Cuttin' up in Class!

Three quick and easy ideas for centers/small group activities!

1. ABC Order

All you need is an old magazine.  Students can cut out letters, or you can precut yourself.  I had my students work together to put the letters in alphabetical order.  You could step it up later in the year and have them make words and put in alphabetical order.  The kids LOVED it!  (And I loved that it was super EASY!)

2. Contractions

I used colored index cards for this activity, but you could use anything.  I started with two separate cards like "did" and "not" and led the kids in cutting out the "o" and adding the apostrophe.  They did a great job!  I used this in a small group setting. 

3. Fiction vs. Non-Fiction

I saw this great activity on Pinterest.  I saved old Scholastic Book Orders and the kids cut out and sort fiction and non-fiction books. I used this as a center.  The kids love looking through the catalogs, and I love the fact that it took almost no prep work! :)

 I hope some one can use these easy ideas!

Graphing Good TIme!

I'm so behind on blogging!  I have taken some snap shots here and there throughout October, so I don't forget all the fun we had!  A week or so before Halloween, we studied graphing in math.  The kids LOVED working with graphs!  

We started with pictographs.  Here is our birthday pictograph we created.  Each kid decorated a cupcake with their name and placed it on the correct month.  We discuss which month had the most least, equal, etc.

We also did a popcorn pictograph, which was everyone's favorite!  We taste tested butter, caramel, and cheesy popcorn.  Each student colored their popcorn the color of their top pick.  So fun and tasty! 

For our tally graph, we voted on our favorite milk flavor and created tally marks with straws.

 We wrapped up the graphing activities with a bar graph about our favorite season.  Our story for the week was Seasons from our basal series.  

Hope you can use these fun and simple ideas in your room!  I would love to hear of more fun graphing ideas!!