February, Braille, and Frog and Toad

Happy Monday!! I feel like today has been super busy....has it? Or is it just me???

So, today our Family projects started coming back....This one is SO cute! He took the names off of the list (cut them out) that I sent home for Valentine's Day cards (get that list HERE) and put them on the heart...LOVE this! And his writing part to the family project is behind his heart.

Here's another one that came back.she loves donuts and cupcakes and ice creams! haha! And then she added in her family....hehe!

So this week, we're going to be doing the Helen Keller story in our reading series...(I KNOW...the 2nd story out of the reading series...WHAT is wrong with me?! ha!) So I got out my Braille file (which I've had since I lived in St. Augustine, 10 years ago!) and we did a little background knowledge on Braille before we started reading the story. I gave them a "cheat sheet" that they used to write out their name. It's one of my favorite activities to do.  I don't know where I got this sheet, and I googled it, but it didn't' come up, but TONS of other Braille alphabets did. When the glue dries, the dots are raised like Braille.

We also started our new Read Aloud series....Frog and Toad. I LOVE these books! I'll use my Bloom's Taxonomy questions after each day of reading it...but I also have a Frog and Toad pack

And my kiddos have been HARD at work during centers working on all the different activities in my February Common Core Centers.

Collective nouns....

Digraphs...

Poetry center with 4 different task cards...

This is one of my favorite centers - 3 different paragraphs that they have to put in order. They have to use the clues in the sentences to SEQUENCE and figure out which sentence was the topic sentence...reading AND writing skills all in one!

Pronouns...

vowel teams...

AND, I wanted to let you know that I just uploaded my Candy Heart Math pack!! It's a lot like my Fish Math and Marshmallow Math packs....I can't wait to use it on Friday! Snag it up -it's on sale!

TpT

Here are all the packs I listed in this post, with the links to take you to them!

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You can grab a freebie for February on {THIS} post!

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Blog on the Shop

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More Frog and Toad and a spelling freebie

Go my Birchbox yesterday!!

SUPER excited about it this month!!

click HERE to check them out!!

OK - so we've been doing a lot of Frog and Toad this week...

You can see what we did last week on THIS POST

We've been doing some sentence imitation, practicing combining sentences.

I wrote the top two sentences on chart paper, which they copied, then they had to write what it became after they combined it. This happened after a few days of me modeling it and them copying it. Next step?? Making their own...

which they kind of already did in their letters to their friend 

(because we read Frog and Toad are Friends and Toad is waiting for a letter...)

and they addressed them and they are ready to be "sent!"

And they did some problem and solution in their learning journals...

And they compared and contrasted frogs and toads - real ones :)

They did the venn diagram in the pack - I chose to give them the one where they cut out the facts and glue them to the right part of the diagram, that way I knew they would have good facts for their writing.

They took the facts and turned them into paragraphs, and did their crafts.

They turned out so cute!!

In other news, if you bought the bundle or any of the individual packs, go back to your "my purchases" to see if it's blinking at you to download a revised version. I updated a few of the packs (I can't remember exactly which ones..haha), and added a few pages to them.

Check it out!!

TpT

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And I wanted to share with you (FINALLY) one of my favorite things I do for our unit review spelling homework. This is every 5 weeks or so. They have different homework during regular weeks.

On unit review weeks, they do Spelling Tic Tac Toe.

I've gotten so many compliments on my post from over a year ago (and emails for an editable version), so I went ahead and made templates that you can print up and write in your spelling words...or have the students write them in (which would give them an extra time to practice writing them)

I have given 3 different versions - hopefully one will work for you!

Click the pic to download

This is version one, because I change up the activities every so often, so next time, I'll post version two.

OK - I must go REplan for next week now... I was all excited about the penguin activities we're going to be doing next week, and then I realized that we DON'T have school on Monday!! BLARG! And while I'm excited to have a 3 day weekend, sometimes it really messes with my mojo for work..lol! Anyone else feel like this??

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Frog and Toad activities

This week, we read one of my FAVORITE books - Frog and Toad are Friends.

I seriously LOVE this series!!

We went through the book in just three days. I couldn't help it. I probably could have read it all in one day, but I wanted/needed to prolong it...just a little bit. But We have more to do still :)

We did a few activities from my bundle

(click the pic to check them out)

we did some cause and effect with the chapter "The Story" - hehe, I love that chapter.

Then, I busted out my bag of buttons for a few activities. I found one that looks like Toad's button, and then I found another one that is "my" button.

They wrote some compare and contrast attributes

and then wrote it out on an index card and we taped it to the venn diagram in their learning logs.

