I'm back and Charlie, the Ranch Dog by Ree Drummond

Hey Y'all! I have been gone forever, but I'm back! I started the blog full speed and loved it, then got busy and busier and even busier and just got straight out side tracked! I'm glad to be back!

 I have a cute little book and compare and contrast idea for you guys today! I am obsessed with The Pioneer Woman. I read her cookbooks, cook from her cookbooks on a weekly basis and I now read her children's books. Oh.my.word. What a cute story! Her children's book is called, Charlie the Ranch Dog and it not only shows a lot about life on a ranch but is also PERFECT for teaching compare and contrasting! Here is glimpse of the adorable cover I found on The Pioneer Woman website!

This is a true story about two dogs, Charlie, the lazy Basset Hound, and Suzie, the highly energetic Jack Russel terrier who live on a working cattle ranch. You just have to buy it to understand the cuteness! DO IT! I got my copy at our Scholastic Book Fair for $4.99! It is available at Barnes and Nobles, Amazon, Books-A-Million etc! Here are two compare and contrast activities I made to go with this book you can download for FREE! *SIDEBAR- I cannot for the life of my get these to upload to googledocs with my cute font and everything, anyone know why??* If you want a cutesy copy email me/comment and I'd be happy to send you the file. My kids had a blast with them! It would be great to add to a farm or animal themed unit as well!

I will leave you with an adorable picture of the real life ranch dog Charlie for which this book was written courtesy of Ree Drummond, The Pioneer Woman, at her fantastic website!

I told you...ADORABLE!

Happy reading :)

Erin Mason

One foot, two foot...

Looking for some god Dr. Seuss ideas for the big day next week?? Well to help save you some time, keep reading this post! :) I've already searched high and low and I have some great units and freebies to share with you from some of my favorite teacher bloggers! Here it goes!

1. Go check out Erica Bohrer's blog for a great little 1st grade unit on Dr. Suess. It is her most recent post on her blog (as of the time of this post). If you already purchased this before she did say re download because she added some more Dr. Seuss goodies! I am going to be digging into this unit tonight!

2. Have you ever been to Suesstastic Classroom Inspiration? Well if not, this is the perfect time to go!! It will get you in the Dr. Seuss mood for sure! Mel D. has a FREE primary Dr. Seuss unit at her TpT store. I know I always repeat the FREE, but y'all, it's FREE! SO no excuses, go download it tonight! She has a good variety of literacy activities to go with a few different Dr. Seuss books. Click below and GO!

3. A new blog I found a few days ago was Second Grade Locker Room and it just happened to have a Dr. Seuss giveway as the most recent post! I went ahead and bought Sandy's Dr. Seuss unit (it was only $1.70!!!) from her Teacher's Notebook store. I had never used TN before, but it was a very positive experience! This unit has a really cute shoe graphing activity to go with The Foot Book. I love it! There is a GREAT variety in this unit too- so many activities (reading, math, even science!) to go with MANY Dr. Seuss books. So head to Sandy's blog and TN store soon!

At The Second Grade Locker Room there is also a Dr. Seuss Linky party if you have any great activities you want to advertise to fellow bloggers! :)

4. Fun in First has another FREE Dr. Seuss unit! Jodi graciously posted her Dr. Seuss mini unit for free again this year. Follow the link above right to the post! This unit has some great literacy center ideas (rhymes, word families, antonyms and sequencing) you can incorporate into your weekly rotations! I can't wait to add them in here and there for some extra fun in our centers!

Hope this helps you find what you need to celebrate Dr. Seuss next week with your munchkins! Have a wonderful weekend y'all!

Erin Mason

Happy birthday Mr. President!

It's been another busy week in my 1st grade classroom. We've been adding President's Day activities in wherever we could and boy are some of them super adorable! I've been using Amy Lemons FREE President's Day Packet for many activities.I repeat, FREE packet! It is full of cute ideas for George and Abe! I also made some sweet little George Washington's I saw on Cara Carrroll's blog. (And they were super easy y'all!) Here are some pictures I snapped of our George project!

 We wrote an interesting fact to go with our craftivity! (I think half of my munchkins wrote about how cool it was that George Washington loved horses!)

 How cute? Thank you Cara for the adorable idea!

Happy birthday Mr. President!

Our Abraham Lincoln craftivity is getting finished tomorrow! It is from Amy Lemons! 

