Rainbow Similes {Freebie}

Doesn't that just make you happy to look at?! I just love seeing it when I walk in the room!

This was our rainbow week...in pictures!

We read A Rainbow of my Own. They always love this story. Then we summarized it.

I always love to see their illustrations of this story. Some of them have some great visualizations!

You can get my summarizing cards freebie {HERE}.

For our writing we did another round of similes. This time we did them with color. I love doing this activity. I do it every year!

First we brainstorm things that are the different colors of the rainbow.

Then I did my example on the chart paper. Yes, I realize I didn't draw a Smurf for that sentence. I can barely draw. I don't trust my skills. ha!

Then it was time for them to write out their similes. They wrote their "sloppy copies" in their learner's notebook, then after I approved it, they got their neat paper.

 After they wrote out their neat copy, I told them to go over it with a Sharpie. It's amazing how much they love using Sharpies - such a motivator!

When they were finished with that, they got to work on their rainbow.  I cut up a whole bunch of colorful strips about 1/2 inch wide and then they tore the strips to glue down.

They cut out the rainbow and glued the rainbow and their writing down to blue paper. I just love them! They came out so cute!!

If you want these freebies, click on the picture to download them.

Another activity we did real quick this week, was to do our Pot of Gold writing. The template came from The Teacher Wife, and the writing paper I made to fit the pot. They just wrote about how they found the pot of gold and what they did with it. We added some glitter to their gold and it just made them come to life!

THEN, we added them to my back board! Oh. My. GOSH. I just LOVE this board!! I am never taking it down. Well, I will, but for the rest of the year, it is staying up. The pots will come down (and my big pot), but the rest will stay up. I just love this rainbow. I got the idea from A Cupcake for the Teacher. It just makes the board so much more vibrant than just using my actual bulletin board pieces. I love it!

I hope this posts makes you as happy as it make me... I mean the colors are just so happy!!

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Jam Packed for St. Patrick's Week!

Top O' the morning to ya!

lol. Ok, I'm a little tired still since SOMEONE thinks that I need to get up at 5:30....surprisingly, it was the dog. And I really can't ignore him, or I'll have a "present" waiting for me to deal with later...lol. 

Any whosit. I know I haven't been doing Visual Plans this year...because, let's face it, I just don't have the time...but I did want to show you what we'll be doing this week....because for some reason, I have the time to do it this morning before my day is jammed packed!

First, though, I want to show off some of my "arteest" skills. I'm getting better at drawing for my anchor charts, which used to be HORRIBLE...like, can't wait to get them off the wall and into the trash can horrible. lol. But this year, I've really put some "UMPH" into them... I "blame" Kristen (A Day in First Grade) because her anchor charts are always soooo cute, and I strive to be more like her...lol! 

We've been working out of my Jamie O'Rourke pack...I just love this story!

We did some some summarzing, problem and solution...and here is character trait...

here is my BEAUTIFUL anchor chart I made (lol - I'm totally impressed!)...I left the clues from the story OFF the anchor chart because I wanted to see if they could tell me how Jamie was clever OR lazy. 

Check out my pack in my Shop on the Blog or my TpT store

Ok...now onto next week!!

First off, for math, we'll be doing my Lucky Charms Math.  

(shop on the blog.... or my TpT store)

It's just like my Fish Math and my Valentine Conversations Math. 

I'll also be doing a Shamrock Shake. I've done these the last few years and my kiddos always love them!

I think I'll be doing this on Tuesday...to go with the Tasty Tuesday that I found from Denise (Sunny Days). This is such an awesome idea! I just found it, so I'm going to do a trial run for the next few months, and next year, I'll try to put it into full effect!

I stole a picture from her blog so you can see some of what I'll be using this week...even though it's not the recipe, you'll get the idea. But check out her posts on it HERE.

What am I doing for my Literacy centers the last week?? Wellllll....I'm finished with my March Common Core pack (I started the last week of February...) SO, I'm pulling from some of the centers I did last year. Why not? I already have them lying around, right?! You can check out my posts from last year (Here and HERE) on how I did centers last year...there are some great freebies and links to other fun activities on there too!!

