Primary Chalkboard

Primary Chalkboard's MONSTERous Giveaway and Freebie Link-up!

Greetings friends!

I am so excited to be posting today and bringing you the opportunity to WIN some UH-MAY-ZING things!

Welcome to Primary Chalkboard's MONSTERous Giveaway!!! Dun, dun, dun!!!!

Not only do we have product bundles up for grabs, but we also have some other goods that are the bomb-diggity!

So let's get down to it... the fabulous prizes! There are 4 different prize bundles! Enter one, enter all, totally up to you!

Now, let's remember, with great prizes comes great responsibility...Ok, so maybe not great responsibility, but there is going to be some clicking involved! So to this I say, Happy Clicking friends! :)

4. The Mega Prize Pack

And for our mega prize pack, we have some VERY generous people who have donated some fabulous prizes for ONE LUCKY WINNER!

First Mega Prize - Amie, from Glitter Meets Glue, has graciously donated her Technology Equipment Variety Clipart Pack! Some real glittery fabulousness!

Second Mega Prize - Troy, from Classroom Friendly Supplies, has graciously donated one of his AMAZING pencil sharpeners!

Third Mega Prize - Stephanie, from Ooh Baby Designs, has graciously donated a prize pack worth over $150.00!!!

Winner will receive: Deluxe Teacher Tote and Matching Teacher Chair Pocket and Bunting Flags!

Giveaway is for items pictured below with NO substitutions and you must be a US resident! But who would WANT to substitute?? These are adorable!! See for yourself!

Stephanie has these items plus MANY other fabulous items for sale! Check out her other adorable items: Chevron & Dot two sided infinity scarf in School Colors, Large Deluxe Reversible Black Chevron & Black Dot Teacher Tote, Large Deluxe Reversible Teacher Tote with Reusable Bunting Set, and Large Deluxe Reversible Navy Teacher Tote!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Giveaways end October 8th! Enter before it's too late!!!

But wait! The fun's not over yet!

Not only are we offering all of these wonderful prizes for you, we will also be featuring different October themed freebies over the next week! Make sure you check back each day from now to October 8th and snag some new resources for FREE!

Have your OWN October themed freebie? (

That can include fire safety, pumpkins, Halloween, red ribbon week, fall, etc.)

Well if you've got one, link it up below! :)

Applefest Continues!

Happy Apple Week from Simply Skilled in Second and Fluttering Through First Grade!

We are so excited to share some fun with you today!
Thank you so much for stopping by to check out the Primary Chalkboard.

This week is all about.... APPLES!!!!
We guess you can call it an Applefest :)

Hi Friends! It's Anna from Simply Skilled in Second! I wanted to share with you what I am planning to do during my Applefest! Every year we tie in apples during our Fall Observation Week that is connected to our science unit. We observe a tree in each of the different seasons, predict and record the temperature for the week, and record the sunrise and sunset time for each day during our observation week. I read many different read-alouds throughout the week that have a focus on apples. On Friday, we have our Applefest. The children are engaged in many different types of activities with apples. They weigh, measure, and describe apples. We also have the parents come in a do a baking activity with the students where they get to use standard forms of measurement with baking.

This year I have decided to add some additional stations into my Applefest Day. Most of my Apple Stations revolve around math, however, this year I am going to add some ELA stations into the mix as well. They are going to be making an Apple Flip-Flap Book when they arrive at each of the ELA stations. At the first ELA station they will create the "A" and the "P" in their Apple Flip-Flap Book where they will complete an apple graphic organizer to describe an apple using their senses. The next ELA station they will create the next letter "P" where they will color and label the parts of an apple tree. Next, they will read through a short non-fiction text about apples and then label the parts of an apple and color it. After that, they will complete the "E" page where they will label and color the life cycle of an apple. Lastly, they will finish with the "S" page where they record the results of the class data on each students' favorite apple. I am so excited that I added an ELA portion to my Apple Day. Now I will have covered my math and ELA lessons for the whole day and we get a yummy baked treat at the end as our reward for our hard-work! Take a look at some of the pictures below of the apple flip-flap book.

This is what the apple flip-flap book will look like when it is complete.

This is what each page of Apple Flip-Flap Book looks like!

If you are interested in trying this out with your students, click the image below to head on over to my TPT Shop to pick it up.

Howdy Apple Lovers!

It's Christy & Tammy from Fluttering Through First Grade.

Are you a Honey Crisp kinda person?

Maybe more of a Gala Girl?

Any Granny Smith Lovers?

We're a Dipped in Chocolate or Caramel if at all Possible People ourselves...

It really is an Applefest!

