Plants and Insects

We've just finished our study on plants and insects. We began both with a schema chart. (I love doing these because it gives me guidance on what the majority of them already know.)

You see my sensory table became a "garden center" for a few weeks. It is full of insects and a butterfly matching game. The Easter grass was messy though! 

I also hung up a couple different pocket charts. One is mainly for some vocabulary and the other is a word family sorting game. The butterfly cards have staples on them and I used my net from a puzzle I have to "catch" the butterflies. (The net has a magnet on the end.)

Thanks to my co-teacher for bringing me over some goodies for my kiddos to create and eat their own insects.

We planted our own seeds and made our sprout houses. (Free in my TPT store)

These are simply a few seeds of your choice and a paper towel in a zip-lock baggie. Make sure that when you wet the paper towel, you wring it out really well or you'll get too much moisture and moldy seeds. I speak from experience.

We labeled flowers and threw in an Earth Day project too!

Well, this is just a small portion of all the fun activities that we've been doing. Next up...........OCEAN!! Would you like a sample of my new ocean bundle?

Here's an "Add the Room" for you! Hang the cards around the room and your students will need to find the matching ocean animal to write and solve the addition problem on their recording sheet. I hope your kiddos enjoy it! Click on the pic.

Dinosaurs are now extinct

So, I haven't even had a chance to blog about the rest of the dinosaur unit. It really is one of my favorite themes to teach! I'll just walk you through the pictures.

We did one of these anchor charts for t-rex, stegosaurus, triceratops, and velociraptor. I was smart this year and laminated them before writing what we learned on them. 

We did many different dinosaur activities. Here is our schema chart, some of our inferences papers about what was inside our egg we found, a labeled t-rex, and dinosaur story, and some dinosaurs with pattern plates.

We ended our study with the fictional story "If the Dinosaurs Came Back". We studied how the illustrator used only black and white for the backgrounds and used color on the dinosaurs. We tried to copy him.

For math we have been learning about collecting data and using that data to graph the results. This has been so much fun!

Freebie Friday!

First, just a few random things that I love! This is the new bulletin board design made by my co-teacher. I love it!

Also, I wanted to share my new organizational tool for storing all  a few of my zippered bad games and such. I love it! It's so handy to turn and grab an activity to work with my kiddos at my teacher table. As the year moves along, I'll just trade out the bags for some new ones. I used a small curtain rod, the large Command hooks, and medium sized binder rings. (I believe 1").

Now, on to my freebie! We have been doing DINOSAURS this week (which I also love)! Last year I made these for my freebie!

This year I made some cute little sight word dinosaurs that you clip clothespins on to spell the sight word. (They look really cool with their clothespin spikes!) I also made a few small letter sequence dinosaur puzzles. I hope you enjoy and HAPPY FRIDAY!!!

Weather

This week has been all about WEATHER! I really enjoy teaching this theme with Kinders. We began by exploring what meteorologists do. I made this cute little anchor chart.

Thanks to 

for the idea.

I made the weather words chart too!

Thanks to 

for the idea!

We studied the water cycle. 

Thanks to 

for the printables.

We LOVED the water cycle song from "Have Fun Teaching"!

The magic school bus has a good video about the water cycle also.

We studied clouds.

Thanks to Miss DeCarbo's Weather Unit on TPT for the cloud idea.

We studied wind. We tested different objects by first predicting which would move with the air from the fan. My favorite book to read when learning about wind is Vicki Cobb's "I Face the Wind".

Lastly, we studied tornadoes. With us being smack in middle of tornado alley and in tornado season right now, I find it a necessity to discuss tornadoes and how to stay safe. I found this video on youtube and it had their attention the whole time. I found the second video to give a visual of how to take cover.

It really was a fun week, now on to DINOSAURS!!!