Free Animal Classes Reference Chart

Hi, Everyone!

Animals are so frequently a huge part of our primary grade science curriculum. Isn't it a happy coincidence that kids love learning about them and we also love to teach this? I really can say that everytime I've taught an animal unit, I've learned something new! Awesome Author Alert: If you don't know Steve Jenkins' books, you're missing out on something great! Check out his great website here. Two of my faves are Actual Size and Biggest, Strongest, Fastest - your little guys will be wide-eyed with wonder!



                                       




I have a freebie for you today that will help your little ones understand and remember animal classification more easily by looking at photographs of animals.

This Animal Classes Reference Chart  has a color-coded background that is keyed to the animal classifications. Teach your students to use the key at the top of the chart... and put another check mark by your standards for Informational Text!

You can print, trim, and glue this into a file folder for use at desks or in centers, or print and attach to a 12X18 paper for an instant wall poster.

Click here to download from my TPT store.

The chart is a part of Animal Classes: A Literacy and Science Cross-Curricular Unit, also available at my TPT store. There are 14 activities, which include comparing and contrasting, fact and opinion, graphic organizers (webs and tree charts), 2 board games, 3 sets of animal cards (pictures, words, pictures/words), story cards for reading, a set of sight word phrase cards, pictures for labeling, and more!   Here's a little peek!

Click on this picture to go directly to the unit at TPT.

Happy Teaching!

Zoo Animal Freebie!

Hi, Teaching Friends1

Is there anything children enjoy more than learning about animals? There are so many exciting things to wonder about... and so many confusions rolling around in their sweet little heads! Like the little sweetie of mine who was excited to be going to gym to do the octopus course (obstacle course), another who wondered how cows get their gutters, and yet another whose dad hauled around a truck filled with woodchucks (woodchips)! Honestly, does anyone in the world get as much fun and laughter in their workdays as we do?

At the end of the day, of course, we're here to help them untangle the facts from the what-they-are-convinced-are-facts-but-well, no.  Here's a freebie for you that will review some facts about zoo animals while providing practice with subject and predicate. There are 12 sentence subject cards, 12 predicate cards, a self-checking card, and a student response sheet, as well as a suggestion for an extension activity for writing.

Click here to download

This activity is from my zoo animal unit. It's a set of cross-curricular activities to practice early literacy skills while supporting your science teaching about zoo animals. Here's a sampling of the activities...

Download the preview at my TPT store for a detailed listing of the contents!

Click here to see the zoo animal unit.

I'm hard at work on a new animal/literacy cross-curricular unit, Animal Groups. Keep watching here for details by the end of this week! (At least, that's the plan... :)   Done! Click here to see it!

Happy Teaching!

                                                           

Cottontail on the Bunny Trail!

Hi, Everybody!

Happy Spring!!
I'm so excited about my new Spring and Easter math activities for kindergarten and first grade! I just posted them at my TPT store yesterday, and here's a sneak peek for you!

Click here

Here's some of what is included!

And then there's...

Click here

With just some of what's inside!

If you're looking for something more specific, I've listed 3 of the items from the sets above separately.

For "hopping" up and back on the numberline...

If you liked my "All in the Same Family" puzzles (which are a free download at TPT), then these are for you - same easy-to-make format. This time your students will match number word to numeral, and practice addition facts ( doubles, doubles plus one, +0, -0, +1, -1).

Last, here's something to help reinforce complements of 10.

Each of the last 3 are $2.50 each.  but the larger units, Here Comes Mr. Cottontail

and Hoppin' Down the Bunny Trail are only $5.00 each. (I want to be able to make that number blink!) Hey, you do the math - some deal, right? :) I love these units, and the adorable Bunny Bash Graphics from KPM Doodles were so much fun to use with them! I hope you'll have as great a time using these activities as I did making them!

And, just because you persevered through this very long-winded ad of mine (thank you!), here's a special Spring freebie just for you - available only here! It's a set of leveled alphabetical order cards. The first ones (green borders) are to the first letter, but you can differentiate by adding in the blue-bordered cards, which require your students to use the second letter to alphabetize. They'll make a nice activity for your pocketchart center!  Click and enjoy!

                       Happy Teaching!



Monday Morning - Great Time for a Spring Making Words Freebie!

Hope you all had a great weekend, and that you're enjoying glorious spring weather like we are here in NJ!

Do you use making words activities with your students? I LOVE them! They're an awesome way to draw your students' attention to spelling patterns, prefixes, suffixes, and endings like -es, -ed, and -ing.

Here's an example.

Take a word like PESTERING. Miserable example, sorry, but stay with me on this.

You want to lead by modeling in these activities. Start with some large letter cards with magnets on a chalkboard, or with moveable letter boxes on your interactive board. 

Show your students how to take away the P in PEST and replace it with the R to make REST.  Yep, onset - rime principle.

