October Randomness

I'm sure I'm preachin' to the choir when I say that life is cah-ra-zeeeeee!!! It seems like last year it was much easier for me to blog two or three times a week and this week I'm doing good to get one post written! I'm going to cut myself a *little* slack since I am having to learn how to use a new reading series and I have a little one is about to turn 1 {can you hear my crying!!}! I've been just a little pre-occupied with making her Halloween costume and figuring out her first birthday party. For what it's worth, here's what we did last week:
We learned all about firefighters and made these little guys to hold our tree maps.

We used firefighters to help us with our math {compliments of Deeanna}. We used our math stick to decompose the number 7, sang a song about 7 brave firemen to practice taking 1 away, and used manipulatives that firemen on one side and fire dogs on the other to decompose 7.

I often get asked how we have our kids doing these activities so early in the year. It's not easy to start, but since we start from the very start, by now, it's a breeze. The key is to model, model, model and do it TOGETHER! We always sit in circle around the rug and the kids have clipboards while we do the activities {except for the Firemen Drop - we modeled together then they went to their seat to do it independently}. This makes it easy for me to monitor who is getting it and who needs help. Here we are in action...

We also made our hexagon craft that we didn't get to the week before.

We also learned about the -at word family and made these cutie Halloween cats to hold our -at words.

This week we're learning all about Columbus and spiders. I didn't have exactly what I wanted for workshops {literacy centers}, so I made some spider themed ones this weekend to go along with what we're working on.
Matching uppercase and lowercase letters...

Stretching CVC words {I am determined to get some sensory in somehow, so I put our picture cards in pumpkin scented rice ;)}

Matching pictures to word families...this was for my higher groups and it was definitely a challenge, so we'll be working on it a while

Sorting nouns and verbs {they loved that they were able to use the words noun and verb correctly!}

Rolling sight words

And clipping beginning sounds

All of the centers above can be found in my new Spidery Centers pack on TpT.

We have a jam packed week ahead with homecoming dress up days, early release, and a trip to the pumpkin patch, so I'm not making any promised about when I'll blog again this week ;)