Five for Friday (linky party for April 24)

Today I'm joining in once again with Doodle Bugs Teaching's Five For Friday linky party :)

My week started off FANTASTICALLY when I opened the weekly TpT newsletter and saw this:

Needless to say I was *pumped* to see my most popular freebie featured in the newsletter for the first time! Here's a sample of the super simple but skill-packed math craftivity:

If you don't already own it, go download my Name in a Ten Frame freebie, and don't forget to check out the newsletter to grab 9 other awesome freebies as well!!

We are quickly outgrowing our little house and are most likely making the move to a bigger space later this summer! ...A bigger house, but a much smaller backyard. Which means I have recently been obsessed with pinning ideas of how to create a cute little backyard oasis:

(You can check out more of my outdoor pins on my "Going Green" board!)

So far these have been some of my fav ideas:

(all of the pics above + their sources can be found on my board)

We are still waiting for the arrival of baby and I've been off work for over a week now...bored. out of. my mind. Seriously, where is this desperate "nesting instinct" they talk about?! 

Well anyways, being home has actually made me quite productive work-wise and I was finally able to put my Healthy Eating Unit together as a resource to share with others in my little store!

These are all of the activities that I have used in the past when teaching all about nutrition and food groups, along with some newly-added posters, worksheets, and more!

I just uploaded it last week and already I'm pleasantly surprised with how many teachers are finding it helpful! Here's a closer look at everything in the pack if you're curious :)

(And if you're interested in reading a detailed description of everything included, click HERE)

So, like I said,  I've only been off work for a few days and already I'm missing my little firsties. It's seriously crazy how one day I was looking forward to being off and finally taking some time to relax, and the next I'm just dying to get back to my classroom! I'm so grateful for all this love:

And finally, since I am no longer spending my days in a classroom, I thought I'd share a little tour of where my recent days have been spent: in the teeny tiny nursery!

And if it wasn't yet obvious that this nursery was decorated by a first grade teacher....

I'm not kidding, deciding which books to display first on these shelves actually took longer than the time it took to put together the rest of the room! I have WAY too many to choose from, but these will do for now. Seriously though, what teacher is not obsessed with children's books?! 

 And that's that! Thanks for stopping by and reading my very random 5!

If you'd like to join in on the Friday fun, head on over to DBT to link up and have a wonderful weekend :)

Our Probability Unit: worksheets, activities, lessons, and assessment

Hi all! If you follow me on Instagram then you probably saw what I posted this morning:

So needless to say I won't be in the classroom today and, according to the doctor (but not me yet!), for the rest of the week. But I will still share what my firsties will be up to anyways :)

Last week I introduced a new math unit on probability. We began by discussing some new math words that we will be using frequently throughout this short little unit: likely, unlikely, certain, and impossible. 

Before school one day, I printed and cut out a whole bunch of simple scenarios. At the beginning of each lesson over the next few days we discussed and sorted the scenarios according to their likelihood:

The "impossible" scenarios were by far the biggest hit with my firsties :P

To practice our understanding of these 4 new math words, we created our own probability flip books that featured events that were likely to occur, unlikely, certain, and impossible:

This flip book is part of my Probability Pack

To make these books all I did was print off the first page for each student and staple it with 3 other blank pages (you can use as many or as little blank pages as you'd like depending on how many scenarios you want your kiddies to come up with). Then the students cut along the 3 dotted lined to make their flip books. 

Today, the kids are going to learn about spinners. I created a SMARTboard file for the supply teacher to use while introducing this concept. It simply features a spinner with 3 different-sized sections (similar to the one on the paper below) with several questions to discuss about likelihood. The kids then get to make their own spinners!

This activity is also part of my Probability Pack

The kids will: 1. Decorate each spinner section 2. Create a spinner using a paperclip and brad 3. choose three sections of their spinner and copy the pattern into each of the three blank boxes 4. Answer the questions 5. Spin their spinner 10 times and record the results on a graph (second page not pictured)

Although I won't be there, the kids will continue learning about probability throughout the week and will work through the rest of the practice pages in my Probability Pack. Here's an overview of what else they will be doing (and exactly what else is included in the pack if you're interested!):

And before I go make some hot water with lemon and honey, I'd like to congratulate Jena who was the winner of my Student Awards giveaway! Congrats Jena :)