First Day of School Books and Activities

I can't believe my brain is beginning to get into 'back to school' mode!

This year my little guy starts kindergarten and my older goes into first, so yesterday while at our local library attending some WONDERFUL summer reading club programs we also picked out some 'school' books!

The kindergarten book choices were easy for me- I have ALWAYS used:

The Night Before Kindergarten

Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten

Look Out Kindergarten, Here I Come
and

The Kissing Hand

 but was happy to find some new ones:

Kindergarten Rocks

and this HYSTERICAL story (since I am a boy mom):

19 Girls and Me!

(This would make a great mentor text for writing too- be sure to check it out!)

For my soon-to-be first grader I was going to get

First Day Jitters

but it was out!  I didn't know any other first grade books, so I searched and found:

Pirate's Guide to First Grade:

OH MY WORD!

This book is GREAT!!!

It tells about a boy who truly believes he is a pirate (and speaks 'pirate') for the moment he wakes to 'a slobberin' moist mornin'' (aka his 'great scurvy dog slurped me kisser when I was tryin' t' get me winks!') til his 'captain' (teacher) hands him 'a map where X marked the spot' and he found 'me treasure!'

The illustrations are amazing!  The boy and his surroundings are all in color but then there are pirate illustrations scattered throughout!

The back cover defines all the 'pirate expressions'- I learned a few new ones!

Since I already had a

'Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten'
printable activity for you all to download, I felt the need to create one to go with 'Pirate's Guide to First Grade' for all the first grade teachers out there!

I had my boys give both a try!

First my soon-to-be-kindergartener did the activity to go with Miss Bindergarten:

I L-O-V-E his self portraits!

He added his picture and I wrote his words.

He is all ready for kindergarten!

Next my soon-to-be-first-grader tried out the pirate one I just created!

Before he started I printed the papers and then put a dotted line around the shapes to make cutting less 'stressful!'  You may want to do the same before copying for your students!

We have already read the story a few times, so he was familiar with all the items on the page!

He went right to coloring! 

Then drew himself as a pirate (look at the hook!!!) and started 'decorating'! 

He can't fill in any of the writing yet because we don't have his teacher's name, room number and he hasn't had a 'first day adventure' yet...so it is ready for after Day 1!

Don't try to take that treasure...the sword is set to go down on anyone that tries!

So here are both to download for free:

You can take pictures of the students to put in the frame or have them draw themselves as your 'beginning of the year' self-portrait!

For the pirate one I also included some pirate 'props' to be added to the photo/illustration!

These will make a great Open House/Meet the Teacher bulletin board display too! 

(If you have students with your before those events- we don't have ours until 2-3 weeks into school so parents 'expect' to see their child's work hanging about!)

You can also bind all the pages together to make a class book the students are sure to re-read all year long!

So I hope these make your first day/week planning a bit easier and I hope your new year is 

'A Fiddler's Green!'

(you'll have to read the book to find out what that means!)

Until next post,

Let Your Students Be 'In A Book!'

I can't believe it is nearly August and I did not get to catch up on blogging!

Oh please forgive me!

I have tons of pictures and ideas...just lacking time!

In any case, please stop by The Primary Pack between now and August 2nd to...

(Entries must be made on The Primary Pack post and those entering, please be sure Amazon ships to where you live- I will be sending it directly from them.)

On the post I also blogged about how to use a few 'Elephant and Piggie' books as 'back to school' read alouds!

I also showcase a new class book I created that you can download for FREE from my TpT Store!

 

While you are in my TpT Store, you will also see that I added an editable Letter Beads FREEBIE for working on names!

Here is how I used it with my son:

The re-usable sleeve is from Amazon (they sell a pack of 10 for $12.99 and they are really great quality!)

I am on a mission to start-up 'Sight Word Stations' after attending an amazing session given by Mary of Sharing Kindergarten at the National 'I Teach K' Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada earlier this month!

Her sight word stations bundles look AWESOME (and she even gave us a FREE set after the workshop!) but I am required to teach words in a different order, so I have been working on coming up with station activities for each word.

