Fun With Firsties: compound words

Showing posts with label compound words. Show all posts

Friday, January 30, 2015

Compound Words & 2D Geometry

Happy Friday, y'all! Not sure about you but I've been working on report cards all week...but I'm happy to finally sing:

So needless to say, this week's recap is going to be short and sweet! Let's start with compound words:

Most of our literacy centres were focused on practicing identifying and writing compound words, and throughout the week we added to this little anchor chart:

They loved writing words in our pancake.

I actually used this same idea last year as well...but as they say: if it ain't broke, don't fix it!

FLASHBACK:

Last year's anchor chart was so much cuter!

We also repeated an another activity for our pocket chart centre that is currently my number 1 most-downloaded freebie on TpT:

If you don't already own it, click HERE to snag a copy!

In math, we continued with 2D geometry by learning about symmetry:

We used these anchor charts to practice making various shapes and figures symmetrical before trying it out on our own. I find symmetry is often quite a difficult concept for some little ones to demonstrate independently but I have to say, my firsties ROCKED it this year!

They were all about our symmetrical snowman:

...And if you're looking for some extra practice worksheets to go along with a basic geometry unit, check out this new product I just added to my little shop:

So far we've used most of the 2D worksheets as centre activities and the kids really enjoyed them...especially the "Shape Search." I've even used 2 as assessment pieces.

I won't introduce 3D geometry until second term but I can't wait to try those out!

If you want a closer look at this pack, click HERE.

And that about wraps it up! Have a great weekend :)

Sunday, March 02, 2014

2014 Winter Olympics and Compound Words

Is it spring yet?! We have been stuck in what the news is calling a "polar vortex" (not kidding) for WAY too long. I am jealous of all my southern-state friends who are enjoying morning tea outside on their porches right now!

But, although we're facing arctic conditions up here in the north, it really does set the stage for a celebration of the WINTER Olympics with my firsties!

Since we had two "snow days" last week (I put that in sarcastic quotes since one of the downsides of living in a northern town is that huge dumpings of snow, ice storms, and other insane winter weather is apparently no biggie so school is always open, busses just get cancelled) I ended up having 12 of 22 kids (grrr! haha), where some classrooms had as little as 2 kids. The upside to all this is that our awesome principal let us watch the gold medal hockey game as a school in the gym. GO CANADA GO!

To show our team spirit, my kiddies whipped up a couple festive crafts:

This is a great go-to activity for pretty much any occassion. All you do is cut out the shape you want, colour around the edges of the shape (in this case a circle) with pastels, and hold the shape against your paper as you smudge the pastels outward onto the background paper with your finger. Smear the pastel all the way around the cut shape and then when you remove it, you get a silhouetted "glowing" effect on your background paper. Let me tell you, my kids were all over this craft!

Afterwards, we marched down to the gym to watch Canada beat US in our nation's game with our home-made Olympic torches:

And in no way related to the Olympics, earlier we learned about compound words and started this anchor chart:

We added to it throughout the week and it now hangs with our other poems and whole-class charts in our reading centre:

Looking for social-emotional freebies & more?!

Stay warm, friends!

Friday, January 25, 2013

Compound Words, Descriptive Writing, and Symmetry!

Hi, everyone! Sorry I missed my post last week, but I have a good excuse; As all my teacher-y friends are sadly aware...it's report card writing time! It's a time when you suddenly find a thousand things to clean around the house, in places you have never even touched, and when doing laundry and dishes is surprisingly life-threateningly important.

But anyways, this is a HAPPY post because the fact that I'm writing it means my report cards are DONE!!! So let's begin with our literacy focus for the week: compound words!

We read that big book of poems all week and, each time we read a poem, we hunted for compound words. By the end of the week, we had learned lots about compound words and felt confident to share our own ideas on sticky notes:

(please excuse my sad drawings!)

I turned Word Work and the Investigation Station (oral language centre) into compound word practice centres.

At the Word Work centre, we added words together:

We are beginning addition and subtraction next week so I love this simple literacy connection to introduce our upcoming math concept; two smaller, independent words combining to build a greater sum.

At the Investigation Station, students worked together to first solve the compound word puzzles, then record the words they made on a worksheet:

(click HERE or the pics above to download your FREE copy of the compound addition worksheet, compound word puzzles, and two different versions of the compound word puzzles worksheet)

We are beginning to wrap up our focus on descriptive writing. First, we read Tomas' Snowsuit by Robert Munsch.

We described Thomas' snowsuit, then we hauled our own snowsuits into the classroom and did our very best to turn this template:

into this:

(UPDATE 15/03/2016: This activity has been updated and can be found in my Writing Focus #3: Descriptive Writing pack)

Holy Bologna, they were ALL ABOUT having their snowsuits INSIDE the classroom. You'd think I was telling them to break a school rule! The kiddies did a fantastic job describing their very own snowsuits. They were quite proud that their snowsuit wasn't as "ugly" as poor Thomas'!

Now for some symmetry!

When introducing symmetry, we helped Mr. Snowman (whom this kiddies decided to rename "Mr. Halfman" because there was only half of him at the beginning!) find symmetry in his other half:

Boy did they LOVE this activity. Thank you, Ms. Carroll, for the brilliant inspiration, as always!!!

And, finally, as I had promised two weeks ago, here are my kiddies' 5 senses Mr. (and Miss in some cases!) Potato Heads:

(I apologize for the horrible quality...I really need to stop using my phone to take pictures!)

These two are just meant to be together...but it exposes the tragic truth of Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head that the public rarely sees: Mrs. Potato Head must sell her fine jewelry in order to make bail for her jail-sentenced husband. hahaha I kid.

Stay warm and have a great weekend!!! :)