Could they do the same with RING? Guide them to substitute various initial consonants, hopefully eventually making SING, and ... do you see any others?

Teach them to look for endings and take them off to find root words.

Show them how an S in a word is a particularly great find! It turns RING to RINGS, TIP to TIPS, etc.

Do you see the power of teaching with making words activities!?!

Here's a quick freebie for you, since we'll officially celebrate the first day of spring this week. It's a little Making Words activity, but with a bit of a twist. The first page supplies your students with the goal word, "Springtime". The second page doesn't give the word. Instead, "Springtime" is the mystery word that your students are challenged to figure out by manipulating the letters. (Nothing like the word "Mystery" to get those little brains working harder!) And the third page is a word sort by spelling patterns, using the words they made from the letters.

 

I like adding the word sort page to Making Words when the children are doing this independently or with a partner. First of all, it echoes the activities we do in whole class Making Words. Second, it challenges the students to go back and try harder to make more words. Finally, I like the underlining because it really helps the strugglers to focus on chunks in words.

Click here or on the cover to download yours!

Have a great week - back with another spring freebie very soon!

                                    

Fact Family Freebie (from the Depot!)

I always love finding a new use for something unexpected - like these paint chips from Home Depot!
Don't they make a great way to practice fact families?

I was originally thinking of flowers, but they'd be awfully cute as pinwheels on a bulletin board, maybe with straws as the stick handles. So put on your "hi-I'm-a-teacher-could-I-PLEASE-get-some-of-these-for-my-classroom" face and head over to the Depot. I've always found them to be super helpful and generous in the past!

Thinking about that... while you're there. look at the extra long paint stirrer sticks. Put an alphabet letter on the end of the stick and send your little guys out to read the room.  Have uppercase, find lowercase, or find the letter the comes before/after the one on the stick, etc.

Let's get some idea sharing going! Do you have another idea for the paint chips or the stirrer sticks? Or maybe some other treasure you've made from a find at the Depot or Loews? Leave a comment!

                       Have a great weekend!

St. Patrick's Day Math Freebie for the Hundred Chart!

Hi, Teaching Friends!

Today I want to tell you about this free set of  Lucky Numbers Hundred Chart Games.  These simple games are MAGIC for math review on the hundred chart! Fun for St. Patrick's Day, especially when you use fun little erasers like rainbows and pots of gold as game board markers. 🍀 Use them for the 100th Day of School, too!

Hundred chart and 120 chart games are a great way to work on number sequence, counting and matching one-to-one, counting on, and sometimes even a bit of addition, subtraction, and place value.

These Lucky Numbers hundred chart games are low prep and super simple to play, but my first graders have loved them over the years!  The games all use a hundred chart as the game board (print the St. Patrick's one that's in this pack, or just use your own).  Players roll two dice, add, and move ahead that many spaces.

So, what's new about that?? Well, read on! 

What makes these games extra fun is the **Lucky Numbers** twist.  Each set of players has a task card with a different set of lucky numbers. When a player's turn lands him on one of those numbers, he  moves ahead ten spaces, which to a first grader is almost as good as winning an extra recess!

Seriously, kids think they're playing a new game whenever they get a new set of numbers, so they want to play again, and again, and ...   😊 Meanwhile, there's lots of addition practice as well as some bonus practice with moving ahead ten on the hundred chart.


Click here or on the picture to get your free set!

Find more 120 chart games like the ones shown here when you visit my TPT store!

Happy Teaching!
                                                                     

See Me on the Lesson Cloud! Plus... A Freebie!

Today I'm excited to announce that I added my first post to The Lesson Cloud, a colloborative blog of TPT sellers!  Fun!!! You can go there to read about my adventures with MARE, the ocean unit our district began using last year, and also about the TPT product I developed to extend the science unit into math and literacy. While you're there, be sure to become a follower. The Lesson Cloud contributors include many top author/sellers from TPT, and it's a great source of info and freebies!

While you're there, be sure to download the math freebie you see here. It's an ocean-themed addition and subtraction activity that also has the students sorting the facts by odd and even sums.

                                                                          Happy Teaching!

                                                                                             

St. Patrick's Day Freebie - 4 in a row!

Here's a little something for St. Patrick's Day - wow, how can it possibly be March already!! I was thinking about the word "lucky" and how it might be used in a freebie for you.

Here's what I came up with.

Here's a fun way to give your students a bit of extra phonics practice decoding words with /ck/, like tricky, pickle, cracker, and tickle.  After all, what's more fun than a Four-in-a-Row game for your literacy centers?  

Click here  or on the picture to download yours free!

If you missed getting this freebie for St. Patrick's Day (which was ridiculously early- the freebie, I mean- but was good for 100th Day, too), check it out by clicking on this picture.

    Happy March... Spring is on the way!