Fundraising for Boston - Can You Help?

This is Martin Richard. He was 8 years old. On Monday, April 15, his life was tragically ended when a bomb exploded at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, where he waited for his father to cross. His mother, Denise, and little sister, Jane, were also injured. Jane has already lost one of her legs.

This is the heartbreaking final photo of Martin, which pictures the bomber and the bomb to the right of him.

Over the past 6 days, Boston and its surrounding areas have been put through a terrifying ordeal. After the two bombs at the Boston Marathon, our city was literally put in a lock down while we waited for police to capture the two bombing suspects. The city was silently waiting to hear that our hours of anxiety and fear were over. Living just outside of Boston, we stayed in our house too, not sure where the suspects were or what was going to happen next.

Photos from the bombing and aftermath

Photos from Friday's lockdown and manhunt 

This is the boat where the suspect was eventually found and captured.

While there were 3 other victims from this tragedy, including a police officer, as a teacher of young children in the Boston area, Martin's story hits close to home. His little sister is in the first grade, and was an Irish step dancer, and has now lost a leg. To support Martin's family, I would like to fundraise with some fabulous products from some fellow teachers. All proceeds would benefit the Richard Family Fund - http://richardfamilyfund.org.

If you are interested in donating a product, please e-mail me at theprimarybuzz@gmail.com.

In Martin's words, No more hurting people. Peace.

Please feel free to spread the words to other blogging pals - I'd like to help Martin's family as much as we can! :)

THANK YOU! 

Five For Friday - School Vacation Edition - and, I'm on Facebook!

It's my last day of school vacation - weekends don't count. Blah. This has been a crazy, crazy, week for us here in Boston. We are literally in a lockdown all over the state. It's scary. So, I'll distract myself with a little Five for Friday with Doodlebugs Teaching.

Go link up, too!

1. 

Boston Strong. This is so scary to look at - the city is in lockdown. Please keep our city and our first responders in your thoughts and prayers.

2.

On a happier note, I went out for my best friend's bachelorette party, and Lola decided to get in on the action :)

3.

Student portfolios. My parent conferences ended right before vacation - THANK THE LORD.

4.

I just returned home for a much needed vaca... I'd like to go back now, please!

5.

I used some vaca time to create a Facebook page for my blog! (I just finished it this morning... no, I don't have any "likes" yet! :() Click the Facebook button above to head over. I'd love if you popped over and gave me a "like" - if you do, leave some love over there-I would love to choose 3 people randomly who like and comment to choose from my Spring Math Centers or Spring Literacy Centers on TpT! Please include your e-mail and your choice of product! 

I also need to share an awesome giveaway! 

Head over to Learning with Mrs. Leeby and enter to win one of 3 awesome survival kits!

Fabulous Giveaways!

Hi all,

I've returned from my vacation and I'm back in Boston. It feels weird to be home after Monday's events. My heart breaks for the victims and their families. As I drove home from the airport last night, I saw billboards already posting with images of those we lost. This billboard was up too -

It's just too close to home this time - literally, 20 minutes from home. I'm anxious to see my kiddos on Monday - I know they'll be talking about it. Many of them were there to cheer someone on, or just to go for the fun of it. I'm sure we will meet as a staff to discuss the best and most developmentally appropriate response for our students.

On a brighter note, I have nothing educational right now because I'm still in vacation mode :) But, go check out two great giveaways that I am a part of! 

First Grade Fairytales 400 follower giveaway

Kinder Krazy's 100 follower giveaway!

Click on the pictures to go check these fabulous ladies out! 

My goal for today is to finish creating my Facebook for my blog - we'll see how that goes :)

Boston

I cannot comprehend what happened yesterday in my home town. Four months ago, our school tried to find the words to explain Newtown to our students if they asked. Now, we are deciding how to handle discussing something that has hit us so close to home - many of our students were there, somewhere along the marathon route. I have no words.

Vacation!

VACATION!! 

