Thinking Maps and Book Clubs

Do you use Thinking Maps? We do and I really like them. Our school has decided to make a big push for ALL students to know and be able to use ALL the maps.

I am trying to use multiple maps a day and incorporate them in my bulletin boards. For example, here is the snow globe inspired by Deanna Jump but I paired it with a tree map that we made on the story structure of The Snow Globe Family.

 Here are the map circles I posted about last year but this year I added a bridge map!

Are you familiar with the bridge map? It is for analogies and at first I was like, really? In first grade you want me to do analogies? But my wonderful teammate, Robi, showed me how to make the relating factor more kid-friendly and she inspired me to use them with our phonics/grammar, etc. skill every day and it is working out great!

I took the pic before we filled the bridge in. The two words that make the contraction go underneath them.

I like seeing how others use thinking maps so I thought you might, too even though they aren't beautiful. I could post how I use them in writing if you are interested? I'd love to hear how you use them. It is pretty cool to talk to a student not in your class and still have that common language.

I also wanted to let you know I have some new Book Club packets available to keep those high kiddos challenged. The first is a Ready Freddy 2-pack: Caterpillars on the Move! and Good Morning, Groundhog! There is even a double bubble map in there to compare and contrast the two stories. :-) I got my books through Scholastic Club Shop.

 And for my 3rd grade readers this one is AR 3.1.

 These are available in my TPT store if you are interested.

Fixing Sideways Photos and more

Sorry for the length between posts. If you have been following me for awhile you may remember that my school laptop is cursed. It completely died and I lost data TWICE and now many keys on my keyboard just stopped working. One letter is in my passwords for everything so that was awesome. Not one to give up, I tried writing strategic blog comments to avoid certain letters or copying and pasting letters in from other documents. This took forever and was beyond ridiculous so I was silenced eventually.  The Bane of My Existence {my laptop's new name} is now in the shop {again} and I have a loaner. I am finding this equally frustrating because the things I was working on I saved to a thumb drive thinking I could keep going with the loaner. I forgot the loaner wouldn't have my cute fonts and it has a different version of Word so all my docs are sciwampus {misaligned if you don't care for words that are in the urban dictionary.}

Anyway, enough grumbling. Time to get to the cuteness. We made New Year's Resolutions.

I will make more friends.

I will pass speedy math more quickly.

I will get my morning work done! (Amen!)

I need to get better at math.

First, we read this picture book 

 

Then, we talked about what a resolution was and brainstormed some together. They wrote their resolution on a cute hat template I got from Brooke Perry last year. {SO glad your family is doing better and you are blogging again, Brooke! If you don't know about her blog Primary Perspective you should go check it out.} I was able to change the date on the hat since I had the same font. Do you think the fact that I could name the font immediately may indicate that I spend too much time on the computer?

As I have posted before, I use my Daily Editing Math Word Problems every morning in combination with Cara's Calendar Companion. My math scores have been amazing and I am sure it is all this daily practice. This week, spelling mistakes started popping up in addition to having to correct the capitalization and punctuation, circling the sight words and solving the math problem! The kids feel so proud that they can recognize that the word is spelled incorrectly. I even had one girl who got that New Year's was missing the apostrophe which is a toughie!!!  I look through their binders occasionally and had to share how cute this guy illustrates his math problems. For those that are struggling, I tell them to draw traditional counters and cross them out, etc but for those that are quick, I tell them they can spend extra time on the illustration.

Aren't those precious?

Do your pictures sometimes turn out sideways in Blogger? I am not sure what happens, but sometimes when I upload pics to iphoto they are sideways or upside down. I can turn them around in iphoto but when I upload to Blogger they still end up sideways!  I finally figured out that I can drag the photo to my desktop, double-click on it to open it, go to Tools in the menu bar and drag down to rotate left, right or flip horizontal or vertical. Save it once you like it and now you can upload it to Blogger from your desktop. Deanna Jump, I don't know it you read my blog, but I remember you have been bothered by this problem so I hope this helps! If anyone knows of a better way I am all ears!

Near Disaster and My Top 3

Happy Holidays everyone! My house is still overrun with family but I snuck off for a few minutes to visit blogland. I love my family but a week straight of a loud {booming male voices and babies crying}, crowded, messy {I've lost count on the number of spills}, smelly {I've forgotten how odorous those diapers can be} bustling house is starting to get to me.

We had a NEAR DISASTER yesterday... Picture my husband taking the 20 pound turkey out of the oven. It may have been the disposable foil pan we were forced to use to get it to fit in our oven or it may have been the fact that my husband was partaking in the holiday booze with my brothers....but as he is transferring it to the counter the juices start POURING over the side onto the floor. My hubbie starts to slip on the fatty liquid and just manages to slide the turkey onto the counter before his feet go completely flying out from under him and he lands hard on his butt!  After making sure he was okay, I laughed my a** off! Making my gravy with MUCH less stock and cleaning up that disgusting, greasy mess wasn't so funny but at least Christmas dinner wasn't ruined.

I saw Fern Smith had a good idea to look back on the year to see what our most popular posts were so I'm linking up. You can click on the post name to read the original if you are interested.

My Top 3 Posts

#3 with 6,307 views Sight Word Fluency and Romance Ruined

#2 with 6,316 views Cutest 100 Year Olds Ever

#1 with 20,042 views Me on the Map

I think it will be interesting to see what everyone else's most popular are.  Okay, I am being called back to play Awkward Family Photos. This board game is hysterical to play, at least with my inappropriate family!

Calling all clipart junkies

Do you love cute fonts and clipart like I do? Lettering Delights is having an amazing $1 SALE!
Aren't these cute?

I could go on and on. I can't pass up such great deals!!! If you want to go check out this amazing sale yourself I'd love it if you'd click on the Lettering Delights logo on my sidebar. Happy shopping!

No Grinch here

Ahhhhhh....I made it! My kids were less crazy than I expected yesterday AND my husband is home after 2 weeks away! Life is good! Here's what we have been up to since my last post...

We read How Santa Got his Job and then applied to be an elf. I used the fabulous Cara Carroll's Elf Application. Is there anything of her's I don't love? The templates for the face, mittens, and shoes are from Mathwire.

I am getting much better about letting things go. The girl's arms on the right would have driven the old me crazy {okay, they still do, but I didn't tell her to fix them so that is progress in my book!} Rainbow stripes and hair glued on top of your hat?? Welcome to first grade! Did you notice some friends switched mittens or shoes so they each had one red and one green? :-) I also let them pick out their own googly eyes which is why they are different sizes. I didn't get a pic but one girl has pink eyes. I did put those crazy colored eyes away after I saw that. So maybe I haven't grown that much.

This cutie braided her hair!

We watched the Grinch while we worked on our cards and I pulled small groups to wrap their present. Then we wrote and drew how we would make the Grinch smile (from my other favorite, Deanna Jump!)

And of course we had a holiday party!

reindeer hats

Polar bears

beading snowflakes

playing dreidels with gelt {chocolate coins}

sequin craft

 Notice the goodie bags? My smart room mom had their names on them and asked the kids to take them with them as they visited the stations. Everything they made got into their bag for a quick and easy take home! Well...not everything made it home...

cookie decorating and eating

Happy Holidays bloggy friends! Hang in there those of you who that still have a few days!!!!