Pumpkins, Witches, and Ghosts, Oh my!

Halloween and Red Ribbon week, aka "survival of the fittest" week, is over.  Can I get an amen?  
The whole week was filled with a whole lot of craziness, and yet, we somehow managed to get in some learning.  I was completely exhausted when I left school Friday and I took a 3 hour nap on Saturday to prove it. 

  We read some nonfiction books about pumpkins and then made this whole group circle map to help us get our ideas flowing for our pumpkin writing. 

We made the little jack-o-lantern craft shown below to display our writing.

 

We also made this life cycle anchor chart that students could refer to throughout the week.

We did a little bubbling boo and popping pumpkin experiment that the kids loved.  I got this idea from Crystal Underwood and you can get get more detailed directions for this activity HERE.

We also weighed and measured mini pumpkins.

The day before Halloween, we read this fun book:

and watched the  "Room on the Broom" Youtube video.

After hearing the book twice, the students were able to do a sequencing activity easily and we attached it to the cute witch craft shown below that I got from April Larremore HERE.

And y'all, we did another writing on Halloween.  If you have taught elementary for very long, then you know how hard it is for kids to focus ON HALLOWEEN. {Can I get another amen?}

 Students had to write three reasons they liked Halloween and then we made the ghost trick or treater to display with our writing.  The ghost came from TLC lessons.  I added the little orange trick or treat bag to the craft that I got from My Cute Graphics.

My team dressed as M&M's for Halloween.

I am really glad Halloween week is over.  Really glad.

 Happy Teaching everyone!

Do Worms Like Light?

We recently did a science investigation to see if worms like light.

We started by graphing our predictions.  

Each student got a paper plate, a worm and a flashlight.  They had to shine the light on the worm taking care not to follow the worm with the light if it began to move. 

 (we had a discussion about this prior to the investigation and we discussed that if the worm moved away from the light and we followed it with the light, then we were not letting the worm make the choice)

Every student's worm moved out of the light so our conclusion was that worms do not like light.

If you would like a copy of the investigation sheet we used to record our observations on, you can grab it at this old blog post.

I want to share a fabulous find I found while on pinterest.  See the tubs that are holding my student's place value blocks in the picture below.     Worth.Every.Penny.

Those little jewels can be found at Dollar Tree.  

Here is the original blog post so you can grab the cute little labels too:

Frogs and Cupcakes

Happy teaching friends!

Busy Week

It has been all kinds of CRAZY in my classroom the past couple of weeks.  We have been watching with wonder the life cycle of our Painted Lady butterflies.

We also started our plant study.

We planted some grass seed and the kids were excited when they started to grow.

We read these books about the parts of plants:

After reading the books, we labeled the parts of a plant and made the flip book that tells what each part of the plant does.

If you want some more plant ideas, 

you can check out some of my old posts:

Plants

Little Botanists

Plant Stuff

We have 25 days of school left.  We can do this!

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!!!!!

Moon Study

"Let's Go to the Moon!" is one of my favorite stories in our reading basil.  There is so much to do with this story and I've included some of the activities we did this week with our story.  

Since identifying and writing questions was one of our skills this week, we wrote "Did you know" questions that had to include a fact about the moon.

We also wrote 5 sentence paragraphs about the moon.  This was a 2 day process.  On day 1, we made our class circle map about the moon and did our prewriting. On day 2, we wrote our final draft copy.

We made a model showing how the moon orbits earth while the earth orbits the sun. 

 

You can grab a copy of the pattern free at Once Upon a First Grade Adventure along with some additional moon ideas.  BTW, Mrs. H's anchor chart is way cuter than mine.

I also added our science TEKS "Objects in the Sky" to our moon study.

Brainpopjr has great videos on the sun and moon.

We also completed the "Day or Night" sort shown below.  The card pictures included objects you might see during the day or night but also includes activities you might do during the day or night.  You will notice that three cards are in the middle.  My students have done enough Venn Diagrams that they placed those cards in the middle because you can do them either day or night.

If you are interested in these cards, you can get them in Sheila Melton's store.  

We, of course, did all the activities included in my Let's Go the Moon unit.  I wish I had gotten pictures of my students working in centers on some of the activities.  Here is a preview of what's in the pack.

On Friday, we tasted real astronaut ice cream that I ordered from HERE

We graphed our results:  

This activity is from Abby's Amazing Astronauts Activities! Pack

I hope you can find one or two things you could add to your moon study.

  Happy Teaching, Friends!