Religion Lessons for the Catholic Primary School Teacher

Well I don't know about you but I find it challenging to keep my kiddos engaged in a Religion lesson!  I find some of the resources out there too wordy, especially for my beginning readers.  My students needed fun engaging lessons that would get the point across but would be interactive as well!  I came up with some activities for my class that my kids enjoy all in one packet.  This is just Unit 1 - look for Unit 2 and Unit 3 to follow, as well as a Advent/Christmas and Lent/Easter packet to follow.

Here are just some of the handy dandy flash cards for teaching about the religious seasons!

Here is the template for the cute Eve - I promise to take care of the earth craft pin!

Here is one of the Interactive notebook activities for learning about the greatest commandment - Love one another!

Here are the cute sheep pins we made when we talked about Jesus being our good shepherd!

Here is a Jesus Heals poster we made with band-aids and names of people Jesus could or did heal!

Just some of the many activities packed into this packet!!  Hope this helps boost your Religion back pocket!!  Hope you check it out!

Are We Out of the Woods Yet?

Oh boy am I a fan of Taylor Swift's new album!  Can't stop listening to it these days.  That Out of the Woods song was probably my first favourite song of the album 1989 - quickly followed by every other song.  Kind of is appropriate since we studied bears all of November in my little neck of the woods.

I'm not sure if I have said how much I like technology and teaching but this little packet has a little of everything!  I had a lot of fun doing the activities with my class!  Check out the picks and check it out on TpT if you think you might like to try it in your own little neck of the woods.

Polar bear information for Daily 5 or choral reading!

Compare grizzly bears to humans!!

Here is a little template I made for Teddy Bear Day writing as part of the packet!

A cute little title page for our Bear booklet that we use for the unit!!

A lesson plan is included for Pudding Bear Art - you may remember my post about this project a while back!!

There is also a lesson for Polar Bear Tear Art!  There are also some nice FREEBIES on this old post!

Here are a few of the little munchkins enjoying their picnic with the furry friends!

Hope you had a Beary good Novembear like I did!!  In the clear now!!!

Group Project!! Oh Yah, Seasons Yah!

Hello all!!  I finally got my act together to get out my latest packet.  I felt like I just couldn't find the right graphics and it finally came together!  I know - it's December - sigh... I guess other things just got in the way.  But I have to say it really motivated my students and helped them work together as a group!

Check out some picts!!

You will need large poster paper.  The print outs in the packet are glued on.  Follow the lesson plan and divide the kids into groups!

The kids work together to create their project.  In this case each tree will be decorated to match each of the seasons.

Check out my packet on TpT.  The tree looks a little different in the packet - a little smoother and more refined I think!!

Other projects include clothing and food for different seasons!  There are also book ideas and classroom decoration ideas, not to mention lesson plans.

Word Choice: Strut Your Stuff in Pictures!!

May SALE! Fiesta Fun, Air, Water, Soil, AND FarFaria Give AWAY!

MAY SALE!!  TpT!!  Oh the excitement!!

My student teacher left me this week!!  BOOOO Hooo!!  I really enjoyed having her!!  It was nice to see her grow as a teacher and all the wonderful interactions she had with the class.  She was inspired by a pin she saw on Pinterest - we had a door decorating contest for the Library Book Fair - so together we made this adorable door!  Do you like the tacos!!  Mmmmm!!  Yummy!!  

I finally finished and tested my Air, Water, Soil Unit!  Thank goodness!!  I don't know why the title is off centre in the JPEG below but it sure isn't on the real product!  Boo technological glitches!!!  BOOOOO - lol!  Techy rage right there, at its finest!  Anyways, check it out if you like the looks of it by clicking on the picture!

The kiddos and I had a blast doing little drama tableaus of the water cycle!!  Super fun!  We used the vocabulary words provided in the packet and each student used the gestures I had taught them!!  They LOVED it!!

Oh - by the way it is ON SALE!!  Get it now!!

Also,  I am having a GIVE AWAY!  We have been trying out FarFaria - FarFaria (http://FarFaria.com) is an app for the iPad or iPad Mini - giving kids, teachers and families unlimited access to over 600 illustrated children’s books, and 5 new books are added each week.This app is CHOCK full of engaging, leveled books for the kids to choose from and read!!  It worked wonderfully for my students during Daily 5.  

When I asked them what they liked best about FarFaria they said they liked the huge amount of choice in reading materials, excellent pictures, and engaging stories!!

The GIVE AWAY includes 2 three month memberships to FarFaria!  To enter fill in the Rafflecopter below!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Good luck!!  I will pick 2 winners on May 12th!!

Easy Easter Basket Art

Happy Easter everyone!!  I hope you had as nice a weekend as I did!  I have to share how I came up with my Easter basket idea this year.  I am kind of obsessed with this amazing website called Catholic Icing.  It has SO many great ideas for my 2's that are going to receive their First Communion soon!  So I found this CUTE representation based on Leonardo Davinci's painting of the Last Supper.

Click on the picture above for more instructions on the blog itself!  Thank goodness we got our buddies to help us make them as they were so fun but quite the undertaking!

Anyhow, at the end of it all I had all these lids from the egg cartons we used.  Initially they all got thrown into the recycle bin.  Then, as I was circulating - you like that lovely teacher word? - I do - it sounds so formal and teachery...anyways so as I was circulating I had an idea!  I would use them to help make our Easter baskets this year!

What you will need:

egg cartons - lids will do but both sides will work

hole punch

stapler or white glue

pipe cleaners

paint brushes

water/glue containers

placemats to cut down on the mess

Easter grass

First, have students cut the lid in half.  Next, have students slide the carton together to make whatever size basket they wish.  They may have to cut out some of the carton so that it will fit nicely together like a piece of lego or a jigsaw puzzle.  Then, have your students glue, or staple to save time, their carton together.  Hole punch each side and add pipe cleaner for the handle - choose a different colour for each side, attach them and then twist them together in the middle.  Use colourful tissue paper and a mixture of water and white glue to modge podge the outside - I told my students to just decorate the sides rather than the bottom to save time.  Let them dry overnight.  Finally, add Easter grass and they are ready to go!!

If you have already done your Easter baskets you can always pin it for next year:)  Happy Easter all!!

Math Game Freebie Alert: 1000 - count by 50's, 100's, and 25's

Have you ever played 10,000 before?  If you haven't this game is inspired by 10,000.  It was funny because my intention was to teach my class this game but then I realized that the full version was a tad too difficult for adding reasons and number of rules.  The game quickly became modified into 1000 and my muffins LOVED them some 1000 playing!

Graphics and fonts by Ashley Hughes, First Grade Brain, and Cara Taylor 

CLICK above for the freebie instructions!!  What I really love is that my kiddos are practicing counting by 25 - this will help with money immensely!  They also learn to add big numbers together - booyah!

Here is a picture of the plate the kids use to roll their dice on to cut down on the noise.  My wonderful mentors Carla and Joan gave me this idea.  Just hot glue gun some felt into a paper play and bye-bye noisy dice sounds!!!

As you can see they are a little worse for wear due to many year of use!!

I was on my TpT store and looking at the comments some of you left!  They are so nice to read.  A lot of you mentioned how you liked the Canadian content!!  Well here is some more Canadian content for all of you peeps out there!  Click on the picture below to see it on TpT!

Here is just a taste of one of the activities that we did this year.  This is based on Michael Mitchell's amazing song "Canada in My Pocket" - so adorable.  Not quite sure how to handle the loss of the penny though.  Anyone else out there in the same conundrum?

Here is the video - it is so cute and catchy - we sang it a lot!