First, I will be doing one center from my March Common Core set... the I'm an Author for writing. I really like these. I have them keep the picture prompt page in their folder that way if I want them to do a quick writing activity, they have a ready-to-go prompt! So, they'll be doing a different one this week for me.

They'll also be doing a Main Idea activity....this one is All About Kites.  It's just like the ones I have in my Common Core packs, but instead of 3 different ones (narrative, opinion, and information), it's just the one informational.  This is a freebie that I posted last year on my visual plans. You can snag it HERE or you can go to the post and get it...there are more freebies over there, so you should go THERE.

I will also be using some centers from my Pot O' Gold Literacy Centers pack. We'll be doing the Fact and Opinion and Sentence Stretcher.

I'll also be doing the Scrambled Sentences Pack that is in the bundle!

You can check out my St. Patrick's Day centers on TpT store or my Shop on the Blog.

For whole group, I actually plan on using a WHOLE bunch of different stuff...

one from my girl, Kelley (Teacher Idea Factory). I seriously love EVERYTHING this girl does. If I taught with her, I would be one of those annoying teammates that expected her to give me everything she did! lol

I have SOOOO many resources for St. Patrick's Day because I might have a slight addiction to TpT resources...lol, and as I do them, I'll post them on my IG and FB...make sure you follow my instagram and facebook account! (look at the top of my blog for the link!)

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St. Patty's Visual plans - part 2 and a sale!

(Thank you DeeDee!)

Here is WEEK 2 of St. Patrick's Day plans - to see WEEK 1, click HERE

Remember...click the picture of the plans (or click HERE), and it'll take you to a PDF document to download...when you download the PDF, you can click on all the pictures and links to take you where you can find all the activities (TpT, blogposts, websites, or Freebies!)

This week, I'm finishing up the summarizing lessons (well, I'm NEVER finished with it, but you know - it's time to test them on it). I can't bring myself to test my kids after only one week of practicing a skill. I just don't get why reading series do that. So this week, we're going to be using my Jamie O'Rourke pack, which, we'll be doing problem and solution and summarizing. Then on Friday, they're finally going to be taking a test on their own. I have tried my hand at writing a passage for them to summarize - make sure to get that FREEBIE in the plans!

And for the phonics, there's a schwa poem I found from Courtney last year that she posted as a FREEBIE, so make sure you snag that one too! I'm also using Sarah's pack, because she's awesome and came to my rescue!

For writing, I'm starting off with Stephanie's March Writing pack- she has TONS of great writing prompts in her pack. I think this might become another "thing" I must have ALL of (like I showed in my other post of addictions that I have to get all of). 

And then, towards the end of the week, after we've been able to read and study Jamie O'Rourke a little, we are going to do a text connection from my pack. 

EEK! Something I just noticed that I left out was our fluency practice for the week - it comes from my friend  Leanne - Mrs. Prince and Co. (who, incidently has an AWESOME U.S. regions pack she just posted - it is PHENOM!)

Nothing TOO fun in Math this week...although we're having our Pizza Party for all my students who passed their subtraction quizzes by the end of the week!! So far, half my class has earned it and the other half is SO close! The last week - the week of the celebration - I let the kids keep going on the quizzes that same day, which helps them get a little further. Without fail, I always get ONE kid who always earns it THAT day. lol.

And our week was SO crazy last week, that I didn't get to ANY of my science, so we're doing the same thing this week that I had planned last week. "That was easy!" Make sure you download to grab the freebie for science too.

And for my Centers this week, I'm doing the other sets from my St. Patrick center packs that we didn't do last week. And for the sight words, we're doing scrabble letters, which I've always done, but I found Denise's spelling pack and there are SO many good ideas in there, and the direction cards are all set up so nicely for you, so I got her pack (because I love her stuff!). Spelling is coming from Sarah's Schwa pack, and my small group reader is the reader that's in Gladys' St. Patrick pack - another Go-To of mine - LOVE her stuff! It's a non-fiction reader, which was EXACTLY what I needed. 

