A Fishy Competition: Subtraction Fun Friday Freebie

So my little muffins needed some FUN and a subtraction review.  It was Thursday and my music class run by a wonderful parent volunteer got CANCELLED!  SUPER TEACHER to the rescue!!  I also had to impress my student teacher who was there for her practicum.  Talk about PRESSURE!  So, on the spot, I came up with A Fishy Competition!  "Imagine.." I said in a mysterious voice, "that you are a terribly hungry pelican..." - we had been working on using fancy words in our writing for the last two weeks - "and across on another peer" I continued, "is another terribly hungry pelican..." DUN, DUN, DUN!! "and what do pelicans like to eat?" "FISH!" they all cried!  Then I demonstrated with a partner how to play A Fishy Competition!

I had already set out 10 rainbow goldfish crackers in the "ocean" (a small paper plate with a piece of felt hot glued to the middle for sound proofing when rolling dice).  In partners, each took a turns rolling two foam dice and subtracting to find out how many fish to eat, and then subtracting again to show how many fishies were eaten.  Yummy!  The game ended when all fishes were in little pelican tummies.

My little pelicans loved this game!!  It definitely helped to review their subtractions skills in a fun way!  I did have to remind them to always begin each subtraction equation with the bigger number!  When I got home I created this little freebie for you!  Click on the picture below to get your copy.  Print it out and laminate it.  Have students use erasable markers to record their subtraction problems!

Also, be sure to check out my little packet I CAN!  It would go along nicely with the peliCAN theme:)

Also, check out Pelican and Pelican't by Hans Wilhelm.  So CUTE!

Shape UP! SHOWDOWN!! Easter Chick Art and 2D Shapes, 3D Shapes

A little Easter chick art for you!  The feet aren't quite the same but hearts are great for feet, too!

This project is pretty much a do as you see project.  You will need construction paper, white glue, google eyes, and tissue paper.  Put squares of tissue paper around the end of a pencil, dip in glue and put onto chick body.

Also, check out my 2D and 3D shape units!!!  I've been working hard on them and they FINALLY came together!  Here is one of my muffins doing the Write it, Pump it up, CAPITALIZE it! activity from the 3D Showdown.  They LOVED it!!  At the end of the day a parent asked a little boy what shape he was colouring and he promptly replied, "That's a triangular prism!"  YES!!!

Here is one of my kiddos doing a page from Shape UP!  LOVE the cute little muscles!!

Hippity Hop! Easy Easter Art AND Our Field Trip to Home Depot

Hippity Hop!  It's Easter time and I am loving this spring weather!  I even went for a dip in the lake last weekend.  It was FREEZING but the sun warmed me up really quickly and the day was glorious!  To celebrate, I am giving away my Spring Sound Garden packet away to the first 10 people to tell me their favourite thing about Easter!  Please be sure to leave your e-mail in your post!

Once again it has been a couple of crazy weeks!  My student teacher started teaching, we had our first swimming lessons (a bit of fiasco in itself - the bus broke down, we missed our lesson, etc., etc.) and we went on a field trip to Home Depot.  I have to say I wasn't sure what to expect.  When we got there we were warmly welcomed and introduced to Myrtle, our wonderful tour guide.  We wandered around Home Depot and Myrtle was fantastic, answering questions, demonstrating carpet cutting equipment, etc.  It was a great start!

Eventually, Myrtle brought us to this aisle in the store with two pieces of plywood decorated with hammers and glue.  What fun!

Each of my students received an adorable Home Depot apron and a kit to build a wooden toy race car. Each kit had directions, nails, stickers etc.  Myrtle told the kids to go for it!  

It was so great seeing them look at the instructions and figure out for themselves how to build their cars.  I wouldn't be honest if I didn't say we had to pry apart a few cars and re-nail a few nails but in the end everyone had a cute toy racer to call their own!

We had a BLAST!  The kiddos wanted to wear their aprons all day long!

I have to share another lovely Easter cross art idea!  It is so easy and simple that you will have to make it with your kids.  Explain to your muffins that their are two types of crosses; one is with Jesus on the cross and one where Jesus has been taken down from the cross and is now in heaven with God!

 Have your kiddos collage squares of tissue paper all over a cross printed onto card stock.  Glue sticks work best.  Make sure to remind kids to put the glue onto the paper and then paste the tissue paper on.  I keep a full bucket of pre-cut  tissue  paper squares for all my tissue paper art projects over the year.  This makes for easy preparation.

Students can then cut out their cross and, hippity hop, easy Easter art!!  Click on the template below  and enjoy!!

Easter Sale!!! Thanks for letting me join, Deanna Jump!

Happy Easter everyone!! One of my favourite Easter memories was the Easter egg hunt.  My mom would write little poem clues.  We would have to solve the riddle to find our next clue.  Mine were usually the toughest because I was the oldest.  The chocolate at the end was just icing on the cake!  I was thrilled when I got a reply from the lovely Deanna Jump, who told me I could join the egg-cellent sellers Easter sale!!  Check out my TpT store to find my top five sellers, all 20% off until midnight on Sunday!

Here are the cover pictures of my top 5 products on sale:)

Happy Hunting!!!

What should I be when I grow up? Career Day in Grade 1 and Community Helpers

It was a wonderful Career Day this past week in Grade 1!  I hosted a little career fair in my little classroom and boy was it jam packed in there!  I'm sure the whole school came!  My little muffins all dressed up and we had prepared a report about each chosen career.  We also made a paper doll to match!  Here are some of the super cute outfits!!

My little baseball player!

A teacher!

A hockey player!  We are in Canada you know!

Watch out for this policeman!  He meant business and he had handcuffs!

My little veterinarian!

Here is my scientist!

Bake me a cake as fast you can!!!

Watch out!  The sheriff is in town!  Press his read button and he will tell you all about it!

Last, but not least, my resident dolphin trainer! She even had a bucket of fish!! ADORABLE!!!

The writing paper came from Brenda Tejada's Community Helpers Complete Unit!!  So cute!  We had a great month learning about our community!

Also, be sure to check out my Community Helpers 3 Sentence Story Writing Unit!!!

Choose Respect! and I Can't ...YET!:)

This week we celebrated Choose Respect Day at our school to combat bullying.  It was a very powerful day which included Choose Respect t-shirts for everyone, a wonderful play put on by the Grade 6 class (I definitely teared up it was so great!), and a few adorable, thoughtful crafts!  Check out the picts below!

Students had to brainstorm positive ways to be respectful and decorate their t-shirt with them.

Also, we made handprints with a cross in the middle.  Black tempura paint, white acrylic paint, flourescent pink paper and squares of black construction paper were all that was required.  They turned out beautifully.  Thankfully, I had a lot of help with the hand print portion!  Black paint is hard to get off!

Thanks to the amazing crew of teachers and staff at St. Joseph School!  We are an amazing team!

This coming Monday my little nutty crew:) is in charge of the assembly.  Our virtue is perseverance!  It's a BIG word for grade 1 but they pull it off!  We created some I Can poetry and read with the proper tone it is really cute!!

I CAN paint.  I can't read hard books, YET!!

I can dance, I can ride my bike. I can sing.  I can't whistle, yet!!

You can learn about perseverance in my new packet of printables and activities.  It features the activity above, as well as a T-shirt inspired craftivity like we did for Choose Respect Day!

This is just a little hint as to what we have been up to for Career Day!  More pictures and ideas to come in the next post!  Stay tuned!!!