Day 44 Today is a two-fer!

So as usual, I was hopping around looking for good ideas, catching up on what my new blog friends are posting and then I was lost.  But lost in a happy place apparently.  I found this colorful header....

Just looking at this colorful header puts you in a good mood, doesn't it?

Teresa is the author behind Fun in K/1.  Yesterday she had a great Abe Lincoln writing freebie that I snatched up and you should too!  I will be doing Abe and George next week since this week is Valentine's and we are preparing for the 100th day of school.

Teresa has some creative ideas on her blog.  I found a few other ideas that would be fun to try with my class.

We are working on these very same contractions this week with our reading program.  And since it is Valentine's Day this week...Hearts and contractions, they go hand in hand!

Then I found this fun book recommendation idea.  My students love to tell me about the books they are reading and so I'm sure they would love to tell each other.

While checking out the cool creations from Teresa, I saw the link she had at the bottom of her page crediting the clipart she was using in her work.  

So this is the 2-fer...This amazing clip art sight...the clip art is free and you can use it on your TpT an TN sights without paying those additional license fees!  It's so nice when people support teachers.  We should be sure to support Laura Strickland and her clip art website!

Day 35 Common Core Classrooms

Today I am continuing with the theme of Common Core.  I found Common Core Classrooms.  This is a collaborative blog that brings you Common Core resources from other teachers and resources.  Their 'goal is to provide educators with classroom tested resources and ideas by grade level and subject that apply directly to the new standards.'

It's a cool idea.  I don't think the grade level links at the top work...or at least not the way I thought they would.  If they are only for comments at your grade level...it works.  But I thought it would be for looking up grade level resources...for that it doesn't work yet.

Instead, if you go to the right column and choose from Blog Archive you can see older posts.  You can also go to the Labels listing and look up a standard and find resources that way, which is helpful.

There are lots of freebie resources linked to this blog.  So that is always fun.  I found a contraction link with lots of resources.  Next week is a contraction week for spelling, so that would be awesome to have.

I already do this with my 1st graders....

And I already do a word sort. But this one is nicely formatted and in a nice clean font for them to read...although I'm not sure why all the words start with a capital letter.

Now this was the new twist that I love, love, love!  I look for ways to make my 1st graders accountable for their work all the time!  This will be very useful next week.

Happy contracting everyone!  

See you tomorrow...35 down and 330 more to go!