Leprechauns and a St. Patricks Day Freebie!

Woohoo, tomorrow's Friday! And we're celebrating St. Patrick's Day! I hope the kids won't be too crazy. They've been telling me stories all week about the leprechauns that came to their kindergarten classrooms and turned chairs upside down, pulled all their cards to red, and left little green footprints all over things. They're so excited! Now I don't always do much for St. Patrick's Day. It's been a few years since I did the green footprints, but after school I thought about the kids and how great this class is and I decided to go back tonight and put out the footprints. Each student will have some Rolo candies (pieces of gold, of course) on their desk in the morning and I think our little leprechaun, Timothy O'Malley will leave them a little note on the board. They should like that.

Today we did a directed drawing of a leprechaun and they loved it!  So I decided to post pictures of a few of them. They turned out pretty cute.

About the brown building... Jesse explained in detail that it was the shack the leprechaun keeps his gold in and the small rectangle at the bottom is the door he goes through. I'm so glad he has some imagination!

This afternoon I quickly put together a paper for my students' desks tomorrow of some St. Patrick's Day Fact Families. If you'd like to use it, just click on the picture. There are actually two pages- one with the larger number at the top of the shamrock and one with the numbers in no particular order. Most of my students got really good at fact families but I'm concerned they're just following the pattern of the top number being the largest in the whole/part charts, so I thought mixing up the numbers might challenge those kids a bit. But those who still don't get it will have the easier one.

Hope you have a fun day too!

 Chrissy

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Fact Families and Giveaways

I went to my classroom today for a few hours and got a lot done. Of course I still have to go back for a while, but that's okay. Before break my kiddos were working on fact families. I wanted to have a "cute" paper to put on their desks when the come in the morning so I made this.

You might wonder why there are no numbers. That's because I'll put the numbers on the board in whole/part charts, triangles, or circles. I can also differentiate a bit this way- easier fact families in one color, harder in another. It's funny how 1st graders think they're harder just because the numbers are bigger... but I need to challenge a few really high students and I'll tell the rest they have to do the ones in the easier color then can try a harder one on the back. They'll eat that up! I might even give a sticker (like a chart sticker) for each additional family done correctly. This class will love that! Hope you might find it useful too.

If you read my "11 in 11" post, you saw that my school goal for 2012 is more activity, fewer worksheets. I feel like I'm going against my goal, but some things have to be paper, right? Activities are coming, I promise. If you download this, please let me know.

Changing the subject, did you see all the giveaways going on?
Erika at The Honey Bunch is giving away a "I can teach. What's your superpower?" bumper sticker. (I just love that!)




Kelly at Busy in K is giving away an electric pencil sharpener. I'm excited about this because I've had several and they haven't lasted at all. This sounds like the one I need!

Kelly and Diane at Made for 1st Grade are giving away an ENTIRE winter center set. The whole thing! How generous.

There's also a $25 TPT gift certificate giveaway at Swimming Into Second.
If you haven't checked out these incredible blogs, you may want to pop over and look around. Good luck, everyone.
 Chrissy

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