How are Pinwheels like windmills? (Wind and Weather)

This week we talked about Violent Weather. We looked at pictures of tornadoes and hurricanes and I read them the books Super Storms by Seymour Simon (really good author for fantastic photographs he takes) and Wicked Weather by Mark Shulman; a book from the Discovery Channel’s Worlds of Weather. We talked about Wind speeds, droughts, dust storms, sandstorms, hail, and violent storms like Hurricanes and Tornadoes and some of the damage in pictures that they have done.

I taught the kids that hurricanes are formed over the oceans and Tornadoes are formed over the flat lands. But both can cause tons of damage. We talked about the Earthquake in Japan and some of the flooding damage caused by the Tsunami and how hurricanes can also cause this same kind of damage with winds causing high waves. We read the Weekly Reader on Tornadoes and Hurricanes.

We looked at lots of really amazing pictures of devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. I told the students how all Hurricanes are given a name. They thought that was funny. They talked about what they would name a hurricane. (LOL) Then we looked at tornado damages over farmhouses and cars that were picked up and moved to other places and lots of smashed in buildings.

Hurricanes are violent storms…

I told them about the tornado that came through Salt Lake City one afternoon while I was teaching and it caused a HUGE loud rumble on our roofs. We were all kind of shook up at the time, but it wasn’t a bad one and not to worry because Utah hardly ever gets them. I think all those Rocky Mountains keep them from forming for the most part. I gave them all a puzzle to cut out and put together in the shapes of the 3 kinds of violent storms. Here’s what they looked like all finished…..

Our Super Storms on the board outside….We added rain poetry on top later….

A fun Fun Weather Game Interactive Link can be found HERE. The site is ETE’s K4 Earth Science.

WIND and WEATHER Cinquain POETRY
I love to do cinquain poems for one of the days of our weather unit. Some years I do it on weather words and kids have their choice of Tornado, Hurricane, Storm, Wind, Hail, Rain, or Snow. Then they follow this pattern; 1 word, 2 words, 3 words, (4 words & 3 words optional) 2 words, 1 word. A link to the directions for a diamante poem is HERE from Teacher Guided Activities. Diamonte poems are longer than Cinquains but both have similar characteristics.

Cinquain Poetry…

Most of the kids end their poem with a synonym of the first word or else just “WEATHER”. Then I type them tall up after school in a diamond shape and cut them out on the paper cutter.

KITE ART
For art the kids paste their finished poems on “kite” shaped butcher paper in pastel rainbow colors to go with Spring. Then we decorate the back with squares of tissue paper “glued” down with a solution of half water half white school glue using the same colors but more vibrant (instead of light purple, deep purple etc.). Then we add a “tail” with crepe paper and small crepe paper bows all down the “tail”.

Here is what the Spring “weather kites” look like. It’s always great to mix writing workshop with art. I’ll put more pictures up as soon as we are all done with everything.

The tails and bows attached were done with rolled crepe paper

SCIENCE – wind instruments
Then we made our own wind instruments to show the direction the wind is blowing. We made pinwheels. A link for the black line is HERE. There is also a set of directions on how to make a pinwheel for first graders on the Jan Brett website. Her website link is HERE. I linked the wind power invention of windmills with this book by Gretchen Woelfle called Katje the Windmill Cat. I showed them some Internet pictures of windmills and how they can give us cheap power. Then we made our own mini windmills called pinwheels.

How to Make a Pinwheel…

Pinwheels on a Pencil! Super Easy!

You could also make windmills out of quart sized milk cartons and windmill brads. This pic is from Little Giraffes website

The kids used markers and made some designs like squiggles, dots, hearts and curly Qs like snails on their brightly colored paper squares. Then they punched little holes in the corners with a hole puncher. Then they cut into each diagonal corner just about an inch from the middle down to the ends. Then they folded each corner over the middle and we used a pin to poke it into a pencil eraser that was old and flat on the top. Or you could use new pencils…but it’s a good way to use up your flattened eraser pencils….uh huh…..

Making a pinwheel from a square of paper, a pencil and a pin…

Then the real fun began. We all went outside right before school let out and ran around facing the wind with them and watching them twirl. It sure was fun! I actually forgot to tell them to look for the wind’s direction, but maybe they did it anyway? Probably not. But the other students who came out when the bell rang thought it was a cool experiment in weather. We did too! Now maybe next time I’ll remember the camera. :O

What are the 4 Kinds of Clouds

To start our weather unit we always start with Clouds. They are the place where it all seems to start! So I teach the kids some of the facts about the types of clouds and what they each look like. My favorite 2 books I used to start this weather unit are;

BOOKS
The Cloud Book by Tomie dePaola
Little Cloud by Eric Carle
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett

They made a movie out of the last one, I haven’t seen it yet
but many of the students had and said they loved it! Now this book is a superb book to springboard lots of brainstorming on a fantastic creative writing story with similar happenings. Since food rains down on the town of Chew-and-Swallow all day every day, who is to say it can’t rain down on our town in some creative way?
SCIENCE
So we make a cloud flap book using 1 whole piece of construction paper cut in half the long way and then folded over each other so that 4 flaps are overlapping about 3 inches each. Just try it and it is pretty easy.
Then we found some clip art for each of the 4 types of clouds and glued them on the flap with the cloud name. A link for some clip art for cloud types is HERE at Super Teacher Worksheets, or just type up your own and do a simple drawing.

