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!!!

Do you dread story writing? Writing Fiction Made EASY!!

I don't know about you but I dreaded story writing after the very first time I taught it during my first practicum!  The editing, and the repetitious events, "said" used 100 times, and events that didn't make sense, not to mention a classroom management nightmare.  I had to find something or I was going to pull out all my hair!  I went to one of the experienced Grade 1 teachers in my school when I started teaching Grade 1.  Joan McKinley had a method that worked for her which she shared with me.  So, I took it, blended with some of my ideas, and made it my own!  Enter 3 Sentence Story Writing!  It saved my life and made story writing fun!  Here is what we wrote together last week.  Some chose to copy this along with me.  Others wrote their own story.

Still interested!!??  Here are the basics:

1. Begin story writing by writing class stories together.

2.  Teach the concepts of characters, setting and plot.

3. Use pictures for inspiration.

4.  Brainstorm and record ideas.

5.  Begin simply by writing 3 sentences: the first includes the character and the setting, the next includes the problem, and the last includes the solution.  Voila!  Story complete.  Once students understand this process they can begin to write their own simple fiction during Daily 5 or whenever they have free time.  My students each have a writing book that they use.  Be sure to allow them to share their stories as this will inspire others and keep everyone motivated!

Here is the story we just wrote for our Community Service unit this month!  Grade one spelling is encouraged.  Allowing mistakes in spelling encourages more writing and less writer's block!

If you are still interested, check out my newest packet on 3 Sentence Story Writing Community Service Edition!!  

Click on the picture below for my most popular packet on TpT.  I just updated and added 20 more inspirational pictures including tooth fairy pictures, and snow adventure pictures!  If you already purchased this packet, be sure to redownload!

Our BUSY Week!

I got some of the cutest Valentine's this year!!  There are definitely some creative moms out there in mom world!  Aren't I handsome!??

On to our 100th Day of school!  We made 100th day hats with 10 groups of 10 stickers each.  The lil' muffins practiced counting by 5's and 10's.  

We also made fruit loop necklaces in groups of 10!  Straws in between and a 100th Day sticker at 50 finished it off!!  Helpful Tip: Always tape the string to each students desk - there are always mishaps but this will save most of them:)

Here is an updated version of my 100th Day of School freebie and some of our creative writing!!  I'm sure writing is my favourite subject...until I'm sure math is:)

Here is my favourite!  I wish I had 100 dogs, I wish I had 100 moms, I wish I had 100 teachers, But I'd never wish for 100 dentist appointments!  LOL!!  Ditto!!!

I got this little surprise at the end of our day!  I love my job!

Here are some good buddies I'm told!

We had some incredible 100th Day projects!!  Check it out!!!

Our field trip to Specialty Bakery was next.  Chris and Carmen are such AWESOME tour givers...is that what you would call them?  Anyhow, they just keep getting better and better every year!!!  We made marzipan carrots, we got to wear cool bakery hats, we played with cookie dough, we went in the freezer, saw the ovens and the mixers, and we got to eat fresh bread and fresh cookies!!  It was DOUGHlicious!  I couldn't resist!

We had fun!!  I, on the other hand, was happy to hold it all together!  I wrote my report cards in the midst of all of this!  Thank goodness for the weekend!!!