Penny Science and President's Writing

This past week we learned  about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Since their pictures are on money, we had fun doing a couple of science experiments with pennies.

First, we used droppers to see how many drops of water our pennies would hold.  Students made their predictions as to how many drops of water their penny would hold and then they tested their hypothesis.

Most of them found out that their predictions were too small.

Then we did an experiment to see what would clean our pennies the best:  water, water and soap, vinegar and salt, or lemon and salt.

I gave each student 4 pennies, 4 cups and 4 sticky notes.  They labeled the sticky note with the liquid that was in it and placed it beside each cup.  

We patiently waited 5 minutes. Students took their pennies out and dried them and recorded their results.

They then had to tell what they learned.

We also did some writing about Washington and Lincoln:

Happy Teaching!

Valentine Science

I don't know about you, but I was EXHAUSTED when I left school yesterday.  Party days wear. me. out.

We did manage to get in a few spots of learning despite all the chaos.  

We did an experiment using the scientific method.  And best of all, it involved candy hearts and chocolate kisses!  

I got this idea and all the sheets for the activity from Primary Paradise's Packet Valentine's Day Candy Science Experiment.  It was well worth the purchase and I recommend you checking it out!

We started with this question -
Do valentine candies dissolve in hot or cold water?

Then the students made their hypothesis.  

(They will melt in hot and freeze in cold.)

Here is a picture of the candy in cold water:

Here is a picture of the candy in hot water: 

BrainpopJr. has a great video on the Scientific Method 

If you are interested in making a poster for the steps of the scientific method, you can get that for free from an old post of mine.  Just click on the picture below.

And y'all, I got the sweetest Valentine present -

You may not can tell from the picture, but the cellophane wrapper was missing.

and when I opened the lid, this is what I found:

PRICELESS!!!!

Happy Teaching!!!!!

Valentine Centers and a Couple of Freebies

Our Valentine centers are up and running and I thought I would share a few pictures of the centers we are working on this week.

Finding the Missing Part/Fact Families:

Students used Valentine erasers as manipulatives to find the missing part and then wrote the corresponding fact families.

Valentine Sentence Scramble:

You can grab this activity on one of my old blog posts:

Valentine Sentence Scramble

Suffixed -ed and -ing:

In this center, the students roll the cube to see if they need to add suffix -ed or -ing to a base word.  Then they had to use their word in a sentence.  You can grab a copy of this activity HERE.

Counting Dimes and Pennies:

I put plastic dimes and pennies in little heart containers.  The students simply count the money and record their answer.  I think I got this recording sheet from Sheree Peterson's blog but I couldn't find the link on her blog.  If I do, I will add the link later.

 ipads:

At this center, my firsties were using Splash Math.

I made this little noun and verb sort for review this week.

I gave each student a piece of manilla paper.  They wrote "Nouns" on the left and "Verbs" on the right.  They then cut out the pictures and glued them under "noun" or "verb."  After getting the pictures glued, they then wrote the words on their recording sheet.  You can grab a copy by clicking on either picture below.

The cute graphics are from My Cute Graphics.

Happy Teaching!

Valentine Holders

 

I got our Valentine Card Holders  made and they are on the wall waiting for those sweet Valentine cards to be placed inside.

Here are the directions if you want to make these:

To make big holders, I used two 12x18 sheets of construction paper (2 colors) and folded it in half and made a crease where the middle would be (see my finger)

Then I opened it up and made two folds (see picture below)

Take the pink at the top and fold it over 

Then fold the corners over and tape to the back.

Then draw lines to make a heart shape at the top 

(see picture below)

Cut out the lines and write names on the holders.

You could have your students decorate these with Valentine stickers or cut out hearts if you wanted to.

Happy Teaching!

  

Groundhog Fun

Friday afternoon, we spent some time learning about Groundhog Day.  We read some books, made predictions on whether the groundhog would see his shadow and graphed those results.  We then made some observations about our graph.  We also did a little groundhog craft and made groundhog cupcakes.  After the students made their cupcakes they had to write a few sentences telling how to make the cupcake.  

One of my firsties declared it to be "The best day EVER!"   

And, of course, that was enough reward for me.  Those are the moments that keep me plugging along looking for fun ways to enrich learning in ways that will be memorable for the littles.

Happy Teaching!