Glue each drawing and typed cloud type onto each of the 4 flaps of your flap book. Then kids take rulers and draw lines under each flap. Write a few sentences describing each cloud type. Then glue a piece of cotton ball in the right stretched out shape for each type. Here are our flap books.

WRITING WORKSHOP
Then we read Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. We talk about what vocabulary is in the story. Then we brainstorm on the board all kinds of stuff that could fall from the sky in a “made up” city of our choosing. Then we all do a funny creative writing about a place where “stuff” falls like rain and what could happen to a first grader in that city. They all have the problem, but they have to come up with a solution, a character, and a setting. We write stories and I edit them, then students rewrite on some cute paper with kids in the rain holding umbrellas. I’ll post the finished crazy stories when we are all done.

Some of the kids really wanted to do goofy, silly poems. So we had a fast finisher idea. We brainstormed all kinds of words that rhyme with cloud and rain and made 2 lists. Kids wrote 4 line poetry using rhyming words. Another option is to do a Cinquain poem describing clouds.

MUSIC – .What’s The Weather? Sing this song to percussion instruments sung to the tune of “Clementine”
What’s the weather? What’s the weather? What’s the weather like today? Tell us(child’s name), What’s the weather? What’s the weather like today? Is it sunny? (hold arms above head in a circle] Is it cloudy? [cover eyes with hands] Is it rainy out today?[flutter fingers downward] Is it snowy?[wrap arms around body and shiver] Is it windy? [“blow children over” with a swoop of your arms]What’s the weather like today?

Next we are doing hurricanes and tornadoes. That sure goes along with what is happening outside today! Lots of wet and crazy weather! Button up your overcoat!

St. Patrick’s Day!

Leprechauns and Pots of Gold

Hello, First Graders I’m Lucky I am

I was here and gone as fast as you can

I’m little and tough and so hard to find

so don’t try to catch me just never mind!

I left you some treats In your classroom Sooooooo,

Get busy looking for them, Ready, set, GO!

While my students were at lunch recess, naughty little leprechauns came in and turned over some chairs and made a trail of glitter to my desk. We even saw some green glitter footprints! Did YOU get a visit from a leprechaun today?

Our WEEKLY GRAPH this week was on…..something Irish…..guess what? Of course we graphed our favorite kinds of POTATOES!!. What are yours? We chose from:

French Fries
Mashed Potatoes
Baked Potatoes with butter
Hash Brown Potatoes
Potato Chips

Guess Which one was the Winner?

Writing: Journals- 1. How would you catch a leprechaun? We shared with the class our great ideas. Then we shared our homework….

Leprechaun Traps! We were very inventive!

Mrs. Moss came up with the pots of gold to
“trap” a leprechaun. We only had to design the various “traps”. Then we shared them with the whole school in our school library…..but we took home our pots of gold!

Here was Peter’s trap…very creative “sticky path”

Leprechaun Traps Letter that went home…

Addie’s trap….leprechaun falls through the hole in the “grass” oops!

Emma’s trap….leprechaun climbs up the ladder, slides down the tube! Trapped!

Trace’s trap….climb up the lego ladder, Uh Oh…look out!

Allie entices her leprechaun in with a FREE all you can eat buffet! Too cute!

Then when he gets inside she’s gonna konk him on the head with the cloud covered box! Zowie!

Even though it said Do Not Enter, guess who entered?

Then guess who cut a hole and escaped? Prison Break! Those tricky leprechauns!

Rainbow IDEAS

Mosaic rainbow- Children glue paper squares and cotton ball clouds on to rainbow pattern. Or have kids paint hand prints in all of the colors and in a shape of the rainbow.We also made pots of gold with rainbows attached. Or just cut out white clouds or use a white paper plate folded and add streamers in the 6 colors of the rainbow. Go out and check the wind direction by how your streamers blow.

MATH BINGO

A fun “Lucky” Bingo game I found was at the dltk WEBSITE HERE! I also found some cute art ideas on another Teachers First website. The link is HERE. I made up a bunch of these on light green card stock. If we played the math side of the game I would always say, 6 tens and 3 ones for them to figure out the number. Sometimes I would say it backwards 3 ones and 6 tens. Or I would add ten to a number or subtract 10 from a number and they had to figure it out mentally. The opposite side I did Irish “word bingo”. The kids can do this one again at a center, they will just choose a caller. It’s super fun. They all got into it!

