More Ocean Freebies!

I know most teachers do an ocean theme in the spring time, but since my firstie teammate has a gorgeous beach themed room this year (I will see if I can get in there to take some pics - it is really just too cute!), she really wanted to do an ocean theme to kick the year off.  Due to testing and behavior issues (oh my word!) I didn't get to do as much as I wanted with this theme last week, so I am keeping it going this next week as well.

During our writing time this week, I realized that I had not made an ocean word wall yet! What was I thinking?! Luckily we had a ton of non fiction sea life books from our library, so most of the words they wanted to use they could find on their own, but I really like making a word wall poster for each theme so we can refer back to it later in the year if necessary. Here's what I came up with for my ocean word wall - I will just cut out and glue the words on a blue poster board, decorate it with fishy stickers and laminate it before putting it up in our room. All the photos came from the public domain btw :)

Ocean Word Wall

My firsties need some serious work on their subtraction skills. Half the time they forget and add instead lol. I have thrown all addition work out the door for now, just trying to get them to focus on subtraction since addition come so much easier. One of the things that is helping is watching this video every morning during calendar time. All my firsties love this song!

In addition, (lol!) I made this Subtraction Fish Bowl game that we will be playing during our math rotations. It has 2 levels so I can play it with my firsties who are really struggling as well as the handful that are starting to get the concept of subtraction. I used clip art from kpmdoodles and the public domain.
Subtraction Fish Bowls

I did some retail therapy yesterday and got a few more ocean themed books for my classroom library. Here are my favorites:

This non fiction book has gorgeous illustrations, tons of insets and diagrams and enough quirky facts to keep my firsties engaged!












 This is a great craft book, with everything from pirates, mermaids, and dolphins to Halloween, Christmas and Winter ideas! This week we are going to make the hand print mermaids and the collage fish for sure, plus the octopus mobiles if we have time. I will post pictures of our creations at the end of the week!









Oh and look for some changes to my blog coming soon! I have been working with Kelly at Kelly Avenue Designs since I won her giveaway for a new blog design! She is having a 20% off sale for full blog designs until September 14th so be sure to check it out! I can't wait to see what she comes up with for me!