Halloween Week!

I’m still alive. Just barely, but I’m here. Just let the Lord get me through this week and I’ll be golden! Are you all ready for Thanksgiving Break? Let me just tell you that we all deserve a special place in Heaven after teaching the day after Halloween. Praise the Lord that’s over!

Well, I thought I’d give you a little peek at last week and then post my plans for next week as well. so here it goes!

Last week we had some Halloween fun. I alway let my kiddos know what they’ll be doing for the week in my morning message. We keep the same message all week, but work on different skills each day. Monday is a day to edit.

We just happened to be using one of my sweet and talented friend’s stories last week for our shared reading. Do you follow Creekside Teacher Tales? If not, you should. Talk about quality products. Tracey never ceases to amaze me. She just started making these great eBooks! They come with printable books, an eBook with audio, and comprehension sheets. My kids loved that our book was projected. The first day I put the cursor on the words as the audio played. And I hear there are more to come! I’m so excited.

Instead of our normal science or social studies themes, we did Halloween. One of the books we read, was There Was an Old Witch. We discussed sequencing and did this fun little craftivity.

We also read a sweet little ghost story and then did this cute little craft.

Then we worked on that first grade preposition standard, by reading a little book from my Spooky Centers. Who doesn’t love a good old spider ring?

I also had a bunch of emails about my bat and pumpkin centers. I promised they would be in a fall center pack. Unfortunately, that pack just isn’t going to get finished, so I posted the centers that are finished in my store. You can click below to grab any of them.

I also thought I’d share my new focus wall. I got the idea from my friend Cara Carroll of The First Grade Parade. She’s my little genius friend. Not only is she adorable and fun as all get out, but she’s also quite a smartie pants. This wall is great way for me to review what we’ll be learning for the week and review each day the important concepts. I also write my “I Cans” for the day and refer to them as we make our way throughout our schedule. I create the printables for each week. The noun poster is from Abby’s Parts of Speech pack and the genre posters are from the Rachel Lamb. Instead of buying a heavy white board, I purchase a light weight frame from Michaels. I inserted some bulletin board paper and just write and erase on the glass.

Now, onto next week. Next week, is a little bit crazy. We are celebrating 50 days of school and I have my OTES observation. That would be Ohio Teachers Evaluation System. Fun stuff and the reason, I’ve been MIA. So, my shared reading is going to be a little off theme. I hope you can use the unit at some point. We’ll be reading The Littlest Pilgrim and covering lots of common core. As always, my shared reading unit and more freebies are linked within my visual plans. Just click on the plans and download. You can then click the download version, for links to all of the goodies.