MATH
Another individual and fun math activity is graphing the marshmallow shapes that come in the Lucky Charms cereal. I give each student a little cup of cereal and they graph their shapes on the worksheet. A link to make a copy is HERE. It is from Tooter4kids. I added some math to the page such as add up the horseshoe and heart shapes. Or subtract the least number of shapes you have from the greatest number of shapes. The kids learn the math vocabulary better the more we use it. Are any of your shapes equal in number?

Graphing with Lucky Charms Marshmallow shapes.

Lucky Charms Math ……always fun!

We also made leprechaun wheels with math facts each child wrote down individually. Some students did multiplication facts they want to memorize, others did addition or subtraction facts. My challenge to them was to write down ones they did not already know by heart.

Math facts wheels, some of the kids did Multiplications! Woo Hoo!

SCIENCE
I love to have the kids learn about Roy G. Biv (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet) and the order of the rainbow colors. We look at some glass prisms on the overhead that show rainbows in a cool way. Then we make a rainbow using 1 inch by 10 inch strips of colored construction paper glued together and then glued onto the back of a black pot. We color a tiny leprechaun and I give them some shamrocks. This year I found some cute green blingy/shiny ones from Hobby Lobby, and they glued those down. Then I top the pot with some fake gold coins. Here’s our finished “Pots of Gold” at the ends of the rainbows.

SCIENCE
Make some 3D “Rainbow” glasses. Use cardboard shapes of glasses. I had some I just copied onto card stock. Then give kids some red and blue permanent markers and have them color an “eye” shape that will fit over the glasses out of overhead clear acetate, 1 in blue and 1 in red. Then cut them out and tape them inside the glasses. If you need a tutorial I found one HERE. I’ve bought many 3D books over the years so it’s fun to make these glasses on St. Patrick’s Day. We ran out of time so we’ll have to do them next week.

RAINBOW SCIENCE EXPERIMENT
Another fun science I do is use my beakers and do some “color change” science. A fun experiment is using a bowl of milk and dropping 2 blobs of food coloring into the bowl in 4 different colors. Then take a tiny speck of Dawn dish washing liquid on the end of a toothpick and stick it on the edge of the milk. It should show a fizzy chemical change. Then dot another far corner of the milk. Don’t dot right into the food coloring.
Do it a few more times. You should have about 5 minutes of fizz in the experiment. It’s really cool, easy, and cheap.

This is after about about 5 minutes and a few kids had bumped the bowl…

It will start a chemical reaction that will “fizz” the milk. It’s really a cool rainbow affect. The kids want to go nuts with the toothpick but don’t let them or it ruins the effect. A tiny bit goes a long way and will make the reaction last longer if you stick it in one area of the bowl each minute and then watch and wait.

St. Patrick’s Day Activities

LEPRECHAUN ART
Another art I do some years is a cute leprechaun face. For beards and the hair I have the kids curl the strips of 1/2 inch construction paper around a marker so it will curl up like a Santa beard. The hat is green, then we add a 1 inch strip of black around for the ribbon and a yellow square for a buckle, and add glitter to it after school. Here is our finished bulletin boards.

We curl orange strips for beard and use orange crimped packaging for hair…

Lucky Leprechaun art….dots are stickers…

March bulletin board…. Type up some poems or songs to go on the back…

Gotta love a leprechaun with a rainbow pot of gold…..the more glitter the better!

Handprint painting for the Leprechaun parent cards…

Look Mom! Here’s our hands! (prints that is…)

MUSIC
A fun song we sing is L U C K Y and it is sung just like the B I N G O Song and tune. I know a chap with a fuzzy beard and LUCKY is his name-O. (spell) Lucky, Lucky, Lucky and Lucky is his name-O. He hides his gold at the rainbow’s end and Lucky is his name-O. Lucky Lucky, Lucky and Lucky is his name-O.
This would go great typed up on the back of our giant art leprechauns. I like to do art with poetry and sing or read it for shared reading time. Happy St. Patties Day to you from me!

My grand daughters in their “Lucky” shirts

Leprechaun Music and P.E. Games

We did St. Patrick’s Day for 2 days this year. We spent the first day doing language arts and math activities. the 2nd day we did Science, P.E. and a fun Word Bingo game. Here are the P.E. games we’ve done this whole week and some silly songs. This would go great typed up on the back of our math facts wheels we did for math. Too bad I didn’t think of it till now. 😀

I found a cute teacher blog idea with a baggie of colored licorice and some gold coins for a cute leprechaun treat and the label toppers can be found in this LINK here and HERE at the It is what it is blog. I loved it….so cute!

Leprechaun poems on our calendar wall…

Emma’s workin on her math facts wheel…

P.E. Games
I’m in charge of P.E. for this month in the first grade so we will do a few fun games in the gym. One is called Hide the Shamrock. Cut out one shamrock shape. Hide it in the room. Have a chair in the center of the room. The children should look for the shamrock, then the first child to find the shamrock sits in the chair. The child in the chair then goes to get the shamrock, the other children hide their eyes and the child hides the shamrock, and the process is restarted.

