Book Activity: Cami Kangaroo Has Too Much Stuff

I have found the most adorable book that is SO realistic and relatable for students (and me)! It's called, "Cami Kangaroo Has Too Much Stuff!" This book is about a kangaroo named Cami who had to clean her room so she could be on time to a party. Her parents sent her to her room to clean and in the midst of cleaning, she got overwhelmed and very distracted by all of the cool things she found. Also in the midst of cleaning, she realized that she had to return a toy to a friend... but, she couldn't find the toy! Oh no!! The story ends with a lesson that Cami learns about being organized and a way that can also help her clean up effectively.

Here are some images from the text. The illustrations are just beautiful.

In addition to this amazing book, I had to create some fun activities for my students to do. Once I got going, my son asked to color a Kangaroo too... So, I may have also thrown in a few Pre-K activities too!

This book lends itself to such great discussion, text connections, character analyzing and focusing on story elements. It's PERFECT for the classroom. I'm thinking, it'll be our first read aloud series of the year.

Here are some of the toddler activities I created to go along with this book!

There is an adorable Kangaroo puzzle and a kangaroo coloring page with the letter K! 

My little man and I may have worked on a few other letters too! :-)

If you own this book or are about to own it very soon, here are the FREE activities for you to use with it!

You can also find the book by clicking here.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/145EcrU-mopAyWcoWRIjLpDaNIdqbgMgq/view?usp=sharing

Enjoy!!

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You Think it's Easy Being a Tooth Fairy? - Reading and Writing Unit!

Hey guys! I am so excited to show you a unit series that I've begun simply called, Reading and Writing for First Graders! Each month, I'll be introducing two read alouds to you with full blown reading and writing plans for the week, including 3 literacy stations! 

This unit uses the story, "You Think it's Easy Being a Tooth Fairy?"

I just LOVE this book!!

You'll get full blown, visual lesson plans inside the unit to walk you through how to carry out this unit throughout the week. I kept our busy schedules in mind so pacing for the week was actually manageable!

Inside each unit, you will find a 5 day reading unit that focuses on a particular comprehension concept or skill. This unit, includes activities to help first graders identify who is telling the story. It's a tough concept for our friends to learn, but I've made it very attainable and engaging for the kids!

This unit includes fun matching activities and writing activities to work with identifying who is telling the story!

In each unit, you'll also find something I call, Quick Writes! These focus on general comprehension of the story. These are great discussion starters to use with the book. You can have the kids make their flaps at the beginning of the week, bring their reading journal to the rug for your mini-lesson and as you read the text, you ask them a question. Students can write the response under the flap and you can share! Short, simple and effective!!

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In each unit, you'll also find simple vocabulary activities. Much of the time, you'll find prompts that allow students to make real life connections with the vocabulary from the text they're reading. I think it's so important to teach the vocabulary from the text. 1-the kids gain a deeper understanding of the story. 2-the kids learn to use the words in context which is turn.... does exactly what we want it to do--EXPAND VOCABULARY!! 

Inside each unit, you'll also find a full blown writing unit. You can be as involved with it as you want! I've included everything you need to allow your students to flourish with their narratives. The book I chose for this unit, lends itself perfectly to a narrative about when the students lost their first tooth. 99.8% of firsties have lost a tooth and LOVE to tell their stories!

Here's a look at what the kids final writing would look like! Nice little craftivity and all!

Last, those literacy stations I told you about! Here they are!!

They are designed to allow students to complete independently!

They're included inside the unit so you don't have to go purchase stations to match the theme separately! I like to place 2 in my word work stations and I always use one for a guided reading activity for the week to review a skill!

If you're interested in seeing more of this unit, click here!

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Books Teachers Love: The Night Before Christmas

Welcome to Books Teachers Love! A monthly, blog link up where teachers share some of our favorite read aloud for the upcoming months! This month, I am sharing the book, "The Night Before Christmas" by Natasha Wing.

This is an adorable book about how the night before Christmas, nothing would go right for the family. Unfortunate and comical things kept happening on the night before Christmas. It's an adorable book that any child would enjoy.