Each fall, we bring real apples as well as apple chips into class to introduce adjectives to our first graders. We demonstrate the importance of "juicy" words when writing through food. It's our way of introducing adjectives without them knowing they are being introduced to adjectives. :)

As they are snacking, we ask them to describe their apples versus apple chips. They come up with words like dry, crunchy, yummy, and dull for the apple chips and words like juicy, crisp, delicious and yum-o for the apples. Yes, we know...Yum-o is not technically a word, but in Rachel Ray's world it is and we are dealing with food, so we took it as a child who was channeling their inner Food Network Star.

As we chat, we discuss the importance of using describing words when we write because apple chips mean dry, boring details and juicy apples mean descriptive, detailed sentences.

And, P.S. This has absolutely nothing to do with Trader Joe's apple chips. We adore them and Joe. In fact, when the lesson is done we have at least 5 kids come ask where we got them from because they are so delicious. So technically, we are helping you Joe.

You're welcome.

We've created some Juicy Apple Adjectives activities and just added them to our TpT Shop.

Plus, we are firm believers that all ~~party guests~~ Applefest attendees should leave with party favors...So, our Juicy Apple Adjectives activities are FREE!

Enjoy!

APPLE Friday with Leslie and Marie!

Wow! What a week! Have you been enjoying reading up on all of these fun APPLE WEEK ideas as much as we have??

Leslie and I have some more ideas and, of course, freebies to share with you guys too!

First up, this is not necessarily a "teacher" resource, but I am going to try to make these with my class during our Fall party. I'm going to sub marshmallow fluff for the peanut butter so I don't have anyone have an allergic reaction on my watch :)

Source from Pinterest

I'm also planning on creating a few gifts for my teammates at work. I made these cute little apple clip art pieces to use on their gift tags I'm making. :)

These are free, so just click the picture if you'd like to download them!

These are the tags I made last year for my apple basket gifts :)

I like to give "Fall gifts" because here in Arizona, Fall is so exciting! It's when we stop seeing those triple digit temps!

Just click the picture above to download the tags!

I also have a fun Apple Literacy packet in my TpT Store.

This is a packet of APPLE themed activities.

It includes three center activities:

*Harvest Thyme: A Homophone “Picking” Memory Game

* Sweet Synonyms: Find the synonym matches on the apple cards

* How do you make an apple pie? Practice with writing directions and using transitional words (recipe cards) After reviewing what transitional words are used for, students will make their own super cute APPLE PIE recipe cards!

I also included a set of Apple Themed Transitional word cards!

This would be a great addition to enhance your Apple Unit/Centers!

You can click the picture above to go see more!

And, before you read all about Leslie's great APPLE ideas, I'll leave you with ONE more APPLE themed idea...this one is for MATH! I created this one to follow the Kindergarten CC math standards, but it could easily be adapted and used for beginning of the year First graders or strugglers!

You can CLICK HERE to see more about this math packet!

And, now...I'll leave you with Leslie:

Hey everyone! It's Leslie from

Oh my!! How fun is that, Marie!! I totally love your apple-tastic science experiment! I am totally doing that with my class, too! This week has just been so fun learning about apples and Johnny Appleseed! We started off the week with Katie's sweet story of the "Apple Star". If you haven't heard or read that story, it is a MUST!!! The kids were just so delighted and so was their teacher!

We also did some apple writing and tasting (who doesn't love to eat and taste apples?). We worked on the seasons of the apple tree with a cute painting craft and worked out of my "An Apple a Day" Pack!

Then today we made homemade applesauce in the crockpot! Here's a quick recipe if you want to try it! You will because your room will smell intoxicating!!!

10-12 large apples (I like Fuji-- but any apples will be okay.)

1/2 cup apple juice/cider (water would be ok)

1 tsp of cinnamon

1/2 cup sugar or brown sugar

Cut apples (rough chop is fine) and place in crockpot. Add other ingredients and mix. Cook on high for 4 hours or until apples are mushy. Use a potato masher and mash down. Let cool for a bit. Serve warm.

Now, some children may balk when they see it because it doesn't look like the brand name applesauce but I always tell them that this is true homemade applesauce.

Since yesterday was Johnny Appleseed's birthday, we celebrated by making Johnny Appleseed headbands with the cycle of the apple tree around the head part! Total cuteness and you can grab yours here!

Click on the picture to grab it from my blog! And I also have some more pictures from my week in Apples posted there!

Thanks so much for hanging with Marie and I!!! We had so much fun sharing our ideas with you! Check back tomorrow for more Apple ideas with Anna, Tammy, and Christy!