More St. Patrick’s Day Games

Another fun game is called Lucky Charms. It is played like “Fruit Basket”. Have each student sit in a chair in a circle. Give each child a name 1. Horseshoes, Clovers, Hearts, Diamonds, Moons. Then have 1 child in the center call out one of the 5 shapes. All those kids that are that 1 shape have to switch places. The student in the middle goes to find one of the chairs. So there is 1 less chair and one will be the odd man out. They do the 2nd round by standing in the middle and calling out a new shape. If you call out Lucky Charms, all the kids change places. That’s super fun. Only rule is you MUST move to a new chair you can’t stay put.

Matt’s writing his Happy St. Patrick’s Day letter….

Song is sung to the tune of “I’m a Little Teapot”

A third game is 4 Corners. Get 2 of the Tropicana 1/2 gallons of orange juice and use them up and rinse them out. Cut each of them off to look like the bottom is a square. Then slit the sides a little and push both bottoms together to make a cool looking cube. It will make a very sturdy DICE.

Fun St. Patrick’s Day Games…

Cover each of the 6 sides with green construction paper. Or use the colors of the rainbow; red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. Then I find a clip art of the Lucky Charms symbols;purple horseshoe, pink heart, orange star, yellow moons, green clovers, red hearts. Then tape them up to the sides real good with book tape. It will look kind of laminated.

Leprechaun game is laminated with lots of book tape….

The game is played just like 4 corners only I have the middle of the room be the 5th corner and the stage at school is the 6th corner (since the dice have 6 sides). I call out “Choose your corner!” and they go to one of the places and each is marked with a paper having corresponding picture to the dice side. One corner is purple diamond, one corner is pink heart, yellow moon, green horseshoe, etc. Then I roll the big dice. It is fun to watch it roll around before it stops. The picture showing on top is the group that is OUT! They take their places on the circle in the middle of the room and watch the action. It’s a really fun game.

My daughter made this wonderful rainbow cake for her daughter’s birthday.

Isn’t it an amazing Rainbow cake? I had to include it…She is so amazing!

Here’s my little Granddaughter Megan with her Birthday cake! So cute!

I hope you enjoyed our St. Patrick’s Day activities! Happy St. Patrick’s Day! I hope you all find the pot of gold at the end of your rainbows. Or just get a cool rainbow birthday cake this year. : ()
Pattie

St. Patrick’s Day Writing Ideas

I like to have my students make a card for somebody they love for almost every holiday. Daily writing practice is so imporant and doing it in a real world way makes it meaningful writing practice for the kids too!

A fun link for coloring pages you can use for the front of parent greeting cards is HERE at Educational Co. It always has some fun coloring pages or if you need black and white clip art and it’s always FREE! Gotta love that! This year I found a package of St. Patrick’s Day stickers at the dollar store. I decided to try a “Leprechaun Hand Print” that turned out cute. Here are our finished St. Patties Day cards.

Kids love choosing their own stationery…

Then I give each student some writing stationery. The kids do their own “sloppy copy” and I edit, then we rewrite our final copies.

Here are the finished handprint cards. Aren’t they super cute? Kids added their own stickers. I got a HUGE package from the dollar store, what a great find!

I’ve collected cute stationery for every holiday.

St. Patrick’s Day Language Arts Activities

Some fun COLOR SONGS can be found at this cute link HERE. Just scroll down to the bottom of the page. I’ve also had the kids do color books at the first of the year to learn their color words. I just have them write a color word a day and write as many things as they can think of that are found in that color.

They came up with cute letters to parents….

I found a really cute leprechaun poem on this website that is printable. The link is HERE. It’s on the First Grade Alacarte blog. It’s got lots of cute stuff.

SCIENCE with ART
I love to have the kids learn about ROY G. BIV (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet) and the order of the rainbow colors. A cute link for some other Roy G. Biv Stuff is We look at some glass prisms on the overhead that show rainbows in a cool way. Then we make a rainbow in a pot!

Here’s our finished “Pots of Gold” at the ends of the rainbows.

Using 1 inch by 10 inch strips of 6 colors of colored construction paper glued together and then glued onto the back of a black pot. We color a tiny leprechaun and I give them some green “blingy” shamrocks. This year I found some cute green shiny ones from Hobby Lobby. Then I top the pot with some fake gold coins topped with glitter of course! Then we wrote some Leprechaun Similes:

Leprechauns are as ____ as a _______ and as ______ as a _______. If I caught one I would __________ and wish for a __________________. The kids sure wished for some fantastic things! These Language Arts Activities are always fun and they turn out so dang pretty!

5 Little Speckled Frogs

This week we learned about Amphibians. We had done research reports on mammals, birds, reptiles and ocean animals. But when it came time to do amphibians, we had run out of time and had to move on to our other units. So we did a quick day of amphibians. The kids really wanted to and kept reminding me about it every week when we went to the library. “Should we get amphibian books Mrs. Moss?” No, let’s just do a few fun activities and call it Frog Day!

