My First Product Swap

For the past two and a half weeks we have been trying something new in the class - morning work!  When the students would come in the classroom first thing in the morning I usually had thematic name cards set out for them at the carpet.  They would use these to review current skills we were working on in class, but since I have been a part of the Magical Product Swap, organized by Jessica Stanford from Mrs. Stanford's Class, I got to try out and use a fantastic morning work product.  

My product swap partner was Vera, The Tutu Teacher.  Perhaps you know her as Vera from Bedford, Love and Teaching, but her blog got a make-over and so did her name!  She loves to make and wear tutus!  I got to use her April morning work pack and the kids had so much fun with these worksheets.  These activities were great because the students were engaged from the moment they got to school.  There was no 'down' time before announcements began and this was because the students were busy working.  Another fabulous thing about this pack was that it got increasingly more complex as the days progressed.  For example, at the beginning of the month the students would read, then eventually trace the word April, but by mid month they were writing some of the word independently.  The pack also focused on so many skills we were currently working on -identifying sight words, subtraction, reading and writing blends and so much more!  The activities were related to current holidays or thematic days such as Easter, April Fool's Day, National Poetry Month and so much more.  We didn't get to do the April Fool's Page since we were on our Easter holiday that day, but all the activities were SO MUCH FUN!  Check out our morning work activities:

My kiddos are so used to circling the words they know in our poems or Read-Along pages that I didn't even have to tell them (and it wasn't expected of them), but they did it anyway!  

I love the sound substitution (change rain into train) and fine-motor printing practise.

The kids loved the word search pages!  This little one was doing mental math and didn't need to cross off or cover up the eggs to subtract.

Here we are circling sight words and applying knowledge of using the word in a sentence (capital letter for the beginning).

I love the visual on this little ones drawing representing "it's as hot as an oven!"  Sweat is just oozing off this person!

Here we are putting the life cycle of a chicken in order.

Here is another great visual.  In this drawing, her hand is WAY up in the air (touching the sky) - the box is that light!

Vera also used one of my products in her class.  Click here to check out her blog and find out what product she used!

Vera has a morning work pack available for all the months, so click the image below to go check out the April morning work pack and the rest of her TPT store.  

Thank you to Jessica Stanford (for organizing the Product Swap) and to Michelle, The 3 am Teacher for the graphics.  Click here to see who else has joined in the fun!

I'm going to leave you with something one of my littles asked me that just made my day...

Little:  "Mrs. Parisi....(pause:  thinking)...are you a grown-up?" hehehe

Wishing the 'kid' in everyone a good weekend!