I'm off to Florida! See you all on Thursday :) 

I Heart Math Journals! (a quick little giveaway)

I have seen the light. I never did math journals before when I taught K or 2. This is a recent adventure for me, and I am SO happy I started them! I just got through 18/19 of my parent conferences, so excuse the quick post.

I am writing about math journals for 2 reasons: first, because I just had conferences and I was able to use my math journals to show student work, growth, and areas for improvement. We do math journals at least twice a week for morning work, and it is always a choice at the math daily 5. Journal prompts range from story problems to missing part problems, how many of each? problems to true/false problems. My kiddos have gotten so good at showing what they know! The thing I love the MOST is the sharing aspect of journals- everyday, my kids share what they wrote and how they solved it. I have my kiddos in pairs, we created a poster on math talk, and we are on a roll!

The second reason I'm writing is to show my April/May journal prompts that I just posted to TpT, and I would love to give 2 copies away tonight! The first two comments get these prompts free! :)

If you want to check them out on TpT, click the pic!

A quick freebie for my K pals (good early 1st grade review and intervention, too!) - this was a customer request and thought I'd share :)

Dino Teen Review

Freebies galore and what we've been up to in literacy :)

Happy Monday! It's the last week before spring break - thank the Lord. Here's a peek at what we've been up to in first grade, plus a few freebies! :)

Today we started using my Woodland Animals non-fiction unit for our new unit of writing. My class loves anything non-fiction, so they're so into it! We read "Squirrels" (I got this pack of woodland animal books from Scholastic last year, they're the perfect level for them!) and practiced some note taking with this jot page I created. Tomorrow, we'll do the same thing with a video aloud.

Jot Page by mrsg1stgrade

Font is A Cupcake for the Teacher, border is Krista Wallden.

This is the book - it's a Pebble book. We read it aloud, stopping and jotting every couple of pages. I plan to use this paper for each woodland animal read aloud or video aloud. We have a district assessment that uses a very similar format, so it's also great practice for that!

If you don't own "Fix It Up" by Growing Kinders, you are missing out! We've been using her packet as morning work recently and it aligns perfectly with our Sitton spelling program! Love!

I especially love the "checked by a friend" piece :)

First Grade Buddies have the cutest Earth Day class book that I just purchased. We actually tied it into our mini-unit on mental images! I found a great YouTube video with pictures to go along with the song that the class book is based on, "What a Wonderful World". I played the video without broadcasting it onto the board once, allowing the kids to get mental images, turn and talk about their images, and create a list of images, then we viewed the images in the video. The kids really enjoyed it! We followed up by drawing our mental images for the class book. 

Watching the video the second time through...

So adorable!

How sweet is this?!

Here's a link to the YouTube video- make sure you run it through once on your own, advertisements always pop up and sometimes they're questionable :)

We've also been working on blend books by Abby for the past few weeks. They are the perfect addition to my literacy centers!

I have also been utilizing a new app on our iPads! 

Voice Recorder

We've been using this app for fluency practice! My kiddos have each been working on fluency over the past few weeks, AND I wanted to have new additions to our listening center, so, they've been recording themselves reading just right books on the iPad! This app allows you to save it to the iPad, upload to Drive/Dropbox, and create a new title for the recording. SO simple for them to use!

Last week, we created Teri's cute little chickies, and this week we're using the making words activity during literacy centers. The kids love these kinds of activities!

Finally, here's another little freebie for you! I created this Scrambled Sight Words game for my kiddos. 

Scrambled Sight Words

In action!

Whoops, forgot I had made another freebie for you guys, but I can't find the pic of this in action today! This is a part of my math daily 5 this week, since we're practicing counting coins. I have numbered plastic eggs (on clearance now after Easter! Yes!) and filled them with random amounts of coins, so here's the recording sheet to go with it if you're interested :)

Egg Hatch Counting Coins

Lastly, I just won this awesome unit from Khrys at Keepin' It Cool in Kinderland! Ahh, so excited!

Go check her out!!

Hop on over to Classroom Freebies to link up and grab more great freebies!