SCIENCE
I started the mini unit by reading Fantastic Frogs below. Then I showed pictures from a giant hardback beautiful book I recently bought called Fabulous Frogs by Sue Unstead. It has incredible photography of all kinds of colorful tree frogs of every variety in the rain forest. There are interesting captions on each photo. A great website that has a compare/contrast of frogs and toads is HERE at the Virtual Vine. It is very bright and colorful too!

Frog Books for First Graders

Books in our unit…..I always like to mix fiction with non fiction in text sets.
Frog and Toad are Friends by Arnold Lobel
Frog on a Log by Phil Roxbee Cox
Froggy Learns to Swim by Jonathan London
Flashy, Fantastic, Rain Forest Frogs by Dorothy Hinshaw
Fantastic Frogs by Fay Robinson
Fabulous Frogs by Sue Unstead
That Toad is Mine by Barbara Shook Hazen A link for a reader’s theatre of the book is HERE

Frog Art Project

ART and POETRY:
Cut out the frog shapes and color the circles spots with Crayola oil pastels to get some of those rain forest, deep, colorful hues. Glue on wiggly eyes and a stick on back. We then cut a 1/4 inch strip of red paper and forked the ends like a tongue. I didn’t even know frogs had forked tongues! Then we curled them around a pencil and glued them on the mouth. On every puppet we make we attach a poem or song to the back and use it as a shared reading or shared song. I found the book 5 little speckled frogs with the song lyrics and typed that up to attach to the back of the frogs. Then I made up 5 little speckled frogs out of light and dark green felt. I used black sharpie marker for the “speckles” and left a little finger opening so kids could put them on fingers to act out the song.

Class Frogs!

I also have several cool bags of tiny rain forest frogs to use for counters or just to look at under the mini magnifying glasses. Kids love to have a stack of cool non fiction books with pictures and the viewers with frogs just in a tote tray at a center for viewing and reading. It helps that I also have aquatic frogs as class pets. We have three frogs; 2 boys that fight over the 1 girl. One male actually bit off the hand of the other male. I told them it’s a dog eat dog world in the animal kingdom. Even FROGGIES fight on the playground of life! Eek!

Frog Finger Puppets!

MUSIC: Sing the song Frog on a Log or 5 Little Speckled Frogs acting out the frogs “jumped into the pool” and use percussion instruments with students as you sing the song whole class. Copy off the lyrics on to an overhead or a poster board to sing along. Or type up individual copies of the song to glue on a puppet.

Sing the song with percussion instruments. The UTUBE song with words link is HERE. The link for the lyrics is HERE. A coloring page frog printable can be found at this link HERE. I just copied off the frog of my choice onto green construction paper and kids colored it using the Crayola oil pastels. They work fantastic!

Five Little Speckled Frogs Song

Frog Jokes

Q: What happens if a frog parks in a bus stop?
A: He gets toad away!

Q: Why are frogs always happy?
A: Because they eat whatever bugs them.

Q: What happens when two frogs catch the same fly?
A: They get tongue-tied!

Q: What do you get when you cross a pig with a frog?
A: A ham-phibian!

Q: What kind of frog lives in a tree house?
A: A tree frog!

SCIENCE and WRITING:
Frog Fact non-fiction books are the best way to start little mini reports. List the frog facts on a giant green butcher paper frog you cut out before school. As kids hear a fact from the book have them show a thumbs up. When the page is done write 1 fact from a child with quotation marks on it. “Frogs are amphibians, “said Tommy. Not only will they love seeing their name in print, they will learn how to do “66 and 99 the talking marks. All my students can do them.

Here’s an old one I had tucked away…..no quote marks on this one…sorry!

Frog Fiction Books…

SCIENCE
Then watch a video of the frog life cycle. Read the 2 books of non fiction. Then have the students make individual Frog life cycles. A free printable link from teacher vision is HERE. Or another one with more science terms is HERE. Add one more page in the life cycle book for “froggy facts” in the same shape as the life cycles and add some writing lines to it. Kids will remember cool frog facts that way. Whatever you do, keep a copy for next year’s class!

Frog Life Cycle Book

Frog art projects…

VOCABULARY
Make a list of the vocabulary words and have kids come up with definitions to go in a pocket chart for a center. Kids can mix up the words with the word strip definitions and put them back in the correct order again. My students do this after lunch a couple of times a week and they all get 100% on vocabulary tests we add to the spelling test each week. I usually give them 4 to 5 vocabulary words a week relating to the science or social studies for the week.

Frog poems Frog facts

Frog Puppets!

MATH: Read the story Frog and Toad are Friends. Do a button activity with the students where they will figure out which button Frog lost. Give each table a zip lock bag with these buttons inside. One white, one 2 holed, one round, one large. The lesson plan link isfound HERE. It is on the Illuminations website. My students always love it. A website on frogs is HERE. It is called frogland.

