Christmas Lapbook
What could be more special than having your students create a memory lapbook where they reflect on their family traditions around the holidays?!? Making an effort to get to know your students and their families is crucial to having a strong classroom community. If you find that your students could also benefit from building fine motor skills, th... Read more 17 Nov 2017 - 2 minute read
Keep Your Students Reflecting Through November
November is such an important time of reflection in my classroom as we think about all the things we are thankful for. In the past, I have always done crafts centering around thankfulness, but this year I wanted to take this a step further. I want my students to think critically about what they are thankful for and to share these ideas with thei... Read more 12 Nov 2017 - 1 minute read
Thankfulness Lapbook Writing and Craftivity
November is a time where we stop to think about what we are thankful for. Every time I open social media I am inundated with thankfulness campaigns. I wanted to create a writing craftivity for my students that we can work on each week in November so that we too can reflect on what we are thankful for. I created this Thankfulness Lapbook to do ju... Read more 10 Nov 2017 - 2 minute read
My Bat Cave Classroom Transformation
By LAURIN BRAINARD Updated Oct. 22, 2023 Halloween is one of the craziest school days of the entire year. My students dress up in their Halloween costumes, we enjoy a costume parade, and students always bring treats to share. Rather than fight the chaos, I decided to take the advice from Jodi Southard at Fun in First and transform my classroom ... Read more 08 Nov 2017 - 3 minute read
Using Bookmarks to Master Fry Words
Learning sight words is HARD for some of my littles. I love finding fun and engaging ways to work on memorization. In my classroom we use the Fry Word sight word system. I created a set of Fry Word Bookmarks for First Grade to help break down the words into manageable sets. Each bookmark includes 20 fry words. In my first grade class, there ar... Read more 03 Nov 2017 - 1 minute read