Two Can Do It: 01.2012

Monday, January 30, 2012

Word Detective Monkeys: Long Vowels

Last week I made a "Long A Search" for my first graders (again, I forgot to take pictures of them) and they loved it!

We spend quite a bit of time learning the various letter combinations for the short and long vowel sounds. I wanted to mix things up a little so I posted Long A words around our classroom & school. They had to determine the letter combinations (a-e, ai, a, ei, eight, & ey) and write it on their "Word Detective Monkey" answer sheet.

We've posted a FREE DOWNLOAD for the "Long U" on TpT. There are 3-4 words for each vowel combination. We've also added Long A, Long E, Long I, and Long O!

On Friday, all of the first graders at my school took a mini field trip over to the high school in search of Long A words. (Luckily most of the rooms we invaded were parents of students in my classroom!) Here's a pic of 75 students invading Mrs. Ladowitz's science class!

Since my kids have been learning about nouns, I made it a little more tricky for them by having them place the words into the category of person, place, or thing. Here is the FREEBIE if you'd like it for your classroom!

Long A Sound Search FREEBIE!

Please leave us a comment on TpT if you download our Long U Freebie...Let us know what you think! :)

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Blog Meet Up

I woke up this morning and immediately thought about what I was going to write in this post...but I noticed that Amanda already beat me to it! Amanda's blog was one of the first blogs I began to follow...And one of the reasons why we started one...So it might explain why I felt like I was back in 2nd Grade waiting for the New Kids on the Block to take stage at the Ohio State Fair when I saw my name on her blog! (Yes, I did scan the cover of my cassette tape for this pic!)

You see, we had a mini Ohio meet-up yesterday (which was also my very first blogger get-together) and spent the afternoon with Kim from The Teacher Lane, Sarah from Sweet Times in 2nd Grade, and Amanda (who doesn't have a blog, but was in awe of all the technology she incorporates into her kindergarten classroom). I was apprehensive at first, but after 3 hours of talking I feel like I now have 4 new friends and some more blogs to stalk! (I stole this picture from Amanda).

Perhaps now I will go to the meet up this coming weekend in Cincinnati?

Sunday, January 22, 2012

We're Back!

It probably seems like we've been hiding...

And although I wish I could have spent the last two weeks laying on my couch...that hasn't been the case! We've been working on a new page on our reading website, ReadingResource.net, which has taken up quite a bit of time.

You see, I have this binder (which pretty much equates to being my Bible) that I've been meaning to sort through. It weighs about 5 pounds and after 8 years of teaching I've decided I don't want to lug it around and I don't want it taking up all the space on my desk...So I'm throwing out the the junk and uploading the good stuff!

Steve & I are creating a page, Reading Worksheets, that will have all of these activities by sound. Hopefully you'll find it a helpful resource! Be sure to keep checking for new updates to this page!

On another note, this Saturday I will be meeting with some bloggers in Ohio. It's my first blog-meeting and I'm pretty excited. You've probably seen some of these names before...but it you haven't, head on over and check out their blogs.

Amanda from One Extra Degree

Kim from The Teacher Lane and It's a Crafty Life

Sarah from Sweet Times in 2nd Grade

Lisa from Stories from Second Grade

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Measuring

Each year I always display snow "people" in my classroom that my students create. Since we were getting ready to begin learning about non-standard measurement, I decided to have them use their snow-person pieces to record the length and height of various classroom items. I didn't give them much direction because I wanted to see what schema they had about measuring. This is the template I gave them...it's also a great activity to see if they can follow directions too!

Build and Measure FREEBIE

My kids enjoyed this activity, but it was helpful for me to see that they really had no idea how to measure...many kids didn't realize that you have to place the pieces side-by-side and many kids asked me how they could measure with only one piece! Here are some pics of what it looked liked...

Bennett uses his carrot nose to measure the length of the carpet.

Alex put his snow-person together after he was done measuring.

Enjoy.

Monday, January 9, 2012

And the Winners...

Three lucky blog followers will be receiving a special surprise from Crow & Company!

Ladies, please check your e-mail soon!

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Printing & Award

For those of you who are having a tricky time printing our downloads...Make sure after you click on our link, you click the "Download" button in the right-hand corner. It should work! (I tried it on three different computers to make sure!)

DeAnne at First Grade and Fabulous and Jessica at Apples and Paper nominated us with the Versatile Blogger Award! Big, big thanks! I promise I will respond to the award here in a few days. Maybe I'll even get Steve to write the post!