Spring means Getting Creative

I spent quite a bit of time in my classroom this weekend.  I thought if I went in Saturday I could do all my planning then and not have to stay after church on Sunday.  But instead I spent Saturday organizing, cleaning, and getting creative.  It wasn't a total waste.  My game closet is organized again with aspirations of once again covering the top shelves with a curtain and only providing the games, puzzles, and toys that pertain to our unit for free time Friday.  That will happen next year.  While cleaning out the closet I hit inspiration for math and phonics games.  I created a math Chutes and Ladders game I spotted on the Finally in First blog.  I created an addition game using a magnetic dart board that the kids really enjoy. 

I will be creating a score sheet for the kids to use to write their addition facts they hit when playing.  I'll post it when I'm done.  I also began work on a sight word Candy Land that I heard reference to on another site but didn't actually see a picture of.  There were two games of Twister in the closet so I took one out and added numbers to each spot.  I have a little more work to do to make this game completely ready for math fact practice.  But I'm pretty sure that once its finished it will be a huge hit with my first graders. 
While playing in my classroom I saw a youtube video of another math game and had the materials available then so also made that.

I totally emptied out my guppy aquarium, putting the guppies in my smallest aquarium until I'm done.  I started cleaning the rocks before having to leave Saturday for my church's Black History Month Celebration. So I didn't quite finish.  The guppies will just have to survive for a little longer in the small aquarium before returning home.

Today we didn't have school.  A crazy storm blew through last night and we were left with limited power in the building.  What that meant for me though was that I had more time today to let my creative juices flow.  They always seem to overflow at this time of the year so I'm happy I actually had the opportunity to let them, even though I'm fairly frustrated by the lack of time I feel I have to actually fit everything in that I still need to teach.  Ugh too many snow days this year!!!

Here's my creation from today ... I drew a little picture of something similar on the white board a couple weeks ago when my Making Words lesson included words with ai.  I told the kids at the time that I would make a poster to hang up that they could use for "research"  I'm much happier with this than with any poster I would have come up with.  Perhaps I'll post the templates and instructions later so others can make it as well.

I just need to decide what exactly I'm going to put in the speech bubble.  I haven't decided if I'll put the rhyme when two vowels go walking the first one does the talking or if I'll put pictures of words that have ai in the middle.

I'll be showing this video to my students very soon as well ... I'm getting ahead of myself though.  We still have two more weeks of long o and long u with bossy e before we even get to this.