My First Guest Blogger!

Hi Everyone! I am very excited to be guest blogging for Elizabeth today! First, let me introduce myself! 🙂 My name is Sarah and I am a first grade teacher in North Carolina. You can find me over at Teaching is Colorful.

 I have been teaching for just 2 years now, but couldn’t picture myself doing anything else! I am always trying to come up with new and creative ideas to add to our sometimes mundane curriculum. haha! I absolutely love first grade and it is my favorite grade. I like to call it the “growth” grade because you really see the kiddos soar through the year and become little second graders  (and sometimes third graders!) by the time they are done.

Today, I’d like to talk about what to do if you have early finishers. We all have those kiddos that just seem to fly through every assignment we give them. It’s so hard to come up with more and more activities for them. There are lots of wonderful packets out there for early finishers, but if you don’t have the time (or printing and lamination) then I have another option for you! 🙂 
I have my kids in groups of 5-6. Each table has a book basket filled with about 20 different books that get rotated around the room throughout the month. When students finish an assignment early, they can grab a book from the basket to read until everyone else is finished. To make reading more worthwhile, I have also created worksheets to go with the books. These are generic that can be used with any book, but provide a little more practice and allows the children to pay more attention to the story or print. My freebie for you includes 4 sheets to use with your kids. (just click on the pic)

I hope you find them useful and for more ideas, check out my blog! I want to thank Elizabeth for hosting me today! She is an awesome teacher and I love her ideas 🙂 Have a great day everyone!