Earth Day and Ocean Fun

Hope everyone had a chance to appreciate the Earth a few weeks ago.  We got to read two great books, one from our fantastic librarian and another I borrowed from a fellow teacher, Our Class is Going Green.  It's written by students!  The kids loved it. We created the anchor chart and also wrote how we can help the Earth.  The students loved making these hand-print Earths.  I found the anchor chart on Pinterest and the hand-print Earth idea here.  

After Earth Day we had a lot of fun with our Oceans Unit.  This starts off with our Treasure's Series book, Fish Faces.

We read quite a few other books and even did some research online to compare Orca whales and Great White Sharks.  I used Deanna Jump's Ocean unit throughout the week.  The kids and I just love her activities.  

New this year, I also found this fantastic sink and float activity which even had me shocked!!  I found it over at Once upon a First Grade Adventure.  This is perfect because we are trying to add more science and using the scientific method into our classrooms.  We had two cups of water.  One was salty. (I mean SALTY, like 1/4 cup of salt!) The other was fresh water.  We put different items in such as a crayon, dice, Starburst candy, eraser and more.  Some of the items sank in both, but some sank in the freshwater but floated in the salt water! The kids loved it!  You can also find a great recording sheet on that site as well!

 To end our ocean unit, we were so lucky to have our fantastic volunteer bring a shell back for each of the kids from her trip to Florida.  Don't they crack you up?

Interesting Insects!

I love this time of year!  We are able to do so many fun activities with our Treasures Reading series.  My kids were wild about learning about insects this past week!  This is one of my favorite units to teach.  The kids love Deanna Jump's unit and Little Warriors' pollination activity.  We also loved singing Dr. Jean's "Head, Thorax, Abdomen" song to the tune of "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes."  I also added in Dee Dee Wills bee poetry.  The kids love these poems and songs, and they are easily made into fun Promethean sorting activities. 

Here is one an insect glyph we made from Deanna Jump's unit. 

Here is our pollination experiment from Little Warriors.  The kids and I LOVE this activity.  The student's hands are the bee.  The "bee" lands on the pollen (the Cheetos) and the kids eat the Cheetos.  The bee lands on another flower (bag) to spread the pollen to make more FLOWERS! 

 Can you tell my kiddos loved it? :-)

Students recorded what is step represented on their recording sheet.

This student wrote it bugs him when people are not patient. 

Below are our edible insect models.  Students drew their model and had it checked by a friend.

 What a great week!  Can't wait to share pictures from all of the great things happening this week in our ocean unit!

Growing, Growing, Grown!

My students had a lot of fun with our plant unit this year.  My favorite activity with my students is putting the carnations in the different died water.   Students also enjoyed growing lima bean seeds in bags.  I have done it in soda bottles previous years, but this was fun because each of the students had their own bag.  Even with my not-so-green thumb we were able to grow them!  We recorded our observations on a sheet one of the other teachers I work with found online.  We also read The Sunflower House by Eve Bunting.  We created and labeled sunflowers. 

 

 

 

SURPRISE!!!!!!!

I am officially the luckiest teacher ever!!  I have the best students and parents a teacher could ask for!  This year I was turning the dreaded.....30!  (I know... now it is the dreaded 40 that's coming in 10 years!)  Well we had our spring party on my birthday.  I usually bring cookies for my birthday, but I didn't want to add a cookie birthday treat to all of the goodies the kids would be getting so I splurged and bought donuts.  The kids loved it and sang to me.  SO cute!  LITTLE did I know that I have 18 of the sneakiest kindergarteners out there!  They and their parents had been planning a surprise party all along and not one of them mentioned ANYTHING!  How is that possible?! :-D  They even had signed a card in library!  Well I was super surprised!  They had cupcakes, balloons, streamers, blowers and more!  Each student even gave me a wrapped box of candy! (I have a sweet tooth problem.)  It was definitely a birthday I will never forget.  A HUGE thank you goes out to the fantastic parents that I have in my class.  Enjoy these pictures a parent gave me.  As you will see my kiddos are so stinkin' fun this year. 

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Weather Unit

This year we did a lot of fun things with our weather unit!  Thanks to Pinterest and my genius sister-in-law, who is a middle school teacher up in St. Louis. I also used a lot of FREE, cute stuff from First Grade Parade.   I saw this rain cloud activity on Pinterest last year, and I was finally able to do it with the kiddos.  It worked so well!

I created the recording sheet to go with it.  Click here for the freebie. 

We also put a cup of water in the microwave.  We were able to feel the condensation on the top! 

Check out the other fun activities we did!  

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Happy St. Patrick's Day!

This past Friday we celebrated St. Patrick's Day with a few fun activities!  First of all we had a Leprechaun come to our classroom while we were at recess!  He flipped over chairs, left green foot prints, turned my computer screen background into a rainbow and more!  We also did the cute little activities from The Teacher's Wife.  Check out some pictures here!  Happy St. Patrick's Day!

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Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!

I love Dr. Seuss books!  So this time of year is one of my favorites!  We did a lot of fun activities this year,   and the kids loved them all!  After reading Green Eggs and Ham, we made word family eggs and circled all of the real words.  Our fantastic art teacher was kind enough to lend me this Lorax mustache for pictures which matched our truffula tree writing and door decoration (Thank you, Pinterest!) perfectly!  We also read There's a Wocket in My Pocket and created our own silly rhyming sentence.  We even had green eggs (lime sherbert and whipped cream)! One of our students brought in truffula trees and a Lorax snack of Teddy Grahams and marshmallows for everyone! Enjoy the pictures below!

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