Then we did some math with my bag of buttons. I broke them into groups, and gave them a plate of buttons.

They sorted them based on the attributes on the graph/table. It was cool to see that one of my groups decided to group their buttons in groups of five because it would've been easier to count them.

We're doing some non-fiction frog activities tomorrow, which is in the bundle pack.

Check it out!!

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AND, in other news, I'm working on my Valentine's pack now!

I'm starting with the Literacy ones and then moving to Math centers.

What are some things that you would like to see in it???

I've got a list going, but maybe you could give me some "ohhhh...yeah!!" moments!

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First "Visual Plans" of the New Year

So... It's "See My Plans Sunday"

Except I've been so busy with B's birthday party....

(did you see my post on it!?! I'm IN LOVE with how it turned out!)

that I didn't actually have time to do my usual visual plans layout.

BUT, I can show you a few things that I WILL be doing this week...

bc I took pics of my planbook before break so I could remember what I had planned...lol

so these ARE visual plans... just not the kind you're used to! lol

(and yes... this is EXACTLY how my plan books is EVERY week... very basic. just enough for me to know what I am doing. I know... you can hate me... I'm very lucky.... I will probably NEVER leave my school bc my admin is awesome!)

The reason my small group is crossed out is because well... FAIR testing is starting - boo! hiss....lol

BUT, we ARE going to be doing some of my FAVORITE books this week and next -

Frog and Toad!!

And for math and science??? well...

This week is just a lot of reviewing, so nothing to show you there...

BUT, what I DO want to show you is what I'm doing for my RTI group...

my poor little babies are still stuck on short vowel words.

So I've been SLLLLOOOOWWWWLLLLLYYYY going through each one... 

about a week for each vowel sound.

Remember - we are 1/2way through 2nd grade, so they are WAY behind :(

I've been SOOO lucky to find Gladys' Word Work bundle

and I'm IN LOVE with it...

Click HERE to check them out.

AND while on break, Lori (who I probably own ALL of her store) came out with THIS bad boy!

I'm so excited to try it out when we get back!!

Click HERE to check out her post on it!

AND I found this from Mrs. Wheeler...

There is a lot of great stuff in it!!

I'm trying all that I can to help these little kiddos out.

Click HERE to check out her post on them...

So, that's what my plans are this week...

And that brings me to this question....

which plans do you like seeing better??

The computer version of plans???

like these...

or pictures of my actual plan book???

Just curious....

Happy First week back!

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Frog and Toad all around!

OH MY!!

My world has revolved around this pack for the last WEEK!!!

It has been my baby - and I just kept adding and adding....and adding.

SOOO....

let me give you the low-down...or down-low??? Not sure...

There are four different packs, one for each of the Frog and Toad books...

Each can be bought separately.

33 pages:

Vocabulary Cards with a picture dictionary

Journal prompts for each chapter - strips or one page writing and illustration

Summary books for each chapter - in handwriting lines or regular writing lines

Seasons activities, Favorite Part, Problem and Solution, Inferencing activity

41 pages:

Vocabulary Cards with a picture dictionary

Journal prompts for each chapter - strips or one page writing and illustration

Summary books for each chapter - in handwriting lines or regular writing lines

Write a Letter - planning sheet and different template options, Favorite Part, 

Lost Button math graphing activity

34 pages:

Vocabulary Cards with a picture dictionary

Journal prompts for each chapter - strips or one page writing and illustration

Summary books for each chapter - in handwriting lines or regular writing lines

Favorite part, how to do your favorite activity writing with planning sheets

36 pages:

Vocabulary Cards with a picture dictionary

Journal prompts for each chapter - strips or one page writing and illustration

Summary books for each chapter - in handwriting lines or regular writing lines

Life Cycle of a Plant activities, Favorite Part, Beginning-Middle-End, Make a List activity

EACH one of the packs are sold separately....

OR....

You can buy them as a bundle...

BUT WAIT!

THERE'S MORE!!!

(lol...do I sound like an infomercial?? lol)

If you buy the bundle, you get ANOTHER WHOLE 45 PAGE PACK for free!!

hehehe

This pack is the "extras" pack.

45 pages:

Comparing books - Venn-Diagrams for all the variations of book combinations and writing extensions

Non-Fictions: Label a Frog, Toad, Amphibian

Compare and Contrast Toad and Frog with ability to differentiate activity - includes writing extension!

Show What You Know - Frog and Toad

Life Cycle of a Frog activities and Crafts

Frog and Toad Craft that can be used for ANY of the activities in the unit!

Click HERE to check out the bundle pack!

(which will also have the links for you to check out the separate packs!)

And I leave you with this...

My B is officially ONE year old!!

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