We're still deep in our book study of Peter Rabbit and the kids are loving it!
Yesterday, we read the story again and charted Peter's characteristics and gave evidence from the story that supported the characteristic. The kids are getting really good at this! Then, they each wrote about Peter and we attached a carrot to our writing to "make it a little cute" as one of my sweeties told me!

"Peter was scared because he was in the net."

"Peter Rabbit was sad and he couldn't get out of the garden."

Today, we read the story and worked on a little cause and effect. I gave them something that happened in the story and they had to tell me what the effect was. They did pretty well considering we haven't worked a ton on this skill yet.

When we finished with this, one of my girls said, "Hey, that' like Pete the Cat when his shoes changed colors." So, since we haven't read Pete since the beginning of the year, I dug it out and we read it again, making sure to notice the causes of his shoes turning colors. Then, each of the kids created a "new" page for the story. They loved this!

"Pete the Cat stepped in a pile of leaves and it turned his shoes green."

"Pete the Cat stepped in gum and his shoes turned pink."

"Pete the Cat stepped in some lemons and his shoes turned yellow."

I'm off to get started on our farm unit that we're going to be doing in a few weeks. I am so excited since I haven't taught farm in a few years! Happy almost Friday!

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Vickie

Ahh! I can't believe what a bad blogger I've been! I had such good intentions of writing some posts while we were on spring break, but it just didn't happen. Although it was cold, it was so much fun to spend time with my sweet girl and do lots of fun Easter activities.

We're back in full swing in school and this week we're kind of using The Tale of Peter Rabbit to do a little book study. Yesterday, we read the story and charted what happened in the beginning, middle, and end. My little dears are still having some trouble with this, so today we reread the story and I had printed events from the story that we put on a chart according to when they happened in the story. This really seemed to help a lot of the kids.

Then, the kids made their own story map where they drew and wrote about somethign that happened in the beginning, middle, and end of the story.

We've also been using Peter Rabbit in our math this week. We've been working on story problems that involve Peter and the buttons on his jacket. We're working really hard on determining whether a story problem is asking us to subtract or add and I always have the kids show me with their fingers what they think we're supposed to do.

Using Peter's buttons to solve our problem

Showing me that we should subtract

As we solved our problems, we wrote the equations on white boards

This math activity is in Deeanna's Peter Rabbit unit {along with lots of other great ideas!}.

Last, we have been working super hard on becoming fluent with our math facts to 5 and in any spare time we get, we love to play Around the World. Today, Tyler made it 'around the world' and was so excited!

You can get the flashcards we use as a freebie in my TpT store here.

That's it for today...I've got to get a move on and get everything ready for the rest of the week. It's so hard to come back from spring break mode!!

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Vickie

We are having tons of fun celebrating Easter this week since next week we will be out on Spring Break (Yay!!). Here's a little of what we've been doing:

We read The Grumpy Bunny and made text to self connections. We wrote about what makes us grumpy and took these cute pictures to go with our writing.

"When my little cousin pulls my hair"

"My brother will kick me out of the bed"

We also read Bunny Trouble and used evidence from the text to chart the characteristics of Ralph. Then, we made our own Ralph and listed his characteristics on the soccer ball. This is from my friend Deeanna and should be in her TpT store tonight.

We also started some new workshops this week:

Matching words to pictures using beginning letters as clues

Matching rhyming words

Spinning a word to see if it is real or silly

Determining beginning blends

Stretching short vowel words

You can get the Easter centers here in my Easter pack on TpT.
\What are you doing to get into the Easter spirit in your classroom?

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Vickie

{Don't forget, if you want to download from google docs, the file is already shared...go to the left hand side, click file then download :) }

I hope all of you have a happy, blessed Easter weekend with your family. My family has so much to be thankful for and Easter is a great reminder of how much God has truly blessed us, especially this past year.

I'll be back next week with some insect fun...can't wait!

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Vickie

We are busy doing lots of Easter activities and we are sooo excited for our Easter egg hunt and ice cream party Friday!

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Vickie

Let me begin by saying it was not easy getting up to the sound of my alarm this morning! Spring break went by soooo fast! I did get to celebrate with one of my best college friends at her wedding as well as catch up with some of my other best friends {it's rare that we're all in the same place!}. Ignore my closed eyes below in the first picture and speaking of pictures, don't you just love photo booths at weddings?

  Although I was dreading getting up this morning, we actually had a really good day!

I posted a new freebie last night to TpT to help my high group that is working on vowel patterns. It's a literacy center that has the children differentiate between long and short vowel sounds. If you download it, let me know what you think :).

Also, if you are still in need of some Easter or Spring centers {we're still using my Easter pack this week...the kids are loving it!}, I would love for you to take a look at my packs on TpT :).

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Vickie

You can get the graphing pages here as a freebie. Yay for Spring Break!!

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Vickie

We only have 1 more day until Spring Break and I am so ready! I have about a million things I need to work on to finish up the year and my classroom is in desperate need of organizing, so I'm sure I'll be at the school at least one day! Then, it's off to Birmingham to be in one of my BFF's weddings :). This is what we've been doing the past few days.

As I was getting my Spring M&Ms ready to graph today, I realized I left green off of the graphing and data pages I made! I will fix that tonight and update it! Also, if you purchased my Easter pack before last night, please re-download it. The recording page for the carrot subtraction was missing the numbers in the corners...sorry!

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Vickie

You can see the Eater themed centers here.

You can get the Domino Digits recording page here and the Story Map recording page here.

Three more days until Spring Break!!

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Vickie

Wow!! I was so excited to wake up this morning and find that I have reached 200 followers! I can't tell you how thankful I am that each of you take the time to follow my blog...I truly appreciate it! In honor of my appreciation, I'm giving away a copy of everything in my TpT store to one lucky winner! You can see everything you will get here. You can enter 3 ways: 

1. Follow my blog and leave a comment saying that you do.

2. Follow my TpT store and leave a comment saying that you do.

3. Leave a comment telling me your favorite thing to teach in the spring.

Leave your comments by tomorrow (March 11) at noon (central time) and then I'll pick a winner. 

In other news, I finished my Easter math and language arts centers...you can see them here. 

I have included variations of games that will hopefully meet all of your common core needs. 

I'm off to get a copy of The Hunger Games...apparently it's a must read and I've finally decided to do it :). Happy Saturday!

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Vickie