Go to her TpT store for this FREE packet! Look for an update soon on that! One more great little President's project we did this week (well, we aren't totally finished yet...) was a little booklet from Jodi Southard at Fun in First. Visit her TpT store for this cheap President's day add on! 

It's almost FRIDAY!!!!!!!!!

Erin Mason

Free fonts!

I recently discovered  Kevin&Amanda's free fonts! And O.M.G. AMAZING!! If your like me and new to this blogging world, you need all the free resources you can get! This is a great starter tool to help you begin making worksheets and units (if you are into that) or to help you jazz up your blog. I saw the button on a lot of different  teaching blogs, such as The First Grade Parade. I am glad I checked it out!

So visit Kevin&Amanda and use their cute and trendy fonts- for free!! Be sure to grab the button below (or on their site) if you use their fonts and post it on your blog!

Happy Hump Day y'all!
Erin Mason

A little of this and a little of that!

Here is my week in pictures!
We started off in a pink flurry of fun! We did this freebie at the beginning of our Valentine's day fun. I cant remember where I grabbed it from- so if you used it too, leave a comment! :) It was a fun way to use candy and math in one!
                                 
Here is a picture of my "semi" finished writing wall. I have to move my lifeskills to make room for sample writing of work to go above, but you get the jist! I am liking those colors together- gives my room a little punch of color! Check out that freebie pack here!  
                                
 I talked earlier about the Cara Carroll TpT unit Love, Splat that I recently bought and LOVED. It had so many wonderful and diverse projects in it for all levels in your room. Here is a picture of one of our writing craftivities from it! I wont lie, it was a lot of tracing and cutting work for my little munchkins but they loved the end result! :)
                                 

Have a good weekend! TGIF y'all!
Erin Mason

Need a cute idea to spruce up your writing wall?

Happy ALMOST Friday y'all! Whew. I am so glad it is a 3 day weekend (kind of). We have professional development on Monday but it starts an hour later than I usually get to school which means I can SLEEP IN! I am not a morning person by any means so I am excited! Anyway, in the chaos that was our Valentine's week I found an awesome and FREE writing wall resource. In my school district in Florida we have started our preformance appraisal system of teacher "grading". So we had to think of a area of weakeness and write a plan on what we would do this year to improve this area with our class. There is more to it, but that is the jist of it. So I choose writing, it is definetly an area I think I can improve upon... a lot! So I am always looking for new writing ideas, wall signs, reminders, conference sheets etc to help me on my mission. I was searching through one of my favorite blogs, The First Grade Parade, and found a super cute writing freebie! I loved it so much, I have a new writers corner in my room with it already! :) It was a blog post from Cara last year. Here is a cute little sample picture.

I mean you cant go wrong with black/white and pink and those cute graphics! And it's FREE! So go grab it if you didn't last year! She has other freebies listed on the post too! Enjoy! :)

Do you have any great writing freebies, writing blogs you follow or have you seen any good writing resources lately?


Erin Mason

A little Valentines spolier!

Happy Saturday!! So I had my munchkins make our "love monster" valentine holders (from the All You Need is Love unit from The Teacher Wife ) on Friday afternoon so they would be nice and dry and ready for the big day Tuesday morning! Let me tell y'all...cuter than expected! After some of my 1st grade team saw them, they decided they have to do them too! Theses fun and different Valentine holders were easy and the kids loved being able to create their own "love monster". Here is a little pre Valentines Day spoiler of the little love monsters drying! (PS- ignore the randomness in the cubbies below!) :)

Have a wonderful weekend!

Erin Mason

I LOVE these units!

Hey y'all, hope you've had a productive and fun week! We have been SUPER busy at school trying to squeeze everything in. We have black history month, Valentines Day and Presidents Day all in the month of February! Plus, all the "normal" things like reading units, math lessons, literacy centers- oh my! SO needless to say we've been busyyyy! I wanted to let you all know about some Valentines Day units I recently bought that i am IN LOVE WITH!
 Do you have a favorite teaching blogger? Well, I do and it's Cara Carroll at The First Grade Parade! She is UH-mazing! Creative, fun and right on track with our 1st grade cirriculum. She had a Valentine's Day unit she recently put in her TpT store titled, Love, Splat. If you've ever read a Splat book, you know why I HAD to buy this unti. Splat is so stinkin' cute and Cara had some great ideas to incorporate with the book "Love Splat" and Valentines Day. I really love the writing craftivity she has included, so check it out!

