Earth Day Crafts

Since our school was on Spring Vacation on Earth Day, we are celebrating now after we have returned. We made 2 crafts to celebrate taking care of our Earth. Here are some pics of the finished products. The first is an Earth sun catcher, or necklace. The second is a "litterbug" that eats litter to help our Earth. The kids loved both of these crafts, and they turned out pretty cute. Here is the link to the instructions I got from Enchanted Learning.

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/crafts/earthday/litterbug/

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/crafts/earthday/glue/

Target Find

I found some chip and dip trays at the Dollar Spot at Target - but they really cost $2.50/each. Still a great deal for a tool to use to help kids practice sorting. We can sort lots of things with these trays, buttons, beads, beans, crayons, cubes, you name it, if it fits in the tray we can sort it!

Using a Globe to Practice Probability

I use a beach ball globe to practice probability during our map unit. We sit in a circle and toss the beach ball to each other. The "catcher" reports whether their right thumb landed on water or land when they caught the ball. Then I use tally marks on the board to keep track of where our thumbs land the most. Before we begin we made predictions of which would win - land or water. Since we had previously made paper plate Earths that showed 3/4 water and 1/4 land they all guessed that water would win. The kids loved this game, and asked to play it for several days in a row afterward!

Giveaway

Hey teacher friends. Just wanted to share another opportunity with you to win! Head on over to First Grade Fundamentals for your chance to win a $20 gift card to your choice of either Target, Dollar Tree, or Teachers Pay Teachers.

http://firstgradefundamentals.blogspot.com/2011/04/choose-your-own-giveaway.html

Cute, cute litter bugs

Our class will be making Litter Bugs next week when we return to school. If any of my parents are checking in on the blog during vacation we could use as many empty egg cartons as we can get.

Finishing Our Globes

Here are our final products! We followed the Scientific Method and completed our projects to create our very own globes. (Continents not to scale!) We had been taking notes on a sequencing page about the steps of this project, then we edited those notes into formal writing so that others could read what we did to make these globes. This is always a fun project in my class, the kids LOVE it, and the other kids in school want to come and make their own globes too! We displayed our globes at our annual Achievement Fair, so pictures show the final products and our display.

Field Trip Fun

Here are some photos of our class having fun at Graeter's Ice Cream in Dublin, Ohio. We had a great time experiencing goods and services in a real life situation! Thanks to the moms who took time out to join us!

Poetry Pack Giveaway

Hello fellow teachers. I want to post about another giveaway because I really want to win the poetry sets listed in this giveaway. If you haven't checked out the Kindergarten Works blog you should do so, I have gotten many ideas from this teacher already! Head on over and enter to win, then share with me! :)

Wants and Needs Collages

We began this lesson by creating a list together of things that we want and things that we need. When these lists were complete we discussed what the difference between wants and needs is. We decided that a want is something that you would like to have, something that makes you feel happy, or something that helps you have fun. Then we concluded that a need is something that we have to have in order to keep living. To make the lesson more concrete for students we then made a picture collage of magazine pictures. Students were instructed to find pictures of 4 things for each group, needs and wants. In preparation for our field trip we discussed that ice cream is really a want instead of a need. The part of ice cream that we need is the milk, but we do not have to have ice cream. Please excuse the handwriting on our easel, it is not an example of my best!

Field Trip

We will be taking a field trip this Thursday to Graeter's Ice Cream! I am excited to be able to incorporate two of my favorite things: teaching and ice cream! :) This week we are learning about the differences between wants and needs, and goods and services. We will make predictions before we go, then compare them to what we experienced when we return. While we are there we will get to take a tour of the factory to see how they make ice cream. After we eat lunch we will get an ice cream treat. The shop also has a play area, so we can work off some of that energy before we return to school. Can't wait to post pictures of this fun trip!

Day 3: Paper Mache Globes

Our globes have hardened in shape, and now we are painting the water on the "Earth". We had fun, and got a little messy again. Some of us had blue hands, faces, hair, and clothes at the end of this day. We will paint one more coat of blue water, then on Monday we will add on the continents.

Day 1: Making Paper Mache Globes

Today we began our science experiment. We went through the scientific method, using the adorable printable cards from Ladybug Teaching Files. Get your own copy here:

http://ladybugsteacherfiles.blogspot.com/search/label/Science

We researched different websites for directions on how to create a paper mache globe. Our hypothesis was that when we mixed the flour and water it must make some kind of glue to make the newspaper stick to the balloons. Our plan is to finish this experiment by completing one step each day this week, so our final globe product will be ready for showing off on Friday. The pictures above show us working on covering our balloons with the first layer of paper mache. Tomorrow we will complete the second layer. We sure got messy, but we had TONS of fun!