One that I really wanted to start this year was letter beads, so I made up these sheets for 132 Dolch words:

 

and there is even an editable template for you to add more words to the pack!

It is on sale for $3 through Saturday evening (7/25) as part of Markdown Monday hosted by Kelly and Kim's Kindergarten Kreations!

I am hoping to get some pictures of my new and improved sight word binders up soon....as well as some fun activities I have come up with for each word, but since I have been a terrible blogger lately, I am not going to promise that will happen!

In the meantime, grab the freebies and enjoy the rest of your summer!

Until next post,

Apple Fun Has Just Begun!

Apple season is here!

I love using the end of September to 'chomp' into some apple fun!

This week we started to 'bite' into our apple unit and it will continue through next week!

I gathered some of my favorite apple books (I have a TON but will highlight how I used these):

 

    

I used Melvin & Gilda's simple informations story, Apples, as my unit launch.

We discussed several apple 'facts' that we learned from the book and then worked on this interactive writing chart about apple colors:

My sight word for the week was 'A' so it tied in perfectly.

The children then chose one of the three colors to make their ripped paper apple:

The ripping paper helped with some fine motor work too!

Combined, they made a great display of our apple learning:

From there we read Jean Marzollo's I Am An Apple to learn more about apples, where they come from, an apple lifecycle and what apples are used for!

We started this interactive writing list of things Apples Can Be...

and I also used Ten Apples Up On Top (see more on how I used this book below) to generate a few more ideas!

The children then each added a page to our class book about apples and I noticed a few things:

they used language from the book (orchard) in their dictations

remembered what apples can be used for

showed diagrams like they saw in the books (apple with an arrow showing it is in the pie!)

mimiced images they saw from the books (how apples bunch together and hang when they are ready to be picked)

recalled facts about where apples grow

used details to explain their ideas

I have found they are 'reading' this class book a lot and I hear them using 'informational book language' to explain the pictures!

On the 10th day of school we celebrated by reading 10 Apples Up On Top and then made these projects:

Each child got a strip with 10 apple stickers and had to place them 'up on top' of a picture of themselves!

No apple unit kick-off would be complete without apple tasting!  After they tasted an 1/8 of each color (I used an apple slicer/corer to cut the apples for distribution) they picked the color rectangle they liked best from the table and brought it to me to add to the graph.

It's a tie- the sweetest and sourest!

So what is in store for us for next week?

We will find the 'little red house with no windows, no door, a chimney on top and the star in the middle' using our flannel board! (You can find a version of the story for free here)

This ALWAYS amazes them!  My version is about a bear- and I have flannel board pieces to tell the story.  It is a amazing how quiet and intrigued they are by this story and the pieces!

I will use this book:

and we will make applesauce (it's like Little Red Hen but about making applesauce!)

We will make apple playdoh- I used to add apple pie spice to get the smell, but a friend clued me into this trick that they use in their classroom to get the most amazing apple smell...add apple candy flavoring:

I can't WAIT to try it (find at craft/candy making supply stores).

I plan on using 2 informational texts, Amazing Apples and A Day At the Apple Orchard, so that we can add more information to our apple facts chart.

We will also learn about and label the parts of an apple using interactive writing and then make this project and label on our own:

Here is the 'How To' for the project!  It is SUPER easy!

Each child will need:

(1) large white paper plate

(2) approx 2x4 inch red, yellow or green rectangles (for 'skin')

(1) approx 1.5x8 inch strip of brown paper (stem/seeds)

(1) approx 2x3 inch green rectangle (leaf)

labels

You can also have them use 'fancy' scissors to cut the core if you want it to look like it was bit!

Here are the labels I used.  You can also have students write the labels on pieces of paper to add if you want them to practice writing them.

This sheet has enough for 8 students.

In addition we will be learning about Johnny Appleseed!  

We won't be in school on his birthday, September 26th, but will 'sing' to him as we eat our applesauce on Wednesday (we have a short week due to Jewish holidays our school is closed for).

Looking for some more apple resources?  Here are a few from my TpT Store:

   

 

Be sure to check back for more about next week's apple fun!

You can also find some great apple books/activities on this linky:

Until next post,