Right after I read this book, I envisioned that students create a present and on the present, write some of the things they do or would like to do on the night before Christmas.

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In each part of the present, students just write one of the things they would do a draw a simple picture. You could add little white pieces of paper so students can write on that and add color the their pictures if you would want them to. Sometimes, though I just love the simplicity of a black picture! :)

Making this present is super simple. You just need to cut out a square or rectangle piece of construction paper. Cut multiple strips of green for the ribbon. Then, to add the bow - bend four pieces of paper in half and glue - like the picture you see below.

Then, glue the ribbons to the back of the present! It's super easy and would make an adorable bulletin board in your classroom!

Last, year I did a post about the Gingerbread man.

You can find that post here.

To check out more ideas for the month of December, check out the posts below.

An InLinkz Link-up

To enter to win 4 books of your choice seen below, enter the giveaway!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Pete the Cat Week

Each week, I love to focus our theme around what phonics skill we are working on in the classroom, as many other teachers do. This week, we went with the famous, "Pete the Cat." He is always so much fun!

When we had our Pete the Cat week, we were still very much in the midst of learning routines and procedures, so we didn't get as much done as I had hoped, but we became better students. That's a win for me!

We began the week reading with our short a phonics lesson. I introduced 4 work families and the students helped create new words by placing letters in front of the word families. Students practiced writing the new words on their white boards.

The next day, we were introduced to our poem of the week. I get out phonics poems here. I use the sentence strips to write our poem because on day 2, I cut up the words and we work to unscramble the poem. Day 3, we see if there are any sight words in the poem. There was only 1 since we only had 5 new sight words to look for. It was our first week of words. On day 5, students read their poem to a partner to work on some fluency!

Since, we were at the start of school when we did Pete the Cat, I thought it'd be perfect to use the following directions craft from Teacher by the Beach's Cat Pack. I read, "Pete the Cat, I Love my White Shoes," and then we did our pete craft. When students finished they worked on number recognition with this coloring activity.

We also had learned all of our reading stations by the middle of this week. So, my students learned how to play the popcorn sight word game. They play this while they wait for me to come to the teacher table... while I'm managing the chaos of kids trying to get started at their stations with out talking (Oh, the struggle). lol

At the teacher table, we did a color word lesson. I read the book, "Pete the Cat, Too Cool for School" to the students. Then, using flash cards. We matched our crayons to the color word. Students laid their crayon on the flashcard that said the correlating color. Afterwards, students completed the coloring sheet you see below. You can grab that here.

Something to help manage students in each group that I came up with on the fly... and I think, someone else came up with it but I can't remember who? Anyway, I grabbed some graduation caps from a free table at my school and I picked 5 responsible students to be quiet captains. There is one quiet captain at each group. When their group gets too noisy, they just do the infamous, "SH, sh, SH SH SH" tune. Then, the group repeats the rhythm.

I also introduced the kids to Cause & Effect! We read the book, and identified cause and effect situations from "Pete the Cat, I Love my White Shoes." 

Afterwards, students completed this reading response. 

To end our week, we read, "Pete the Cat & His Four Groovy Buttons." Then, we made this adorable but simple craft that I found on Pinterest!

You just need, graham crackers, vanilla icing, yellow food coloring and M&M's!

Thanks for seeing what we've been up to in Mrs. Hursh's class!

I'll be back soon with details from our Fish Week for Short I!

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Finding Good Fit Books!

This past week my students worked hard to make sure they filled their book bins with good fit books! We spent all week practicing and reading those good fit books. My kids have quickly fallen in love with read to self and we make sure we get our 15 minutes in each day.

Here is how we learned how to find our good fit books:

First, we read the book, "Goldie Socks and the Three Librarians."
In the book it talks about how Goldie Socks found her good fit book and it just so happened to be the little bears books! As we read the book, we talked about why she kept choosing those books and why she wasn't choosing Mamma or Pappa Bear's books.