Ok, NOW, I realize that I've been leaving out my intervention plans. I don't know why, but here's the synopsis. For my intervention group (our Steps to Success), I have the Silent E group. I thought we were doing really great and then I "mid-way" tested them to see how they were doing.  I have to share a little bit with you. You know how we always say, "when the e is on the end, it makes the vowel say it's name?" (or however you may say it). WELL....in my intervention group on Friday, one of my littles goes "Mrs. Ross, I just don't know what you mean by say it's name."

My jaw dropped. Really??? 

Then I reverted back to my childhood. Do you remember when teachers used to say to you "Please give me your undivided attention."?  Well, I had NO clue what that meant. lol. I just knew they wanted me to pay attention. So I did. So it got me thinking it's like the same concept. To them, when I said, "makes it say it's name" is kind of like when little kids learn the alphabet and ELMENOPEEE is one letter (L-M-N-O-P)....lol.

And by golly, wouldn't you know it, 

After I explained what it meant, it was like a light bulb went off! They got it! Poor kids. I'm so glad that little guy spoke up about that. 

And for this week and next, I'll be using activities from DeAnne's Read! Draw! Write! These are super cute! I love them!

And one of my go to girls for phonics packs - I use her pretty much every week in my phonic's lessons. Sarah has a pack for just about everything... She saved my booty this week and made a Schwa pack....because I HATE the schwa sound. I could have probably done it myself, but since I was sick, I just wasn't in the mood to do it. I LOATHE this sound - so I wouldn't be putting forthe my best efforts on it...lol. It's not a teachable sound. There's no rhyme or reason. Most of those words need to be sight words and just KNOW them. Anyway, so I have her Long Vowel pack that I'll be using for my intervention group too. 

And now I leave you with my pictures of the week.

It's a disco tent party in the crib! lol. 

It's finally FALL!!! in the Spring....

My sick baby girl, fell asleep in my arms with her bag of Ninja Turtles.

Me and Pete - catching some sunshine-y rays. 

ONE more thing.... some of my friends and I are linking up and having a sale!

EVERYTHING is 20% off in my TPT store for TODAY (Sunday) only! Check out who else linked up at Mrs. Wheeler's!

Hope y'all have a great week!

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Marshmallows and a little celebration!

Today we did my Marshmallow Math. 

But, there was a problem.

Apparently, there are TONS of new moons!!! They made moons in EVERY COLOR! lol. I don't know WHY they feel the need to change the marshmallows ALL the time. BUT, we figured it out. I just had them sort by COLOR and PRETEND the red moons are actually red BALLOONS.

Yeah. Some didn't get it. BUT, we prevailed. lol.

They sorted and tallied.... then added them all up.

Then they "bar-graphed"

and compared and subtracted.

Then they wrote sentences.

There is more to finish on Monday!

AND, I want to brag on one of my little students!  I have about HALF my class that has passed all their addition AND subtraction quizzes and are on their multiplication!!! I know!!! I'm super stoked! Well, today, one of my little kiddos passed his x12's!!!!!!

He's moving on to skills like squared, cubed, square root, fractions....

And THIS is why I love doing these timed quizzes. Because I can help to "push" those kids further than they would ever go otherwise.

Check out my packs - I have an Addition/Subtraction pack and a Multiplication and Beyond pack.

I've always sold them separately, I don't know why I never bundled them, so now they're bundled!

Ok, I'm off to veg on the computer. I am UTTERLY exhausted. And SICK! And both my girls are too. They both fell asleep around 5:00 because they're so tired and sick. 

Stupid daylight savings. NEVER fails. THIS is always the week I get sick since I don't get enough sleep. I THINK we're actually going to be voting on whether or not to keep the time changing ordeal in November! I VOTE to STOP changing the time!! I don't care WHICH way they keep it, just stop changing it - PUH-LEEEEZ!!

Ok. G'Night. 

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