Auction Project

We finally finished our class auction project this weekend! I've been planning on doing this project ever since I saw it on Pinterest, and it is so cool to see the results!  My brother welded the frame for us and my dad helped sand blast it, paint it, and he made the firebox for the middle.  The kids decorated the tiles to go around the outside.  The tiles are my favorite part, they are so colorful and show their personalities. We will attach the tiles using fire mortar and grout so it will last through the heat and the rain.

Earth Day

We were lucky to have great weather on Earth Day! The kids planted flowers in our garden and then learned what plants need to survive.  It was a quick and fun way to celebrate!

Bare Books

During a Nellie Edge workshop, we learned about these awesome blank books for students to publish their writing in.  The pages are really thick like a board book.  They are called Bare Books and can be found here. The students write their stories and draw pictures in these books using Sharpies. They are so fun! The kids take their writing so seriously when they know it's going to turn into an actual book.  It's helping them understand the importance of the editing process. We started them this week, here's a couple covers that are done so far.

Kinetic Sand

Our FaceTime buddies in Oregon recommended this awesome stuff called Kinetic Sand.  It's like the consistency of perfectly wet sand, so it holds its shape really well.  Another bonus is that it falls off hands and clothes pretty easily! Here are some of the activities we've been doing with it:

free play for a sensory station

writing sight words in it with our fingers

forming some of the shapes we've been learning in math

showing a continuous path (goes with our snap circuit project)

making mazes

Post It Note Questioning

We are about to have another FaceTime call with our friends in Oregon.  We both have the same Reading Street curriculum, which means we get access to all the same amazing big books.  Mrs. Hang's class picked out this panda book for us to discuss together.  The students are coming up with questions to interview each other with using FaceTime.  This will be their first experience being more one-on-one with another student and I think it will be really fun!

Vowel Sounds

This class book idea comes from my teaching partner Cathy.  She makes a different class book for every vowel sound.  The front of the page is a short a sound and the back of it is the long a sound.  The song goes to the tune of Frere Jacques and I believe it comes from Dr. Jean.

A makes 2 sounds, A makes 2 sounds

A and A

A and A

A as in __________

A as in __________

A and A

A and A

Who Took The Apples?

I got the idea for this class book from Deanna Jump's apple and farm unit here. This is one of our favorites, they still read it over and over!

Pete the Cat Class Book

This was the first class book that we made together.  It's based off Brown Bear, Brown Bear Who Do You See? Making this book made it really easy for us to learn our names quickly!

Lucy Calkins Anchor Charts

I have been using the Lucy Calkins writing curriculum this year and I LOVE it.  It's been one of my favorite parts of the day because the kids are so engaged and they truly seem to love writing.  I am going to start sharing some of the anchor charts I've made using points from her book.  They mostly include strategies and checklists for students to use during writing workshop.

This strategy is about retelling and re-reading stories.  We talk about how one side of the pencil is for writing and the eraser side is for retelling and re-reading. 

Paleontologist Bobble Heads

Don't these look like bobble heads? I love the big heads on the small bodies, so cute! We made ourselves into paleontologists to display our journals.  If you lift away the jacket flaps, the book is underneath.  They look so cute hanging in the hallway!

Paleontologist Journals

Today we practiced being a paleontologist by digging chocolate chips out of cookies! Students could use paper clips and paint brushes to carefully take the chips out of the cookies.  Their job was to count how many chocolate chips were in their cookies.  After we were all done, we graphed our results and talked about the data.  Then we wrote about it and made a scientific drawing of our tools in our paleontology journals.

 

Coming Soon...

The wrap up of our Deanna Jump dinosaur unit!

FaceTime-Dinosaur Bones

We have a student on vacation on the east coast right now and I heard that they would be visiting the Natural History Museum in New York on their trip.  Luckily the timing worked out perfectly for us to FaceTime with them and see the bones through the webcam.  So cool!

Groundhog's Day

We finally got around to replacing our groundhogs on the wall. I was sad to see them go, they were so cute! The idea came from here on Jessica Williamson's blog.  We did lots of gr- words, did a couple surveys, compared spring and winter and make this cute groundhog to display our work on.