100 Follower Freebie!

My TpT store reached 100 followers, hooray!!  I know this is a tiny, tiny fraction of what some of you amazing teachers have accomplished, but it is exciting news to me!  I'm happy to share a freebie to celebrate!

Our math curriculum includes a daily Math Meeting.  We go through the 10 or so pages of math review on our SmartBoard.  I love that it gives us constant practice with important math skills, but it's inevitable that by mid-year, the meeting becomes a little too routine for the kids, and they start to get super wiggly on the carpet.  I've seen fellow teachers create worksheets for their students to follow along and complete during the meeting, but it seems to me that, if done everyday, that too would eventually become unmotivating (and make for lots of grading papers on my part...)

So, my solution: Just one table of kids are Math Meeting Reporters each day.  That group of 4-5 students grab a clipboard and a chair and sit behind those on the carpet to complete their "reports" as we do each part of Math Meeting.  This works great for me for several reasons...

*Each kids only reports once or so per week, so it doesn't become a boring task.  They are always excited when they find out it's their turn!

*It's a quick, informal assessment, and better yet, I only have a handful of papers to grade after meeting, instead of 22!

*There are less kids sitting on the carpet, so they are less wiggly!

My pages are aligned to the first grade Common Core Standards in math, and I add pages of more difficult math skills as the year progresses.  Click the picture below to download my reporter pages for free!  I hope your kiddos love them as much as mine do!

 

P.S.  If you would like small edits made to these pages to fit your specific needs, I'd be happy to do that! Just leave me a comment! :)

100th Day Celebration!

Wednesday was our 100^th day of school, and our celebration went so well!!  Of course, we’ve been counting toward this since day one, so the kids were beyond pumped!  I always love these themed celebration days as well.  Although they're crazy exhausting, it's nice to have a break from the daily routine and curriculum., and it's so fun to see the kids make these special memories.  Days like this are one reason I'm so happy to be teaching first!  

We spent the morning with all three first grade classes combined for activities.  We sang out 100th day song:

This song (and a few other 100th day poems) come from my winter poetry set.

We counted to 100 by 1s, 5s, and 10s.  We read a few of our favorite 100th day stories.  We did 100 seconds of exercises such as jumping jacks, toe touches, and karate kicks (great for getting rid of some of that excited energy!).  And - the teachers' favorite part of the day - we were all quiet for 100 seconds.  It's amazing how much the kids enjoyed that; they asked to do it again!  And we of course agreed, lol.  We also did a few fun writing prompts, including "If I had $100...." I'm looking forward to putting those pages together into a class book.  It's hilarious to read what they hope to buy with $100!

 Here are a few photos of our special day...

Our breakfast treat!

Estimation Activity - the kids looked at the different objects (cotton balls, blocks, bottle caps, etc) in each bag and estimated which bag had 100 items.  Five or six kids guessed correctly!

Their craft - 100 year old portraits and bucket lists - turned out super cute!

 

One special activity we always do is let off 100th day balloons.  Each class gets one balloon with an attached tag which says that our class is celebrating 100 days, gives our school address, and asks whoever finds the balloon to write us a short note!  Although it doesn't always happen, there have been years we have received mail!  The kids just love this!

Seeing our balloons off!