Letter U and Insects

 We decided to crowd in one week of insects before Spring Break and I used all of Deanna Jump's adorable unit.  You can buy one on teacherspayteachers.  You will not be sorry!  We made a schema chart first to determine what we thought we already knew about fireflies. 

We created these fireflies from construction paper.  I had the pieces precut and the kids just rounded the corners and glued together as we went step by step.  It was very time consuming to cut the pieces for 4 insects for 23 students but I love the ending product.

We also made a book because we are entomologists now!  We made a cover, a table of contents and a page about each insect.  This is my chart but each child has his or her own book with the recorded facts.

I learned something new about each insect.  I also have a child that has incredible knowledge about all animals and he told us a lot of facts.  Thanks, Jacob!

 This is the butterfly chart with the information.

 This is our "flock" of butterflies.

Praying Mantis was the most fun to make.

Mrs. Voss made grouchy ladybugs and each child had to make themselves make a grouchy face.  HILARIOUS!!

We made a dragonfly which was the easiest because it was circle glued in an AB pattern! 

  

 We read the book Underwear and Aliens Love Underpants.  The children laugh every time they hear the word underwear.

 We each designed a pair of boxer and hung them in the hall for everyone to see and enjoy!

 This is creation of an underground scene.  I saw this on pinterest and it took me to a website called brilliant beginnings preschool.  They have some really cute things and I will probably use some of it for letter work!

This is a picture of Mrs. Voss's class with a hat like the Cat in the Hat.  They recorded words that are in the "at" family.

 Mrs. Voss' class also enjoyed eating green eggs and ham!

Texas Symbols

 This is one of my favorite books about Texas traditions!  It is a play off of Little Red Riding Hood.  Little Red and her grandma are tough and they become the heroes in the story!

 We looked at these fancy boots and talked about who had some just like these!  Then we decorated a pair of boots to create a picture of us.

 This one has a mustache!  I L.O.V.E it!!!

This one has cute little flowers on her boots.

 This is a poster I have of beautiful Texas wild flowers.  Of course, West Texas does not really look like this!

 We are going to make bluebonnets, our Texas state flower.

Oil is a big product in Texas so we colored a picture of Spindletop and then painted black oil on it.

This is a really cute representation of how big our community grows.  I showed the kids on Google Earth how the Earth looks from outer space.  We kept zooming in until we found the USA and then Texas.  We narrowed it down to Abilene and even saw Ortiz on the screen.  Mrs. Jordan found this idea on pinterest and she shared with us.

Dollar Tree, Literacy Tubs, and TEXAS

 Made a trip to Dollar Tree the Best Teacher Store in the world!  I found these great tongs that I can use in my literacy tubs or math stations!  They can be used to pick things up so that the children are using those pincher muscles and well as their brains!  If they go across the mid line of their body, it is even better!!!

 These will be great in my treasure box.  We are about to study insects and even the girls will like these!

 I got batteries for my bell and my lights that I thought I MUST have way back in August but never got batteries for...until this weekend!

Dust is EVERYWHERE and I know this will help.  The kids love to "help" me dust.  I am going to see how strong the magnets really are by loading them up with posters, papers and whatever else I need hung up!

 These literacy tubs were made by Miss Alkire.  This is one where the child will choose a sight word and then find the letters to make the word.  It is also practice finding the letters and putting them back in the correct slot!

 This tub has lots of stencils to trace so the child can get those writing muscles strong.  They trace as many as will fit on the paper front and back and write the label of each picture.  It is hard to see how well they did on this but they did a good job.

 This is a tub where the child has to sort the cards by the beginning sound and then record the word on a paper in the right catagory.

This is a tub that has rhyming bingo cards and there is also a set of rhyming puzzles.  We decided to use lots of rhyming practice these last two six weeks of school.

 We are going to do a Texas unit for only one week so it will be condensed into mostly facts.  This is a great book with lots of Texas information in it.

We recorded some of the Texas landforms and things that pertain to each part of Texas.  We also talked about how proud Texans were to live here.  I thought they did an awesome job copying this information.  We made a Texas flag today but I sent them home before I got a picture.

policeman and doctor

This is the policeman we made using the tree map.  I am hoping they will be able to begin writing a sentence without help now and then on to paragraphs, reports, short stories, and novels!!  Oh, the dreams I have!

 This is the doctor bag each child created.  This one seems to be missing the q-tip and the tongue depressor! 

And this is the page with the paragraph about a doctor.  I discovered how to make the tree map on the promethean board!  I didn't get a picture this time. :(

 The letter of the week is H and we read this book.  It was so funny about a little boy who got mixed up on his dates and wore crazy hair a week early.  The real problem was that it was picture day!!

 We made our own crazy hair and it really was crazy.  Especially when it was time to go home in 30 mile an hour wind gusts!!

 My wonderful sub, Katy, made this adorable thinking chart about what goes on a hamburger.

 The kids filled out their own order form and then made a burger on a fancy plate!

This is a syllable sort with kid spelling.  They actually spelled the first two words right!  I wanted to sing out loud!!  I love the kid writing on the other words though. It shows they are using their strategies to sound out words.

 One of our sight words this week was No so of course we had to read No, David. 

 We brainstormed about when our moms told us no and this is what we could remember.  It seems most of my moms don't say no!!

We made a class book and the kids did an awesome job of drawing pictures of things that they might be told no to.

Construction Workers and new literacy tubs

 This is the tree map on our construction workers.  We brainstormed ideas and then they copied me as I wrote their ideas.

We used the tree map to create a 4 sentence paragraph about construction workers and then added that to our construction man.  Girls can be construction workers too!

 This is one of the new literacy tubs for this week.  I was so excited to see them do so well.  There are six children at each table and everyone at this table did a great job of creating the CVC words.  They did not want to share the letters to make other words so we have to work on that!

 This one was a great idea but very hard to implement.  The kids had to choose one word with a capital and one word with a period and one word with a picture and no period!  And then one more word!  Whew!  Even the instructions were hard!  I will probably have to sit at this table to help them create a sentence and then write it and illustrate it.

 This tub was matching pictures to a letter card that had the same beginning sound.

This tub matched upper case and lower case because yes after 116 days of school, I still have some children who do not know their letters!