Rewind.

Do you ever feel like your life is in constant fast-forward mode? Today I’m rewinding a bit and taking a breather! We’ve been having all kinds of fun in first grade lately. These first graders (almost second graders – gasp!) are working hard and don’t even realize it. That’s the best kind of learning in my book! Last week, we finished up our SUPER WEEK OF SUPERHERO FUN in our class! Each day a different superhero flew in for a visit to help review r-controlled vowels with my kiddos. I noticed a lot of my kids were still mixing up all of the different r-controlled vowels so these superheroes were SUPER helpful! To prepare for their grand entry, we made superhero masks. These masks were worn all week. After each day of hard work, we hung up our masks so that they’d be all ready for the next day. We hung them on a yardstick so they wouldn’t get all tangled together. OCD, much?

On Monday, Smart Clark came by and helped us review /ar/.

On Tuesday, Stormy Norman stopped by to help us out with the /or/ sound.

On Wednesday, The Super Girls popped in for some er, ir, and ur fun!

And on Thursday and Friday, we reviewed all of the r-controlled vowel sounds! Each day, we went on a different SUPER word hunt (sporting proper attire, of course!), played some SUPER r-controlled vowel bingo, and wrote our own SUPER stories! SO.MUCH.FUN.

All of these fun activities (along with the mask templates) can be found at my TPT shop. Just click on the coversbelow to take you to each one!

In math, we’ve been working on mastering comparing numbers. Phew! This is a TRICKY concept. I knew I’d have to bring in the greater than/less than alligator for this lesson! I found this cute little song here and changed it up a bit to make it into an anchor chart. Then, I made a huge pond out of construction paper and cut out two lily pads and placed them on top. I made a bunch of cards with numbers and tens/ones up to 100 and placed them face down around the pond. Then, I had my students sit around the pond. Of course, I forgot to snap pictures WHILE we were actually doing this activity! I chose two students to come up and flip a card. First, they held up their card to show the class. Then, the whole class sang the song (each time we picked a different food for the “How Many ___________ Do You Chomp part?”). They LOVED talking like they were hungry alligators. Then, they placed their card on one of the lily pads and picked the correct alligator mouth to show which number was greater. If the class agreed, they gave a thumbs up!

You can find an alligator mouths below:

  After we did a little whole group practice, we used this awesome spin it game from the sweet Anna. You can download this great resource (along with lots of other greater than/less than fun stuff!) over at her blog HERE.

Who else is STILL teaching? Please tell me I’m not alone. Haha!