Oops and two freebies!

Hi everyone!  I'm with my best friend from college and am having so much fun in College Station, Texas - Aggieland!  We are having a great time reminiscing and dragging our daughters through various strolls down memory lane!

So better late than never...here are your "Freedom Freebies"for today and tomorrow! Click here to read the original post about my reading logs! I'll be back on Tuesday with an exciting announcement!

Fall Reading Logs

Holiday Reading Logs

 Click on the pictures to download two different sets of my reading logs.  Enjoy!

Sunny Summer Saturday!

Happy Saturday!  

I'm off to visit with my brother today!  My kids love hanging out with Uncle Joe and his many dogs!  We are looking forward to a beautiful "Sunny Saturday"!

Today's "Freedom Freebie" is a class favorite!  My students love solving these addition and subtraction equations to make both sides of the "=" balance!  This product is CCSS Aligned! 

Operations & Algebraic Thinking

Work with addition and subtraction equations.

7. Understand the meaning of the equal sign, and determine if equations involving addition and subtraction are true or false. For example, which of the following equations are true and which are false? 6 = 6, 7 = 8 – 1, 5 + 2 = 2 + 5, 4 + 1 = 5 + 2.

8. Determine the unknown whole number in an addition or subtraction equation relating three whole numbers. For example, determine the unknown number that makes the equation true in each of the equations 8 + ? = 11, 5 = _ – 3, 6 + 6 = _.

For quick reference to the CCSS, you can click on the side tab on the right side of my blog!  This has been so handy for me to reference quickly! 

Please don't forget to leave feedback for this product at my TpT store!

Also, if you haven't had a chance, please follow me on Bloglovin!  You only have a few more days to make sure you don't miss out on your favorite blogs when Google Reader goes away!

Thanks and have a great weekend!

Five for Friday and Your "Freedom Freebie"

Happy Friday!  Of course, during the summer, everyday feels like a weekend!  Have I mentioned, I love summer?!  LOL  :-)

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching's, Five for Friday!

Here are Five random things from my week!  As you know, we are on vacation in Houston visiting family.  I'm spending lots of time with my girls and loving every minute!  So this Five for Friday is all about them!

1.  Triplet #1, loves big dogs!  She is playing with my dad's border collie everyday.  The dog is thrilled have someone playing with her, too!

2.  Triplet #2, loves to read!  She reads constantly!  I am so happy when I can find a series to interest her.  This week we found this series, by one of her favorite British authors,  Anthony Horowitz! 

There are 5 books in the series!  This should keep her happy and reading for the week!  Yay!

3. Triplet #3, loves gymnastics!  I was able to find a great gym here for her to workout in while on summer break.  She is gaining confidence and skills and will hopefully be ready for pre-team classes when we return home!

4. My oldest daughter, Nicole, is in Paris!  This is her senior trip that kind of fell into our laps because of some good fortune.  She is having a blast and I can't wait to see her in a week.  It is so hard to be so far away from her for so long.  

5. I've been blogging and pinning and shopping and having a fun relaxing summer!  I found this while surfing and am strongly considering a purchase.  

I always start off the year using my plan book, but rarely keep up with it!  This seems really useful and might help me stay organized!  

How do you stay organized?  Please share any tips.  This is one area I want to tackle this summer to help prepare for the new year.

So there you have it...my Five for Friday!

Now here is your "Freedom Freebie" of the day!  

This is a great mini unit to use during the fall.  I'll be updating this one soon in my store, but you can download it now for free!  

Thanks for stopping by!

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Best of the Best! and Throwback Thursday!

Summer is the time to party!  There are so many great Linky Parties and I'm having a blast surfing through new blogs and finding so many new ideas for my classroom!  I couldn't choose, so I've linked up with two parties today!  

First, I'm linking up with Classroom Confections "Most Wishlisted Items"!  I know I've already started making my wishlist for Back to School shopping, have you?

My "Most Wishlisted Item" in my TpT Store is my St. Patrick's Day themed "r" controlled vowels practice game!  I used this in literacy centers most of March!  My students enjoyed it so much, they asked for me to take it out on "Game Day" at the end of the year!  As I'm putting things away for summer, I had to go dig through boxes from March!  Lol!  Makes me so happy that they wanted to play a learning game for fun!

Click on the picture above for your "freedom freebie"!

  

Second,  I'm also linking up with Cara Caroll's Throwback Thursday Linky Party! 

So here is my contribution  to "Throwback Thursday"!  

From Spring:

We had so much fun in First Grade last week!  We did a little "magic" which the kiddos found amazing!  I love doing this project with my class each year!  Like most great projects, we start with a wonderful book!

After reading about Babushka and her beautiful eggs, we made our own! 

We started with a plain circle and drew shapes and squiggles.  Then we colored each shape or space a different color.  We tried not to have two touching spaces be the same color. 