Then give each table a cup of buttons and a bulls eye board. They are to follow your directions as you read them. (a bulls eye poster is just 5 concentric rings each smaller than the one surrounding it). A bullseye board link and lesson plan is HERE. I tell them to sort all the white, round buttons and place on 2nd ring. Colored buttons stay on the outside ring. Then out of those move any 2 holed white buttons to the 3rd ring. Then move any 4 holed white buttons to the 4th ring. 5th ring will be the smallest button from the 4th ring. The kids enjoy sorting AND looking for attributes.

Another fun one from this site is “Bears in a Cave” only I use plastic “frogs” I ordered that come on logs of 10, and I use them with cups which become the” froggy forts” Kids can learn missing addend really well this way. The link to the frogs math game is HERE. They are from Lakeshore Learning.

Frog poems frog facts

Then do a Venn Diagram activity using the buttons. Pass out cards to each table that say 2 holed, red, or shank, white, or blue, 4 holed, or textured, black etc. A wonderful link to the lesson plans and blackline masters to these games is HERE. It’s from UEN website. Have kids figure out what goes in the middle if the 2 descriptors for buttons go on either side of the Venn. This is a great activity for emphasizing logic in math through Attributes. Kids love sorting your buttons too. In the past I’ve had kids wear and bring donations of buttons in and we count them in groups of 10 each day. That’s a great way to get a good button collection too.

MATH: Another activity to do is make frog flip overs. They are fun for the kids to make and use to memorize their math facts. HERE is a tutorial on making Frog addition flip overs. It’s a very cool project for addition practice.

Frog stick puppets (on a straw)

Here are our finished frogs. Aren’t they…. ribit ribit…..slurp…..so cute?

Frog Life Cycles

SCIENCE and WRITING:
Frog Fact non-fiction books are the best way to start little mini reports. List the frog facts on a giant green butcher paper frog you cut out before school. As kids hear a fact from the book have them show a thumbs up. When the page is done write 1 fact from a child with quotation marks on it “said Tommy. Not only will they love seeing their name in print, they will learn how to do “66 and 99 the talking marks. All my students can do them.

Frog Fiction Books…great to add to non fiction work…

SCIENCE LIFE CYCLES
Then watch a video of the frog life cycle. Read the 2 books of non fiction. Then have the students make individual life cycles. A free printable link from teacher vision is HERE. Or another one with more science terms is HERE. Add one more page in the life cycle book for “froggy facts” in the same shape and add lines to it for writing. Whatever you do, keep a copy for next year’s class! Link HERE at infovisual for an animation of a frog’s life cycle.

Frog Life Cycle Book

Frog art projects…

Frog poems Frog facts

A fun Frog and Toad game that a fellow blogger came up with can be found HERE at First Grade a la Carte Blog. Another fun math game with theme of frogs can be found at

Finished Art Project…..Frog Puppets!

Frog poems frog facts

Roy G. Biv Rainbow Science

I introduce a weather unit around the time of St. Patrick’s Day so we can do some rainbow science activities along with learning about the water cycle, wind, rain, and clouds too. Here is a good utube video to introduce kids to the spectrum.

Rainbow IDEAS

Mosaic rainbow- Children glue paper squares on to rainbow pattern. Then add some cotton ball clouds to the top. Or have kids paint hand prints in all of the colors and in a shape of the rainbow for a giant classroom rainbow.

We also made pots of gold with rainbows attached made with just 1 inch x 10 inch strips of the 6 colors. We put puts of gold (black pots with yellow colored coins….see picture below)

Or just cut out white paper clouds (picture below) and add streamers in the 6 colors of the rainbow (I combine indigo and violet into one color of purple). Go out and check the wind direction by how your streamers blow.

WRITING
Every year during our rainbow sciene and St. Patricks Day activities we write about “A Person I Treasure” and it goes on some paper I found with a treasure chest on the top. We add sequins and little gems and metallic mosaic paper tiles to the top. And the rainbow art goes to the side of our writing on a cute bulletin board. The kids write about pets, parents, grandparents and siblings and best friends. It is a touching bulletin board.

Graphing with Lucky Charms Marshmallow shapes.

Lucky Charms Math ……always fun!

RAINBOW SCIENCE
I love to have the kids learn about Roy G. Biv (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet) and the order of the rainbow colors. We look at some glass prisms on the overhead that show rainbows in a cool way.
Make some 3D “Rainbow” glasses. Use cardboard shapes of glasses. I had some I just copied onto card stock. Then give kids some red and blue permanent markers and have them color an “eye” shape that will fit over the glasses out of overhead clear acetate, 1 in blue and 1 in red. Then cut them out and tape them inside the glasses. If you need a tutorial I found one HERE. I’ve bought many 3D books over the years so it’s fun to make these glasses.

