her "circle"
to find ways to describe scarecrows!

A really cool way to describe money and all the ways to help to remember!

We are studying graphs this week in Math.

How about a circle map to help us know why graphs are important to us and how they are used everyday!

Addition & Subtraction anchor chart USING a circle map.

How about a "cupcake circle map" for helping us with letter c.

Transportation circle map...

Nocturnal circle map... (moon shape of course!)

Ghost circle map...

the 50th day of school...

It was also the 50th day of school!!  

Kindergarten and First decided to invite the rest of the school 

to join us to celebrate.  We all dressed up in 50s attire!

 Even us... 

We had 50s activities for our math block.  

We tallied 50 times.  

We counted to 50, we wrote our numbers to 50, we made things with 50 items!  We definitely know that 50 is 5 groups of 10, 10 groups of 5, 5 ten frames, 10 sets of 5 tallies and we can spell "fifty!"  We didn't celebrate it like we do on the 100th day of school, but we had fun with the number 50!!

election day...

How in the world did the 5oth day of school happen to be on "election day?"

Well, it made for a busy day of excitement!!

We voted for president. 

 Our 5th grade classes had a voting center set up.  

We had to use our IDs to vote!  

 We made headbands with our "I voted stickers!!"

Turkey Skip Counting...

Here is a really cute skip counting page for first grade.

This is higher level thinking, because the kids have to skip count backwards.

Guess what... they can do it!!

Grab a copy at our Teacher Pay Teacher store.

click here to go to our TpT store

turkey letter find...

Kindergarten is so fun!  

It makes it all worth while when they discover that 

letters make sounds and these sounds put together... make words!!  

We have the best conversations with our kiddos!

One of Mrs. Smith's cuties proclaimed, 

"Hey!!!  I just noticed something!

All you have to do is say all those sounds 

the letters make and you can read!

WOW!!"

Here is one of the new letter find activities for Kindergarten we came up with.

click here for Turkey Letter find

small group math...

We have had many ask us how to download this document. 
After trying forever to upload a pdf... apparently you can't on blogger, this is the next best thing.  Hope this organizer helps you with your guided math.  

We have also found it a great way to document RTI!! 

small group math planner
Click on above link to download this document.
You can download it free from our Teacher pay Teachers store.
click here to download free from TpT

story character day...

Instead of a Halloween costume day, 

we did a school wide "good" character from a book day!

It was so much fun.  Teachers and teams definitely got involved! 

Check us out!!

Mrs. Vaughn's 1st grade mob!

Mrs. Smith's kinder creatures!

Ms. Benesch's 1st grade gang!!

We had LOTS of fun storybook characters.

The Lonely Scarecrow

a peacock

Jack and the Beanstalk

Fancy Nancy

Peter Pan

Toy Story

a pirate

The Grouchy Ladybug

a cat

Goldilicious

The staff really gets into this as well!!

First grade team, Eric Carle characters

Pirate from the Specials Team of Music, Art and PE!

Where the Wild Things Are is definitely our office and administration staff

3rd grade team

and the winners...

2nd grade as The Hunger Games!!

Let's just say, we do love our school!!

JAV ROCKS!!

daily 5...

We do daily 5 as a way to organize our language arts/ reading block.  

We have these kiddos in kindergarten, so by the time we get to first grade when we loop with them, it is a breeze.  

We can actually begin our daily 5 routine just about as school begins.  

It is unbelievable how well they do with the structure of the daily 5 layout.  

One of the components of daily 5 is working on words.  We have adapted that to fit our needs and it is very beneficial to really learning what words are!!

our funky pumpkins...

We love fall!  

We love fall weather.

We love fall books!

We love fall crafts!!

Check out our pumpkins!

We read some great books about pumpkins...

a book about a lonely scarecrow...

books about "some lady" who swallowed some leave and a bat...

imagine that!!

We also read about The Leaf man.

We each made our own leaf man.

We wrote some great stories about where our leaf man would go if he could tell us about it.

Well, a leaf man's got to go where the wind blows.