I see new ideas looking at me.

You knew which book I'd be referencing before you even clicked on this link, right?  You good teacher, you.  ;)

I've always thought of Brown Bear as a pre-K or early kindergarten story because of it's simplicity.  But I used it with my K-1 class this year and the simplicity and repetition lead to some awesome skill mastery and understanding.

I see {sequencing} looking at me.

One of my goals this year is to work in more fine motor activities using scissors and glue...which will in turn work in creativity & art!  So for our retell activity, my students colored pictures, cut them out & glued them in order to sequence the story.  If they finished early, they labeled the different animals.  Of course, I forgot to take a picture of any of my dolls wearing their crowns but this is how they looked.

I don't know where our pictures came from - I've had them for years - but you can get an ever cuter coloring page from 2care2teach4kids:

I see {writing} looking at me.

I. love. these. books!  Teacher to the Core must've created these just for me because there's a kindergarten version and a 1st grade version!  My 1st graders created their own circle stories, writing their name on the first page then continuing the story by carrying over whatever they saw to the next page.  The number of pages depended on fast they worked but each student started with 3 and added from there.

My kindergarteners created a group book together.  We used the kindergartener page each time to minimize the sounding out frustration and only asking them to sound out one word per page.

He saw a coconut tree.  Hmmm...can you guess which book we used last week?!  ;)

I see {math} looking at me.

I chose this math activity because it takes the typical graphing activity to the next level.  I gave my students M&Ms to represent the colors of six of the animals.  {The white horse & black sheep are missing but no one seemed to mind since they were working with candy.}  The students sorted their M&Ms by color and graphed.

But then Happy Teacher, Happy Kids extended the math practice with this addition sheet that was amaze balls!

{can I say amazeballs??  I hope so because I just did...twice.}

This activity is actually 4 pages in total with a sorting page, graphing page, recording page and the addition page.  Best news: it's a free download.  Actually, everything in this post is a free download! Just click the pictures or linked text to go to the original store or blog to grab your copy.

Don't stay away too long...I see apples looking at me next!!  ;)