This is after about about 5 minutes and a few kids had bumped the bowl…

See my post on hurricanes and tornadoes and another post on clouds.

Mardi Gras Day…Make a King Cake

IT’S MARCH 8TH HAPPY MARDI GRAS EVERYBODY!

Mardi Gras is a day of carnival. Mardi Gras means “Fat Tuesday” in french. The name “Fat Tuesday” comes from the ancient custom of parading a fattened ox through the streets on the day before Lent. Mardi Gras is celebrated in many places around the world, including: New Orleans, Louisiana, USA; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, (where it is called Carnaval); Nice, France; and others. The traditional New Orleans Mardi Gras colors are purple, green and gold.

Happy Mardi Gras!

We are starting our study of mapping and the 7 continents and 4 oceans of the world. As part of this study we look at some areas of the 4 corners of the United States. I like to teach the kids something about each continent, but something about the North, South, East and West of our country too. Nothing speaks about the South like Louisiana. And one of their holidays they are most known for is Mardi Gras.

Now I think it is a crazy New Orleans holiday too, but I think it is fun to use it as a cultural springboard to discuss the new term “King Cake” and craft a mask and maybe write a story about a boy or girl who found the little plastic baby inside their own King Cake.

King Cake….who’s gonna find the baby inside?

In our study of the South, we will mention that Louisiana is where Hurricane Katrina happened in 2006. And how lots of Americans went to help out where they were needed when people had their homes flooded. We will talk about what a hurricane is and compared and contrasted Tornados versus Huricanes in bad weather. (Since we are just starting our weather unit in Science!) Steve Spangler the Science Guy has a cool 2 liter bottle Tornado Tube demo. It is on his website. The link is Right HERE.

Cute story about a Hurricane…

Tornado lessons are fun with visual aids….

http://www.prometheanplanet.com/en/Resources/Item/35975/ This website has a great math powerpoint using terms from Mardi Gras for standard measurement questions. We have computer too so it will be fun to get on there and play it. I like that kids in my class will become exposed to all thestandard units of measurement even though it is not required core anymore.

We will make our own 12 inch “kings feet” to go with the book I read called “How Big is a Foot” about a king who needs to figure out now to measure a new bed for his wife and they use his “feet” as a measurement tool. We then add them together to make 3 feet into a yard. Then we will hang the decorated “feet” and “yards” from strings in the ceiling for our Mardi Gras decorations. The KING’S FEET story kind of goes along with the “King Cake” too. There’s a method to my madness….hehe….

Elementary grade Measurement Lessons are easy with this book….

King’s Cake

Here’s a picture of our “feet” and “yards” all decorated up and hanging from the ceiling. We did this activity in table groups of 3. It was lots of fun and I think it helps them learn the vocabulary for standard units of measurement….inches, feet, yards…..

We used these 12 foam “feet” I bought at a Teacher Math Seminar a few years back…..

They traced them, used rulers to put 12 inches on each one….

We added toes to each one of course…..

Then we got in groups of 3 and glued our 3 feet to a “yardstick” made from paper strips.

Here’s our “King’s Feet” and Yardsticks all hangin around the room….

This is a King Cake….ours were invidividual cinnamon rolls from Rhodes Rolls
frosted and sugared with the baby bear hidden inside..

The student with the baby inside their king cake gets an extra set of Mardi Gras beads. I just used a baby bear pick I had leftover from a baby shower I hosted last year. So funny to see the winner scream when they got the baby!

Little King Cakes…. This was before I baked them…then we ate them before I took a pic

Here are our yummy “little” King Cakes. I used Rhodes frozen cinnamon rolls and let them rise. They were perfectly big for all the kids to eat. I hid a little “baby bear” pick inside one of them for the “mardi gras baby”. It was a lot of fun. When they were cooled I frosted them with icing and green sugar.

Mini “KING CAKES” for First Graders..I only had green sugar….mmmmmm!

J found the little baby bear inside his cinnamon roll. So he got the extra cinnamon roll and a “Celebrate” crown to wear all day. It was a fun snack for the day.

After our daily seatwork the kids did masks instead of centers

They turned out very festive looking!

And here are our masks……don’t they look cool? I passed out feathers, sequins and cardboard metallic mosaic tiles for the masks. The kids colored them with markers, cut them out and cut out the eye holes, and then just did their own thing for a center. For the noisemakers I put macaroni into paper plates and stapled them on the back of this circular design I made on cardstock and had copied. The masks and noisemakers turned out pretty festive.

I did my own mask design but I found a free design from Skiptomylou.org and the link is HERE She did a pretty cute one that is downloadable and printable. Just embellish however you want to for “bling”. We used feathers, pom poms, sequins, etc.

Noisemakers out of paper plates and macaroni stapled to the back of the jester.

And the “feet” and “yards” hanging all over go right along with our measurement unit we are doing in math.
I think when kids do an art activity and they’ve read a story about “feet” and “yards” they will have that unit of measurement pretty much in memory. Art, music and stories, are all such good ways to internalize vocabulary you want the students to remember. Happy Mardi Gras!

