Martin Luther King Jr. and Peace Doves from Paper Plates

The children created the work for this bulletin board right outside of our classroom. We completed our writing after reading several books about Martin Luther King Jr. You can get the writing sheet here on Google Drive free. They wrote their opinions....I think and Martin Luther King Jr. thought. This is part of a unit here. The unit includes anti-bullying materials and friendship activities. I also have free downloads for the anti-bullying resources. We created the doves out of paper plates. The dove art was also a fractions lesson. If you are interested in how to make the doves please comment below and I will add the directions. I love this board. The children did a great job!

Transportation Go! Go! Math Centers for the Common Core

This math unit is free to readers for 48 hours. Please leave some feedback for the unit. Click below on the Teachers Pay Teachers Link and you can get the whole math unit for free until Sunday June 16th at 9:00 pm Eastern Time. Enjoy!!

I hope you will enjoy this free transportation freebie for Math. I know the boys in my class were thrilled to see cars, trucks and helicopters in their math centers. All children at this age are fascinated by the big modes transportation they see!

You can get your copy of the Math Bump It Game Here on google drive. You can also see the many math centers I have created to help you save time in your classroom at my Teachers Pay Teachers Store.

Pets in the Classroom our Reading Buddies

The children in my classroom love to read to our Guinea Pig Sweetie. Sweetie is a gentle,quiet and kind listener. I have several small stools that the children pull right up to Sweetie's cage when they want to read to her. I have always had pets in my classroom. Currently I have a Beta Fish, Mr. B, and hermit crabs. I have had a black snake and a corn snake as well as millipedes and earthworms. I am fortunate to work in a school where pets are encouraged and we have a lot in our school. I feel that pets are so important for the children. One of the daily jobs in our classroom is to be the zoologist. Each child has the opportunity to be the zoologist several times a year. It is a favorite job and as the year goes on the children become more independent feeding and watering the pets. I spend time at the beginning of the year teaching the children about pet care. The most I do at this time of the year is hook the water bottle up to the cage for Sweetie. The benefits of having pets in the classroom are many. The pets teach kindness, how to care for something that depends on you, exploration about animals and they give companionship to the children. Many children may never get to experience pet ownership due to housing restrictions so a pet at school is their first pet experience. Pets in the Classroom has a grant program for teachers to get classroom pets. They awarded over 22,000 grants last year for classroom pets. There are also a lot of great articles on this site if you are interested in having a classroom pet.

I can't imagine my classroom without pets. I would love to hear about your classroom pets!

The Mitten Math and Literacy Freebie

Hi everyone I hope you have had a great week. I had the wonderful good fortune to be a featured writer at The Curriculum Corner Jill and Cathy have some wonderful ideas so please check them out! I shared a sampler unit for The Mitten. There are two math centers and two literacy centers. You can find them here This is what the freebie looks like. You are getting a ten page file!

You can also get the unit from Google Drive Here.

We are expecting wintry weather here in North Carolina again. The second Friday in a row. The neat thing is may have more thunder snow. It was really weird last week hearing the thunder and seeing the lightening everything was so bright! Enjoy your weekend! Sarah

Fraction Fun with a Pizza Cootie Catcher

It's pizza time! I love a good pizza and so does my family. We have several wonderful pizza places in town. I'm from the south and my hubby is from the north so he is the expert on really great pizza! You know the kind you fold up and eat kinda like a taco. At our place they have a 6.00 large cheese special on Mondays. It is a great price for two teachers with two kids living on a budget! So Mondays are usually pizza night. I have created this fun pizza cootie catcher. You can grab it on Google Drive here. I also have other cootie catchers in my Teachers Pay Teachers Store. I wanted to share Charlotte Diamond's I am a Pizza song with you all. It is favorite of my class.

School House Rock - Counting by Fives

I love this counting by Fives video by Schoolhouse Rock. Being able to count by fives is so important for telling time! I am going to share this with my honeys since we are working on telling time. We are referring to the clock throughout the day as we move through our schedule. I often ask them to count by fives to figure out what time it is. I know they will love this song. This class likes to dance! I love that about them so much!

Telling Time with Cootie Catchers and Thunder Snow

It finally snowed here! It was beautiful and something very usual happened. We had thunder snow. It was quite surprising to see lightening and then hear thunder during a snowstorm. Thunder snow is rare and I am happy that I experienced it. Since it snowed we are having a snow day. I'm creating some Teacher Pay Teacher products. One of the things I created today are some Telling Time Cootie Catchers. Cootie Catchers are back around again for weddings, parties and of course school. Several of my little girls are madly making cootie catchers during any free time they may have. I decided to take advantage of the trend and make some for telling time. You can find them here.