Then we carefully cut the circle into strips about the same width as our pinky fingers.  We made about 6 cuts, which gave us 7 strips!  We cut the strips over our background paper so they would fall in order on the paper.  Then we glued them down onto the background paper, leaving small spaces in between each strip!

Viola!  A circle becomes an egg...like magic!

These cuties wanted to make a second "magic egg" and work together!

 

This is not a jelly bean!  It's a _________.

We also did a little writing with Jelly Bean shapes!  I love this writing assignment and my firsties did, too.    We started with jelly bean shape tracers and a variety of color choices.  Each child chose a color for his or her jelly bean and traced and cut out the shape.

Then we had to decide what our jelly bean, wasn't!  Each child created a picture using the shape and completed the frame sentence:

This is not a jelly bean!  It's a _________.

This is not a jelly bean.  It's a shoe.

This is not a jelly bean.  It's a cat.

And, my personal favorite....

This is not a jelly bean.  This is Mario!

My kiddos had so much fun with this little writing assignment that I'm thinking about adding to independent literacy tubs for the remainder of the year.  I'll add different shapes each week and let their imaginations go wild!

Have a great Easter Weekend! 

Hop over and visit!

Hi Froggy Friends!  You can find me over at Fantastic First Grade Froggies,  today, June 26th!  I hope you'll hop over and visit!

There might be a freebie for you :-)

Birthday Freebie #2

Today's freebie is one of my Sight Word Practice Games!  My students enjoy playing these games first with an adult in a small group and then independently at a literacy tub!  They have fun while practicing their sight words!  Who could ask for more?  I recommend printing and laminating for durability so you can use these in your class year after year!  Enjoy!

Click the picture to go to my TpT Store and download free today only!

Happy Monday and Guest Blogger!

Hi Froggy Friends!  You can find me over at Fantastic First Grade Froggies,  this Wednesday, June 26th!  I hope you'll hop over and visit!

There might be a freebie for you :-)

Happy Birthday America!

Happy Monday!  These Texas Summer Days are beautiful!  The weather is awesome and we are enjoying the sunshine.  The Super Moon is gorgeous, too.  Have you seen it?

I've been having a lot of fun catching up on reading blogs!  Summer is a great time for this!  It's also been great to go back through and update some of my current TpT products while creating some new ones.  I'm going to offer a different product every day as a freebie between now and the 4th of July!

I hope you'll stop by and get some freebies!  Please leave a comment and let me know how you plan to use your freebie!  I love feedback!  

And here is your first freebie:

Enjoy!

Hi Faithful Followers!

You may have heard that as of July 1st Blogger is changing to Bloglovin'. In order to keep following your favorite blogs you'll need to switch to Bloglovin'. I found a link from Bloglovin' with some information about this and thought I would share it with y'all!

 First, click here: http://www.bloglovin.com/import/reader

 Then it will bring you to this page: Click that blue button that says “Import from Google Reader”

 I have been using Bloglovin' for a while and absolutely love it!  I see all of the blogs I follow in one place and can easily keep up on my favorites!

I hope you'll make the switch and keep following First Grade Friendly Froggies!

Blog Hop!

I've linked up with
for a fun Summertime Blog hop! Perfect for beating the Texas Heat!! Hop along with us!

Summertime!

HOWDY!  I've been a bad blogger lately! But, I have a great excuse...it's summer!  Yay!

And even better, I'm in my happy place, Texas!  I am originally from Texas and since I live so far from family, I've always wanted to make sure my kids get to know their grandparents, aunts and uncles despite the distance.  So every summer, we come to Texas!

I've been very happy just relaxing and hanging by the pool!  But I can't stop thinking about next year and planning!

I love the state pride that Texans have and that state pride is what inspired my latest center game: Go Fishin' with Texas Symbols!  You can check it out here:

I plan on using it in my classroom in California during my week as the "Star Attraction" or "Friendly Frog."  Keep on the look out for a California Edition coming soon!  

Here is a Freebie just for stopping by!  This is included in the item above!

Finishing up the year...

Hello my friends.  Are you as exhausted as I am?  I can't believe it's only Monday!  We celebrated day 5 on our classroom countdown today.  We popped a balloon and read the secret message inside!  The kiddos were so excited to discover that our surprise was to play games with friends.  We did just that!  We also practiced our play for three different audiences...the students did so well!  I think costumes make all the difference.  The mom who updated the costumes is truly amazing!  She embellished masks, added details and the kids love it!  Take a look:

a monkey

a scarlet macaw

a three toed sloth

Our back drop is always a collection of our art work!  We have jaguars, sloths, morpho butterflies, and wooly mouse opossums!  I love the  artwork!           

 

And, my currently for June!  I'm linking up with Oh, Boy Fourth Grade.  Please check her blog and share a comment!  I'd love to have you link up as well.  Please remember to leave a comment here and follow my blog!

Don't forget to link up!

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