Teach Learn Thive and GROW! Growing the Empathy Advantage in the Classroom

Veterans Day is an annual American holiday honoring military veterans. In honor of this day, I created a writing activity for my first grade class last year. It is a free resource that I have  available at  TpT store (as well as here on my blog). My belief is that we should honor and send our troops and veterans as many kind and supporting notes as we can. I hope you enjoy this free  resource. By the way, I finally found the answer to the use of an apostrophe or not! Good news...the United States government has declared that the attributive (no apostrophe) rather than the possessive case is the official spelling.   Happy trails. Veterans Day We Salute You Writing Paper.pdf

This craft was completed on Friday (thanks to Amy Lemons freebie on TpT).  We have our acrostic ghost poems up, spiders in the web, and now we move to my Stellaluna unit  and bats! Since I am a BIG fan of Halloween, all items in my TpT store are 10% Monday, October 28 through Halloween. Happy trails.

Leaves are falling down, quickly. I always feel like a kid when I see all the beautiful leaves on the ground. I can't stop searching for the "perfect" leaf as there are just too many pretty, bright colored leaves. Just when you think you found the perfect leaf, you see another one that is even more amazing than the last one! As a classroom teacher, I try to get my kiddos outside as much as possible. Recently, I took my kiddos on two sensory hikes, we collected leaves for a sorting and graphing activity, and just completed a grandparents' day activity to decorate our hallway bulletin board with multi-colored leaf wreaths that corresponded to one of our Autumn poems. I think it provides a great visual, it is festive, and it was a hands-on experience that was engaging and fun for the students (including me)! ! Happy Trails. Beth *credit given to my fabulous teaching partner for her collaboration on this project (and her neat printing on the sentence strips!)  ...

Acrostic Halloween Freebie by bvine55

Calendar Record Form for Primary by Beth Vineyard http://firstgradegrapevine.blogspot.com/

Technology has been on my mind this year as we were given a new iPad this summer. I have been busy playing around, exploring Apps, and thinking about how to best use this incredible resource in my first grade classroom. Although I don't have all the answers, I did want to share my new idea on how to use the Sock Puppet App in my classroom. If you have not used Sock Puppets...you should check it out. It is simple and easy to use. Plus it is downright fun and engaging. Last week I had my first birthday student. I decided that I would create a Sock Puppet skit and sing "Happy Birthday" through this App as a special way to end our day for all student birthdays this year. There are two main reasons why I love this idea! First, it is FREE ! Second, you can't actually tell it is my voice and the kids were trying to guess whose voice it was! My first grade teaching partner and I also used the Sock Puppet App for our back to school curriculum night to introduce ourselves at t...

Happy Back to School! It is hard to believe that it is time to start back up. Didn't school just get out? If you are like me, you never really stopped thinking about teaching, planning, purchasing cute stuff, and stressing out about the upcoming year. I have been busy creating custom job cards for teachers through my store on TpT. It has been really fun to customize jobs for teachers. I know how important it is to have jobs that help support your community and it was a challenge for me to create a set of job cards that could be used by many teachers. I didn't realize how popular it would be to offer an option to customize them for individual teachers. If you are interested in having a custom job card set made for you, feel free to email me at bethvineyard55@gmail.com to inquire about purchasing a set for your classroom! May all of you fabulous teachers have an amazing start to the year. We ALL work really hard to make a difference in the life of children. I feel so lucky...

Mother's Day is in one week and I will be reading "Is Your Mama a Llama?" by Deborah Guarino. I absolutely love her books and I adore llamas! I suppose all my travels to Peru makes me think of the beautiful Andes Mountains and hiking along the side of llamas. Boy, that sure brings a smile to my face. Anyhow, I created a cute resource to go along with this read aloud that incorporates literacy activities, comprehension and science connections. It is available at my TpT store. Check it out! I love to find ways to bring my passion for science into my lessons and I am excited to teach this resource to my kiddos this week. Make it a great Monday and here is to a fantastic month of May!Happy Trails.

A Sweet Idea for a Mother's Day gift! This fun and hands-on science activity will be a hit in your classroom. I have done it every year and both kids and moms love it. All you need is a plastic cup/container, grass seed, soil, a photo of each student, water and sunshine! Students plant grass seeds and grow grass to look like "hair" and when the grass gets super long it is time to place a photo of the student's face on the container! The tag line that goes with the gift is, "I love you with every hair on my head!" couldn't find a photo from last year, so I have one of me as an example! My kiddos have them growing in our class greenhouse right now. Grass grows super-fast so you have time to still make this happen. It is pretty cheap to do about $20.00 and is priceless as your kids get to nurture and pour love into their plants and how sweet that they give it away as a gift! Check out my TpT store for the complete resource. Happy Trails! ...

EARTH DAY is right around the corner! Ok, I hate wasting paper on student worksheets! I try to include activities where we can reuse materials while focusing on hands-on activities. I recently just wrote a shared reading book that I plan on incorporating into my literacy block and I included a student contract to help my kiddos commit to making three changes that will positively impact the earth. I am trying to use as little paper as I can (which is really hard to do). I usually do a trash art project but this year I want to step it up a bit and trying to think outside the box on other crafts or projects we can do this year! As you can see, I have just started to plan and I am excited to use this cool website I just stumbled upon called Planet Pals (www.planetpals.com). I am not affiliated by any means with this website, just found it and thought I would post on my own blog. I hope it helps me figure out what recycled projects my first graders can do to get them thinking about ...

It is finally complete! This student designed rainforest themed bulletin board is a great reminder and print rich way to reinforce objectives of the unit! I love how it turned out and the best part is that I incorporated material from my new rainforest unit. Happy Trails!

Happy New Year! It feels so good to start a new year. I don't know about you...but time has gone by so fast! I am ready to get back to class and kick it into high gear. My class is traveling to South America starting in January and just in time to implement my rainforest unit that will help support our journey through the Amazon Rainforest! I am excited to share it with fellow teachers. I hope to have it up on my TpT store in the next week. Happy Trails!