Snowy Fun! Snow Globes and Writing

My regular readers will remember one of my posts from a couple of weeks ago when I was pleading and whining for snow. Well guess what? It hasn't gotten any better. We had 70 degree weather over the weekend followed by two cold rainy days and now a teacher's worst nightmare it appears that it will be raining all week!! No recess and the rainy day wiggles are turning into a week's worth of wiggles!! My honeys are actually doing fairly well poor things. We are doing Reading 3D Assessment and the DIBELS Assessment so it has been a fairly steady stream of quiet working time and Mrs. Winchell's nose in the iPad. They want a bit of snow and so do I!! ( but not until the assessment window is over) I wanted to share some writing we did earlier in the year. We have holiday pals that we send cards to through Project's by Jen and the theme this year was snow globes.

If you are wondering about the gators that is our school mascot! The honeys did a great job and they fancied up their letters with some glitter glue. If you would like a copy of the snow globe writing paper you can find it here. I also found this cute snow globe idea made from a baggie on Pinterest. I love it because baby food jars are small and they break! The directions are in French but the photos are great and the ingredients are simple. I love it. We are going to make it soon in my class. I will post photos then! Rain, rain go away we want some snow for a better day!

Source: de-tout-et-de-rien-caroline.blogspot.com via Amanda on Pinterest

100 Days of School Label Freebie

Even though it seems we have only just returned from winter holidays I know many of you have the 100th Day of School on your mind. My little honeys in class are already counting the days. I hope you will enjoy this 100 Days of School label with cute Melonheadz graphics. It is created to be printed on Avery Label Template 5160. The standard address label. You can get it here. Remember if you leave feedback you get TPT credits. I have gotten several free products with my credits! Also please follow my 100th Day of School Board on Pinterest for more ideas.

More No Bullying Resources and Martin Luther King Jr Writing Paper

I'm linking up with The Resource Room Teacher for Special Needs Sunday!

Please use these resources in your classroom to start or continue a discussion about how we should treat others. I have included writing resource paper for Martin Luther King Jr. I feel like this is a great time of year to talk about how others want to be treated. We know all children want to belong and feel that they are part of a group. Teachers have such a great impact on children in their care. Together we can make a difference! Please find your free resources here!

No Bullying Resource for your Classroom

This is a free resource to help stop bullying in your school or classroom. Click here to get the poster above and two different writing sheets to use in your classroom. I would love to see some of the writing your children do with this resource. Please post on your blog and let me know. I will be glad to link up for sharing.

Peace Love and Learning Martin Luther King and Anti Bullying Unit

I have posted my first large unit on Teachers Pay Teachers. It is called Peace, Love and Learning. I'm really excited about it! It includes anti bullying resources, Martin Luther King Jr. Day Activities, Friendship Activities, math centers, technology resources and more!! I have put a lot of effort into this unit and I am planning on adding more to it. There are 61 pages of resources for you to use. The first ten people who comment will have their names entered into a drawing for a free copy of the unit. Peace, Love and Learning to you all!

The Mitten A Math Bump It! Game

I have been begging, pleading and even whining for some snow here in Greensboro, North Carolina. Snow is a fickle thing in our area. One year we could have three huge snows and then no snow for a year. On the last day of school also the first day of winter we had snow flurries! Of course the kids went bonkers!! I never miss an opportunity for authentic learning so we grabbed our coats and out the door we went. The children were thrilled and so was I. When you teach little ones you have to remember that any opportunity could be the first experience for learning about something. We really don't get tired of snow or least I don't. The only time we are truly bummed out is when we miss a lot of school and we are still in class near the middle of June. Right now we are not thinking about that and we just want some snow for sledding, making snow cream and building snowmen. Since I have snow on the brain I created this math game to go with the story The Mitten. You can download the game at my Teachers Pay Teachers Store I hope you enjoy this free math game and think snow! If you do not have an account at Teachers Pay Teachers email me at idreamoffirstgrade@aol.com and put Mitten Bump It in the subject line! I will email you a copy.

1st Grade Fantabulous Great Freebie for the New Year

Faith Wheeler has created a wonderful freebie for ABC Order, parts of speech and other goodies. This is such a great packet and I wanted to give her a shout out for this gift she is giving us all for the New Year. All she is asking is that you leave her some feedback at her TPT Store!