Here is a preview picture of the unit from Cara Carroll's TpT store!

SO, I went a little TpT happy last week and bought another Valentines Day unit from The Teacher Wife. She has some awesome acitivities as well. I saw her picture of her "Love Monster" Valentine sacks she makes for her munchkins to collect Valentines in and I was HOOKED, with a capital H! They are so cute, and even cuter in person (I made my sample this afternoon and it is adorable!) Check our her unit at her TpT store! Here are two little previews from The Teacher Wife blog to hook you too! (I mean, how cute is that "Love Monster"???)

Do you have a favorite blogger or Valentines day unit? I want to hear- I am always looking for new reads (teaching or not!) :)
Erin Mason

Happy Groundhog Day!

It seems there has been some kind of holiday every week since we came back from winter break! Martin Luther King Jr. Day, The 100th Day of School and now February which is jam packed with Groundhog's Day, Black History Month and Valentines Day! Whew! I just need a day, heck even an hour, to breathe! Today I did a few activities from Cara Carroll over at The First Grade Parade to teach about Groundhog Day. Groundhog day is one of those holidays you can really teach about! Not only can you teach all about a groundhog (aka a woodchuck) but it is also an AWESOME day to teach predicting and weather. And that is just what we did! I really loved Cara's idea with her "Tracking the Weather" journal she had included in her groundhog mini unit. Each day, for 6 weeks, you jot down the weather(high/low temperatures and forecast) in a weather journal. You do this 5 minute activity for 6 weeks to see if Phil's weather prediction of 6 more weeks of winter was right (although here is sunny Florida I think winter has been over for a week or two since it was 79 today!).She had a whole days worth of fun so check out her blog and her TpT store for this activity and more awesome ideas!

Here is a sample of the "Tracking the Weather" journal

Happy ALMOST Friday!
Erin Mason

More Inferencing Ideas!

Here is a preview of the mini lesson

Sample of what the kids will do with their "evidence"

Last week had a bit of a theme- INFERENCING! With our reading series here at school (Treasures) we talked about inferencing last week and I searched and searched for some fun and interesting activities I could use to really teach me munchkins about making good inferences. Well, I searched and I found! I love teaching blogs for that reason! You can search for anything, absolutly anything, and find it! I found a few great lessons. One lesson I shared with y'all yesterday from The Inspired Apple titled, What's in my Teacher's Bag? That one started inferencing off on a high note with my kiddos. On Friday I like to try and do a little different craft or activity that is special. Last Friday we became official 'Inference Investigators" and we went on a mission. I found this ADORABLY cute lesson from The Inspired Apple again! (Abby has it all y'all!) She had a lesson called "Snow Day Case Files" on Teachers Pay Teachers. I saw Cara from the The First Grade Parade had a post about how her class loved this activity and thought I'd give it a try. And, its a winner people! I've even shared it with a teacher at my school in 3rd grade- it's multi age appropriate! So visit Abby at The Inspired Apple and become "Inference Investigators" in your classroom!

Erin Mason

Blog ideas needed!

Hey y'all!
Hope you all made it through Monday! Mondays are always a little sluggish around here. Its hard going back, even after a 2 day vacation! Anyways, I am new to the blogging world and want to see if anyone has good web desgin ideas or wed designers whom you've worked with and liked? I need to jazz up my blog a little and wanted some trustworthy advice! Thanks in advance for your help! :)

Erin Mason
Link up with me!

Need a good and easy inferencing lesson?

Happy Sunday!

 I just have to share a super cute and super easy inferencing lesson I found at The Inspired Apple ! When I say super easy, I mean SUPER easy. You can print her response sheet (as seen above) for each child in your class and pull out that huge teacher tote you carry around and that's ALL you need for this lesson! Here is a link to her inferencing lesson, What's in my Teacher's Bag? Try it out and enjoy! My munchkins loved every minute of it! :) Abby has some fantastic ideas for primary grades so be sure to check her out!

Erin Mason

Welcome y'all!

Welcome to my new adventure in blogging! I have started to blog to connect with other fabulous teachers and get some new ideas while also sharing some of the ideas and happening in my own 1st grade classroom! Thanks for checking in! Come back soon and visit!