October Centers

Looking for literacy centers for Kindergarten, first, or second grade? Come by my blog to see pictures of some of my centers from my October literacy menus.

Each grade level has a menu for students  to use. They keep track of their centers for the entire month using these menus. They color in the box when they complete the center. Here is a picture of the kinder menu.



Each center is kept in a folder. The cover of the folder matches the picture on the menu.





Here are a few pictures of centers:











With these packs come tips about how I organize my literacy centers. It's amazing how much easier my life became when I started this system years ago!

To see many many more photos, visit my blog.

I'm also having a quick giveaway that ends tomorrow. Two winners will win all three October literacy center packs!

Ten Apples Up On Top Freebie!

I love kindergarten!!!

 

We have been having so much fun working on our letters, numbers and colors- we do a lot of rainbow writing in our room!

 

Before I get into all of that and share my freebie, I wanted to show you a new little incentive that I've been using. . .
I'm a strict teacher. Fun. Loving. Strict.
I expect the best from all of my kiddos.
This year, I have really "low" kids and half of my class cannot write their name, despite daily name tracers.
Ugh.
I'm running our of stickers, and stamps don't seem that cool to my kids anymore.
So, I turned to clothespins.

I stuck these cute, felt owl stickers to clothespins last year and they have stayed in a box ever since.

Now, I just clip them on a child when I see them writing their first, last name and date.
The kids get so excited and now EVERYONE is trying their hardest to do these three things on every single assignment.
Yay!


Our number of the day was 10!
So, we did the usual. . .

Grab this worksheet by clicking HERE

And read the obvious. . .

 

I have the characters that I illegally photocopied and I put them on knitting needles. As I read the story, I choose three students "sitting criss cross" to come up and "help" me. They add the "apples," which are really giant red beads, to each animal as he puts apples on top of his head in the story.

So fun!

We are also working very hard on patterns right now.

What better way to tie this all together, than to make a silly hat, right?!

 

 

Grab your freebie by clicking on the image below!
Please, please, please leave me feedback, if you like this!

 

 

Happy Tuesday!

 

 

It's Not Nice to Tease!!

... but I'm going to do it anyways!!

Wanna know what these are all about??

Then make sure to head over to Adventures of Room 129 to check them out!  THREE freebies and lots of fun ideas and activity await just for you!!  (plus cute pictures of babies!)

You can check them out HERE!  Make sure to come back here and tell me what you think!!

THANKS!

Ciera

Word Work in the Reading Room

Hi everyone! I just finished up week three and I'm loving my new position at school. This year I'm teaching literacy to kinder-third grade students. It's a big change for me since I've been teaching first grade for 7 years. The first two weeks were dedicated to assessments, which is important, but a little boring. :) I was so happy to get started this week with my students!

I thought I'd share with you some of things I did with my kiddos to strengthen their phonics skills. Here are a few of the activities I did with my first graders:

Come by my blog to see more pictures of activities I did with second and third graders, and to read a little more about how I spend my time with each group.

FREE FONT and a BLOGIVERSARY!



 

We have been having a crazy, but fun year over in Kindergarten!  I've been blogging almost daily, so come on over for some fun ideas!

Some highlights include rainbow writing, learning our color words, using our 5 senses with apples, and math tubs!

 

 Here is some of our fun in pictures:

 

 

GRAB THIS WORKSHEET HERE!

 



GRAB THIS WORKSHEET HERE!









FREE WORKSHEET HERE!

 

In honor of my fun milestone, I made a fun FREE font for your personal and commercial use!

 

 

 Check out all of the fun prizes that you could win in my Blogiversary giveaway!

THIS ENDS TONIGHT!

 

 Blogiversary Button Credits:

Font

Background

Graphics



PRIZE PACK #1 Consists of: 

 

 

PRIZE PACK #2 Consists of:

PRIZE PACK #3 Consists of: 

 

Prize Pack #4:

 

 

 

 

Hop on over to enter!

 

 

Come over and grab a freebie! Classmate Interview- Writer's Workshop

Hello from Beth at Thinking of Teaching....yes, it has been a long time. I hope everyone is settling into their new school year and have been enjoying the cooler fall weather (at least it's getting cooler here in Ontario).




I have been busy as well...but not doing as much teaching as the rest of you! I actually only returned to work for the first 2 weeks and am now off on mat leave. That's right, I'm expecting my second child at the beginning of November. 

While I'm off I have been taking the time to clean my house (who knew how easy it was to get done when you don't have to work all day! LOL), get things ready for the baby and of course, read blogs! One of my goals this year while I am off, other than raise a brand new baby, is to organize all the ideas I've been pinning, liking, saving, etc while reading through all the great blogs out there. I've started with looking at my Writer's Workshop program and gathering ideas for how I would like it to look and run. It seems like I re-vamp it every year and am just never happy with it.

I've put together a post with some great ideas I've discovered and a FREEBIE that I've created.  It's a Classmate Interview Writing pack that can be used as a diagnostic tool at the start of the year or as a jump into your Writer's Workshop program.

Also, if you're not a follower of Thinking of Teaching I'd love for you to come on over and see my first technology post where I wrote about a great new app/website called Class Messenger.