My New Bundle of Joy

Awww - did you think I had some exciting news to share from the title of my post?  

Sorry to do that to you, but this post is about some fun PRODUCT BUNDLES that I have put together that I think will help teachers.  

A little while ago I posted about my Ultimate First Grade Starter Kit which is an All-in-One Back to School bundle.  

Today I want to share the next Bundle I put together - The Ultimate First Grade Math Bundle.  

This bundle includes some of my most popular math products at an amazing price because they are bundled together.  Here is what is included:

Meaningful Math

This was my favorite thing I used last year in my classroom.  Every morning we had Daily Math and the students complete a Calendar page and a Number of the Day page with different skills each day.  I was amazed at the progress my kids made with their number sense by the end of the year.  Even my little one who struggled SO much in September were rockin' it by June.  #proudmommy #imeanteacher #butsometimestheyfeelthesame

Show Me the Number

These Number Collages were so perfect for the beginning of the year.  We talked a lot about how to represent numbers in different ways.  This showed me a lot in those early weeks about my students.  

Number Bond Books

We started implementing a little Singapore Math into our school and when I saw these number bracelets I thought they were absolutely perfect!  I knew I needed to use these to help my kiddos compose and decompose numbers.  We talked a lot about fact families.  I made two sets of these so you could still use them in your classroom even if you don't make the bracelets.  

Common Core Math Centers Set 1

AND Set 2

These centers are my life savers!!!  

I use and reuse these centers in my classroom ALL YEAR LONG!!!

There are so many different options that each time you use them they can be different.  These are not your one and done centers.  Although I really love using seasonal and themed centers (and have a TON of them) - these are truly my favorite.  It doesn't matter what time of year it is, you can always pull these out when you are working on these concepts and get some much needed review.  I keep meaning to make more sets - maybe this will be the year for that.  

So if you are looking for a SUPER SAVING Bundle of Math products - look no further.  

Thanks for stopping by today :)

What are math products that you CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT????

What are some centers you would like to see me put into a Set 3??

Working on Routines

Routines, routines, routines!!!

What else is there really to do in those first few weeks of school?

This was our first full week of school and it was a FULL week.  I don't know about you, but we have so much testing that needs to be done in the beginning of the year and most of it is 1 on 1.  It's so hard in those first weeks to pull students one at a time and expect the rest of the class to work relatively quietly for an extended amount of time.  It just doesn't happen!  And truthfully, it is unfair to expect that 1st graders just coming off of summer CAN do that.  It makes me feel awful to spend so much time at my teacher table testing and not enough time helping them learn our routines.  

For them it's probably like being thrown into a cold pool with all of your clothes on.  There's no time to get used to the water or to even get prepared with the correct attire.  It's just sink or swim!  

Ugh - I just hate that teaching is going in this direction, but I won't spend my whole post complaining.  I will try to at least show you some of the things we did this week when I wasn't testing.  I have to say that I am so proud of my little "swimmers".  I have a GREAT class!!!

Here's a few things we worked on this week:

 First up is Daily Math.   

Each morning students get some practice with number sense, calendar, and even handwriting.  The daily practice is SO important for these little guys to improve number sense.    

Once we get to the number 10, the Number of the Day pages change and include different concepts.  I am already seeing a huge improvement in their number sense.  

Click HERE to read a post about our Daily Math Folders. 

 We also started doing some centers this week.  One center that will be consistent each week is our writing center.  Students have a writing journal and there are monthly task cards at the center to choose from.  This first week we all used the same writing prompt to learn about this center, but eventually they will have the choice of topic.  I can already see what my first mini-lessons need to be: What is a sentence?  Why do need spaces between words?  What's a word???  =)  I joke....well, a little!  They do need a lot of work with their writing.  I'm up for the challenge.  

This week I was thrilled to find so many AWESOME freebies to use with the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?  These were the perfect first centers for students to work through and review colors.  I am also lucky enough to have a class set of these books so they all practiced reading this many times this week and get to keep this book in their book box.

