Little Cupcakes, Compound Words, and a Synonyms Freebie

Nothing makes me happier than a cupcake. Really, I cannot tell you how deep my obsession with them goes! I am also deeply obsessed with bulletin boards. I love it when two obsessions come together! Cupcakes and a bulletin board? Yes! It’s my own personal heaven!
I created some What’s Cooking crafts to cover some of my grammar standards and a few of them will be all yours for free!!!! Including one today!!! I made this little chef using the tips I talked about {here}.

I wanted to take the cooking theme and really run with it, so I coved the board in foil to make it look like a cookie sheet. It was so easy and cheap. However, as a disclaimer, I went into Target to buy foil, just foil, and spent $217 on God only knows what. Go figure. But this was much cheaper than the time I went into Target to buy detergent, just detergent, and bought a puppy. I tell my husband I am going to Target and his eyebrows shoot up…. Just sayin’ foil is cheap, Target is dangerous!
The foil tears easily, but you have to remember everything is going to be covered in darling art like this!

Last year’s students loved making this especially when I would rain the paper sprinkles down on their desks. Squealing and laughter are always welcome in my classroom. My students this year are going to be treated to a cupcake reader’s theater for fluency this week! I anticipate more squealing!

They really do love the reader’s theater weeks. I only do 1 month, but I have to tell you the kids and parents alike love them:

Parents love that I cover social skills in the reader’s theater. This passage is about using manners and being a delight. Proud as a peacock covered not giving up and not tattling.
Kids love the interactive nature.
I love that my students develop more vocal intonation that transfers into their reading across all subject areas.

We will also be doing some procedural writing this week. “ I know how to make cupcakes” will be our topic sentence. My district uses Step Up to Writing, and I love it! These pages have full directions and some sample pages too!

If you own Spring Into Fluency then you already own Little Cupcakes. Simply download it again!

Now, I know I mentioned a deep obsession with cupcakes. I am now going to reveal a total scarf session with you! Vicky from Teaching and So Much Moore and I met up at the beach and boy oh boy did we have fun at Casey’s Cupcakes. If you watch Cupcake Wars on Food Network, then you saw her win! Let me tell you, she won the $10,000 and bragging rights for good reasons! They are delish!

We showed the cupcakes no mercy. Now I realize that you can still see a few bites left of every cupcake… Yeah, we were not done yet! We did not lick the paper liners clean. That is only OK in your own house! I love Miss Vicky! I know you all love her too, but if you have not met this sweet woman yet in the blog-o-sphere, then you simply must check her out!

So are you ready for your freebie!?!? How about some Synonym Rolls?

If you had Little Cupcakes up already, then a simple swap out of the bottom lettering and art gives you “new” board in less than 5 minutes! Heavenly and very sweet!

If you teach first grade like I do you are going to need to make anchor charts that the kids can pull from as they create the synonym rolls. Round out the whole lesson by handing out some delish cereal like this! Cara gave her kids cinnamon cereal and I about died with excitement to do the same with my students.

You simply must go to Cara’s blog because she has a darling synonym freebie that you must use! Listen to me being bossy. Sorry but it’s good stuff. My students were insane over it! Her freebie is shown below and can be grabbed {here}