Hooray for Dr. Seuss Day!

This free scrapbooking design customized with Smilebox

HOORAY FOR DR. SEUSS DAY!

Every time I read the book One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, it brings me back. I am back 20 years ago sitting with my kids around me reading a bedtime story. I still remember the funny little rhymes we all laughed to because they still make me giggle, and I so enjoy the giggles I get from the first graders. Dr. Seuss, you were a master author and illustrator. The books are still timeless fun. I remember calling my daughter a Zizzer, Zazzer Zuzz when she was 3 years old. The name stuck for quite a few years. Who didn’t love the Foot Book, or Green Eggs and Ham, or Sneetches?

My cute class with their hats and “Cat” rhymes…

Well, today was Dr. Seuss’s birthday and we celebrate every year in school in a national Read Across America day. We wore our jammies, brought pillows and Dr. Seuss books of every kind. I think our class had about 25 different books and several book collections. The kids enjoyed reading to each other and laughing at the funny pictures.

One of MY favorite Dr. Seuss Books!

Sunrise “Characters” at Dr. Seuss Night!

We made our hats, did a cool crossword puzzle and a maze and then had some contests to see who could write the most “at” words to rhyme with Cat in the Hat. Then we wrote our own “at” rhyming poems. We tried to be as silly as possible. They turned out pretty funny. Here are a few of them….

Cute and Wacky Rhymes….

I made the Giant Cat….my contribution…

Then we voted for our favorite Dr. Seuss book in our weekly graph.

The Top 5 Dr. Seuss Books were voted on…Winner was….?

I try to get the kids to graph something every week….It’s easy!

I think the winner was The Cat in the Hat! I thought Green Eggs and Ham might be the winner, but NO! And, by the way, guess what we had for lunch……yeah….you guessed it…..green eggs……..and ham! EW!
Thanks cafeteria ladies who make it fun to go to lunch! But….. they really didn’t look that appetizing, the kids liked them……I actually forgot my lunch today but luckily I had lunch choice number 2. : D

We actually had Green Eggs! Mmmmmmm?

We read this in a choral reading…Green Eggs and Ham….VERY NOISY!

Then we came back from lunch and did a funny choral reading on Green Eggs and Ham. Each table had to read a line going around the room over and over and they started to outdo each other in the expression department. It got quite loud and funny by the end. “I DO NOT LIKE THEM SAM I AM!
I DO NOT LIKE GREEN EGGS AND HAM!

Yum! This Ham and Eggs is better than my waffle!

Lots of Grinchy people everywhere…. at the Dr. Seuss School Celebration!

Dr. Seuss Cake…yummy!

Then tonight our school had a party. There were Grinches, Sneetches, Thing 1 and 2 and the Cat in the Hat. We had giant slides and jumping rooms and face painting and fun confetti looking cake. The kids could write on murals about “The Places They Were Going….” or fish at the Red Fish, Blue Fish Pond, or go get a glow in the dark bracelet or exchange a used book for another one.

Thing 1 and Thing 2…..I wonder if they are related?

There were lots of slides and fun in the school gym….

Mrs. Neilsen had to cut LOTS OF CAKE! She’s one
of the nicest parents at Sunrise…

This was a colorful mural all down the wall with kids drawing favorite places….

They also got to go to an Oobleck booth and pick up some green, slimy OOBLECK! Fun. The recipe is HERE.To make your own mix 2 cups of cornstarch and 1 cup water in a bowl. If you want to color your oobleck like the PTA ladies did, add a few drops of food coloring to the water before adding to the cornstarch. Then mix the water and cornstarch…it’s hard for a few minutes but keep adding little bits of water till it’s smoother consistency and a little runny. Then of course you’ll have to read the book about Oobleck!

Oobleck is a fun kids activity too…..

This was my booth, I’m around the corner painting stars on faces….

Dr. Seuss Activites for kids…..Face Painting is fun!

Cutest Cat in the Hat I saw…..

Lots of fun games with “The Cat in the Hat”

Fun Seussical Musicals…..

It was a great day. I was in the face painting booth. I loved painting little “Sneech” stars on all these cute little faces. One little 2 year old came up to me and lifted up her shirt wanting a sneetch star on her tummy, too cute. Her mommy must have read her the Sneetches. She knew the story. Then one of the dads came up dressed as a Sneetch! Too Funny! I wonder if I could ever get MY husband to wear yellow tights? hmmm….
NOT in a million years……: D

Fishing Booth….one fish…two fish….or Face Painting Sneetch Stars….

Going fishing at the fishing pond…One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish….

It’s amazing that one man’s (Dr. Seuss) creativity and imagination can bring about MAGICAL fun so many, many years later and for ALL AGES! . He had over 40 books published in his lifetime. He is still my very favorite children’s author. Thanks Theodore, for all the good fun that is funny.