After we read the book, I asked the kids to just look through their books today during read to self and think to themselves if they thought their book was or was not a good fit book. After read to self, we closed the lesson with a quick discussion of why some of our books were or were not good fit books.. Some of the kids knew right away that their book was WAY too hard.

On day 2, I introduced this poster to the kids which will hang in our classroom all year.

Then, I modeled how to go through a book using the good fit book test.

Afterwards, the students went back to their seat and looked at the books in their book bin to see if they were good fit books. If they were not, they set them beside their book bin. Afterwards, I spread out the book baskets around the room and the students went shopping for new good fit books!

We then, did read to self and as we were doing it, a kiddo went to our recycle bin (AKA book mark bin), got a marker and wrote a number 5 on the paper. Came up to me and said, "Mrs. Hursh, I made myself a good fit book mark so I never forget to use the good fit book rule." *Happy Teacher Moment.* This sparked an idea for the activity the following day because my kids are always wanting a bookmark *proof they're actually reading*!

 I was going to print and laminate some, but it becomes so much more meaningful & purposeful for the students when they create something themselves.

I modeled how to trace our hand, and place numbers on our fingers. I modeled some fun coloring and then off they went. After students were finished, I laminated their hands so they could use them all year long.

Next week, we'll learn this poem as a beginning of the week refresher! 

I may use it as one of our transition songs too! ;-)

I'd love to hear how you introduce good fit books to your kids too! 

Feel free to comment below!

Grab your freebies from this blog post below!

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Books Bloggers Love: January Edition

Welcome to the January edition of Books Teachers Love! 

I'm here to share a simple comprehension booklet with you to use with "The Mitten" by: Jan Brett!

You can find a copy of the book here if you don't already own it!

If you don't own the book, "The Mitten," then, you can always play it for your kids off of YouTube!

This version is read by Jan Brett!

As I read this story with my class, we work on recalling the animals that crawled into the mitten first. There sure are a lot of them, so it's great practice!

After our first read, we see if we can fit all of the animals into our own mitten! 

It's quite the challenge!!

Then, the next day, we focus on retelling the beginning, middle and ending of the story!

Other quick comprehension skills that we tough on are cause and effect and providing an opinion about the choice the boy made at the beginning of the story!

-Don't mind my misspelling of the word sneeze... ha ha! *Real World*

If you would like to grab this activity, then click here or the cover below!

It's completely free! :-)

This month, we are giving away these four books. To enter the giveaway, you'll need to hop onto Instagram to enter! Come find me @theteachertalk !

Now, hop onto these other fabulous bloggers to gather more ideas for January!!

Don't forget to enter to win these four books too!

An InLinkz Link-up

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Retelling Made Simple!

Something I work on every single week with my firsties during guided reading is retelling. We work on it over and over and over again with a splash of other comprehension skills thrown into our book discussions. One time a week during guided reading, I have all of my groups complete some sort of writing activity. The majority of the time, it has been to work on retelling the story. We need constant work on identifying the important parts.

Anyway, I created a little retelling kit to use with my kiddos. We work on the same skill, but it always helps to mix up the 'stuff' we use to keep them (and me) engaged! ;-)

My favorite tool that we use all. of. the. time. is the retelling bookmark. This is perfect when you only have a few minutes left with the group and just need to orally retell the book.

I just keep them in my little guided reading kit and pull them out when we need them!

Sometimes, we use the bookmarks to write about parts in our book.

I just give the students stickies and assign them an element, or tell them to recall the beginning, middle and end.

It really makes planning for guided reading EASY!

As I said up top, we also do some sort of writing activity related to our guided reading story.

The beginning of the year, we focused a lot of just retelling our fiction stories and identifying the different story elements.

I change up our retelling activities week to week. 

Here's some of them!

Some are just simple BME stuff.

Other activities, focus on the story elements!

If I notice a set of students is struggling with certain elements, then I'll pull these quick activities for them to complete. Much of the time, my higher group will complete the larger graphic organizer with their story!

If you're interested in any of these goodies, you can grab them here!!

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