100th day of school

 We read lots of books about 100 days of school and how to count to 100.

 We created these caterpillars by cutting out the circles and gluing them in the correct order (mostly!)

 This is a cute book about how no one would help the little red hen but she shared her pizza anyway.

 We made a pizza and every child added 5 pieces so our pizza would have 100 items on it.  We counted each child by 5's to show how to get to 100.  If one child didn't do his or her job, our pizza would not be complete!

 This is the start of creating a 100 inch snake.  Each table got to design a piece of paper and then while they were at specials, I taped it all together and cut out one very fat snake!!

Octopus and literacy tubs

This is a really cute octopus.  The kids cut out two identical faces and I stapled them together.  I showed them how to curl the legs and they loved that the little guys would stand up!

 This literacy tub holds cards and a sight word game.  The children have to complete the pictures and match the sight words.  It is really just practice for them to use those fingers and make the pincher grasp stronger!

 The kids rolled a nine-sided dice in this tub and colored the space over that number.  It was a race to see which number would get to the top.  This is practice in grasp, self-control in coloring, reading the numbers and taking turns.

 This was a sight word game.  The kids took turns pulling a card out of a bag.  If they could read the word, they got to keep the card.  If someone pulled out a splash card, all the cards went back in the bag.

This last tub was a bingo game.  The kids had to take turns pulling a card and then everyone placing a block on his or her card.

LOOOOK!  They are doing a great job of buddy reading in their 100 day of school shirt!  I love it!!

Space, the final frontier!

We read this book and it had lots of good information about space in it.  We also read Me and My Place in Space and it had some great ideas for letting the kids draw about the planets. It is written by Joan Sweeney.

This is the earth.  It is made for torn blue and green construction paper.  We brainstormed facts and the kids got to choose which two they wanted to copy.

This page shows the phases of the moon.  I gave them 2 circles and we cut one of them and created this page together.  The facts recorded are the names of the phases.

This page is about the sun.  I let the kids finger paint with yellow tempra and then we added some orange to really show how hot the sun appears.  We made a star constellation also but I didn't get a picture.  The kids chose a stencil and traced around it.  Then they drew over the tracing with dark black lines.  I gave them 5 stars that they added anywhere on the lines and finally they colored the whole page black.

We put all the pages together with a cover and a table of contents.  We added ourselves as an astronaut so we could be the main character in the non-fiction book we had created!

This is the schema chart where we recorded what we already knew and then added new facts.  I guess after UFO's were spotted in Abilene Friday night I might have to change the misconception and put aliens back in the facts!!!!

Letter D and literacy tubs for 4th six weeks

 Once a week we become word detectives and we quietly gather words and write them in our handy dandy notebook.  Thanks Kim Adsit for this great idea!

 These are sentences that we cut apart and put back together.  We had to make sure the capital letter was first and the punctuation was at the end.  These are our sight words so the kids really enjoyed being able to be successful at this.

Our new vocabulary word was illustrator and I have enjoyed hearing the kids use the word this week when we "illustrated" all our snow stories!

 We read about animals and how they survive in the winter weather.  Then we sorted our animals into groups using a tree map. 

We read the mitten and then we acted out the story.  The children got under the sheet as we retold the story because it was our pretend mitten!  There was a lot of giggling going on under the sheet and on the rug!

 This tub has 3 sets of numbers.  The kids first sort the sets by colors.  This is good exercise for the fine motor skills.  Then they laid the numbers out in order from 1-24 with partners.  If we were not through, they exchanged colors and did it again.

 This was a little hard and I sat at this table every day.  I would have to tell most of the kids which letter was first and then some of the kids could figure out the word.  Finally, I highlighted the first letter so they would know which one to write first.  My higher kids did awesome and it was fun.  They willl get better if we continue to do this!

 This tub was the book related things and we are using snowman activities.  This table was supposed to make a tower of blocks by reading the number on the snowman and counting that many blocks.  Lots of finger exercise in this one too.

This was matching beginning sounds.  It was self checking but some kids check themselves before putting the clip on!!

Snowmen in Winter

Mrs. Voss' class made ripping rainbows and then hung them in an arc on the lockers.  The kids really did a great job with this and it worked those little finger muscles to help the fine motor skills.

We talked alot about snowmen and winter weather these past two weeks while it was 80 degrees outside!  We made a snowman using donuts, chocolate chips, and candy corn.  Each child made two.

 We read the book, Snow Globe Family and then created a snow globe of what it would look like if we lived in a snow globe.

This is what a snowman looks like after the sun comes out.  These were fun to make.

We watched Brain Pop, Jr. and learned about Dr. King.  We talked about things we wished would happen.  Then we recreated a protrait of Dr. King.  I love these!!

Math Stations BUILD

B-Books about Math.  They are reading in one group and the second group is sorting weather words and coping facts.

U-Using Manipulatives.  The first group is measuring with snowman cards!  Hilarious!  The second group is rolling a die, counting that many "raindrops" and placing them on the umbrella.  The first one to get all the umbrellas full is the winner.

I-Independent Work.  The kids were supposed to roll a die and count out that many snowballs.  They had to share them with the four snowmen and record how many each snowman got.  For example, if they rolled a 16 and shared them, each snowman would get 4 snowballs.  I guess I forgot to take a picture of the puzzles so I will add that next time.

L-Learning and using numbers.  Both of these games include a die.  They have to roll and move that many spaces.

D-Doing Math.  The kids were supposed to put counters on the strips of numbers and when they rolled the dice, they had to move forward or backward to try to collect all the pieces.  I wasn't watching them!  The other game is tic, tac, toe where they have to use their strategy to block the other player.

Since I have 22 kids and I put them in groups of 2, I have 2 extra kids!  So they go to the computer after they do some activity with me.