 Here are some pictures of the centers we did:

Spin and Graph

Roll and Color

This one isn't for Brown Bear, but is a good review of color words.  

We also completed an adorable mini-book throughout the week by DoodleBugs

Here are the links for the other freebies above:

Donna Glynn - Kinderglynn 

Mrs. Seymour's Super Stars

 My Not So Elementary Life

 Another important routine is our morning meeting.  For the first month of school we focus on student names during our morning meeting.  We do one student's name each day.  

First the students found how many letters are in their names and used these colored squares to write each letter on and then glue onto construction paper.  

We then made a class graph: How many letters are in our names.  Forgot to take a picture =(

Then each day we will use one student's name and count the number of letters, number of vowels, and number of consonants.  Then we will use the letters in their names to make new words.  

The kids LOVE being the focus of our morning meeting and seeing what other words they can make with the letters in their names.  

There was some interest in this idea so I just uploaded this on TpT with a few other ideas in it as well.  

I still have more tests to give next week and then I am excited to just start teaching!  

Do you have lots of tests in the beginning of the year too?  

How do you manage your class while you test?

I linked up with Doodle Bugs for their Five for Friday linky with this post.  I know I had more than 5 things, so I hope it's still ok.  Be sure to click on the link and go check out this linky.  Doodle Bugs is amazing!

Meaningful Math

I think we all know how important it is that students practice important mathematical concepts each day in order to increase their number sense and maintain understanding of skills they have learned.  In the past I have always included some daily math activities in my morning meeting.  We have had a number of the day where we wrote number sentences together each day and discussed how to decompose the number.  I've included other skills as well like calendar, time, money, skip counting, etc.  It has been a nice review each day and I think the students have benefitted from it in the past.  

Over the summer I decided that it wasn't really enough to just work on these skills together as a class.  I had a lot of students last year that struggled with math and although I thought this whole group time was beneficial for them, in hindsight I don't think it was.  In fact, these were the students that seemed to tune out at these times when our discussions went over their head.  As a teacher it's so hard to level the playing field when you have those high students who want to be pushed and then the struggling students who need lots of review and repetition.  

Therefore, I thought it would be important for ALL of my students to be actively engaged during this meeting time by working on these skills prior to joining us on the rug.  This way my students will *hopefully* stay tuned IN during our discussion and fix any mistakes or join in on the parts that they do understand.  

So here's how I have prepared for this Daily Math time each day:

First I got some 15¢ folders with 3 hole fasteners at WalMart.  Then I labeled them using name badges, which were the perfect size.  I will let students choose what color folder they want and then write their name on the label.

The next step was to print off the resource/reference pages on colored paper and place them in page protectors inside each folder.  The reference pages include: Days of the Week and Months of the Year, Money, 100 Chart and 200 Chart, and number words to 100.  (There are some other reference pages included in the pack as well).

Finally, I made their first monthly packet to go in the folder that we will work on everyday.  Each day, as part of their morning work, students will be responsible for completing a Number of the Day page and a Calendar Journal page.  At the beginning of each month is a blank calendar for students to fill in.  We will also graph the weather and temperature each day, and keep track of the number of days in school.  The reference pages will stay in the folders all year long so students can refer to them when completing these activities.  I'm hoping even my struggling students will benefit from doing it this way.

Each month I will use different number of the day pages in order to hit a variety of skills and to keep this interesting.  As we get further in the year our number of the day will get bigger and there are tons of different pages to choose from in order to accommodate this.  

I can't wait to use these with the students this year!  If you are interested in checking this out too, click on the picture below.  

Yesterday I posted some pictures of my classroom and there was some interest in a few things I've created.  So I hurried up to post these items in case anyone wants to grab them before school starts (or even after =)  Head on over to TpT store to check them out.  

Happy weekend friends!  It's my last weekend of summer, so naturally I am still in my pajamas at noon.   Gotta soak it up while I can!