2014 – Page 3 – Patties Classroom

COWBOY PUPPET SHOWS

I got a few ideas from looking at this website HERE before deciding on COWBOY PUPPET SHOWS!

Our Reading Streets story was called COWBOYS. I had an idea to do some Cowboy Puppet Show Stories to go along with it for writing workshop a few weeks ago.

COWBOY PUPPET SHOWS WERE REALLY FUN TO WATCH!

Here are the finished products we shared with each other. One person read at the microphone and their friend used their puppet and his puppet to do the puppeteering during the story reading.

Each story had to have a setting where cowboys would roam; a problem and a solution, and 2 characters and a title. And a cowboy puppet made from a western paper doll and western boy and girl outfits. They were really funny!

The Ugly Duckling Class Play

UGLY DUCKLING MUSICAL CAST 2014……WONDERFUL JOB EVERYBODY!

We had a lot of fun learning the songs and performing “The Ugly Duckling Musical” last week.

We had swan dancers, The swan singers, the barnyard brood soloists, the skunks soloists, the duckings and mama and papa duck dancers and singers, the barnyard hoedown dancers and many speakers and backstage crew. It was fun to cast the play this year because we had SO MANY wonderful singers.

Here is everybody doing faces and acting wacky after the show.

I think they all had a great time.

Of course I HAD to get one good shot of everybody with our cool hand-painted backdrop.

And we had to add one more wacky faced picture….just for the fun of it! haha. (note to self….do not EVER make that particular face again in a photo op….) 🙂

I hope you all enjoyed our play. We enjoyed performing it. Good job everyone!

Bar Graphs and Ordered Pairs Graphing Fun

We are doing graphing in math this week and have done some very creative surveys, bar graphs, pictographs and now some ordered pairs grids.

Surveys and Bar Graphs in 2nd Grade

Making a bar graph after doing a class survey is fun!

We started out by each of us coming up with a question to pose for our classmates to take a survey.
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE __________. We made a big brainstorm of about 25 different types of things; sports, soda pop, cartoons, colors, days of the week, animals, birthday place, dessert, etc. Then each of us put our name next to one of them so we didn’t have any duplicates.

Everybody chose their own “What is your Favorite…..” to survey the class on. Then they used graph paper to make their totals after tallying up all the surveys.

They had to also add up their total people surveyed…. They did a great job.

Then they wrote out 5 different choices on a piece of paper. Then I gave them 5 minutes to go around and try to get more than 20 different people to put a tally mark on their choice. We stopped the timer and I have them each a piece of centimeter graph paper and showed them how to do bar graphs. They tallied their tally marks into numbers and then made the numbers into colorful 5 bar graphs and listed numbers on the side and what they surveyed across the bottom with their question across the top.

All the bar graphs look very colorful and different. One year when I had exactly 20 students we also did a pie chart and it was easy to divide the pie into 20 pieces. They turned out very nice!

Here are some ordered pairs graph games I found on the internet for us to play too. Here is a basketball one from teacher’s notebook. And

Bill Nye The Science Guy Mammal and Reptile and Bird Research Reports

We did mammal, reptile and bird reports these past 2 weeks. The kids did a great job finding facts out of their library books and sharing facts with each other and form the folders of animal printouts and cards I have in my stash.

Reptile Reports

3 reptiles were brought to school by Kam’s mom.

We had Kam’s mom come show us his bearded dragon and 2 of his snakes! Very Cool!

Bearded Dragon got “puffed up” from 30 2nd graders observing it! So cute!

Snakes! EEK!

This corn snake was really pretty. The kids loved touching it!

Snake ART and Reptile Reports

We made snakes out of butcher paper and decorated them with washi tape and sticker dots and added a forked, red, tongue and eyes. Then we attached the poem “Black Snake” to the back.

Here is a cute poem by Shel Silverstein about being eaten by a Boa Constrictor….

This cute chart and picture are taken from KinderGals Blog HERE.

Then we make a giant matrix of all the types of animals and fill it in as we learn about them; 1. Amphibians, 2. Mammals, 3. Reptiles, 4. Birds, 5. Fish/Ocean Animalso, 6. Insects. By the end of the study we have done a report on each type. It’s great fun!

Each week I set out a new stash of books and weekly readers so kids can get facts from them. But we also have the internet and library books they have checked out for the week.

Then we edited (30 kids worth of editing is no picnic, I can tell you that!) and rewrote on our choice of cool paper. Then we illustrated each by tracing some of Mrs. Moss’ cool animal coloring pages. These turned out really beautiful. I loved all of their reports. Next we are doing birds and ocean animals. It takes us about a month to do all 5 animal kingdoms (we previously did amphibians and insects).

Check them out. They are very cool. Good job guys!

Turtle report and illustration…….

We used colorful paper in the students’ choice for final copies….

We also did birds and mammal reports on different weeks….

Animal Research Reports

Here is how I did it. I taught them about topic sentences and that they should be kind of like the “main idea” of the report. Then we had details in 3 kinds of paragraphs or groupings. We did 1. what they look like, 2. what they eat, 3. where they are found, and 4. what length and weight they come in. Then they just added interesting facts. Like Jeremy found out that alligators lift up their tails and “stinker” when they want to attract a mate. Hmmm…..that wouldn’t work for me, how about you? haha.

All the kids thought that one was hysterical! Animals do the strangest things!

Cinco de Mayo

Cinco de Mayo Mariachi Guitar craft……

We had a great week learning about Cinco de Mayo and Mexican Culture……

And dancing the Mexican Hat Dance…..

Happy Cinco de Mayo Everybody!

Cinco de Mayo is a great holiday to study and learn all about the Mexican Culture in our classroom.

I always celebrate it because I always have the culture represented in my room.

We write about doing pinatas, singing with the mariachis, dancing the Mexican hat dance and eating tortillas and salsa.

We read lots of stories about the Fiesta and the Celebrations of the Day!

Mexican Maracas made from recycled cans, dry beans, yarn and beading on the ends….Fun to dance the Mexican Hat Dance to!

We started our Cinco de Mayo celebration a week ago by doing a choral reading of FIESTA
and our READING STREETS story A Birthday Basket for Tia. Both are about the Mexican culture and both are filled with spanish words they kids LOVED figuring out the meanings of!! Then we looked at some of the Mexican blankets, a tortilla maker, and clothing of the Mexican culture and watched the Mexican Hat Dance on youtube.

A very cute wordsearch for Cinco de Mayo is HERE at Kaboose.

Here are our cute mariachi guitars….

Here is our hallway bulletin board full of color! Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Ole…..Ay, yiy yi yi…..

Here is our Cinco de Mayo bulletin board….with our guitars and our writing…..

The inspiration for the Mariachi Guitar art project can be found HERE at Kaboose. We made ours pretty big and VERY colorful!I let the kids choose the color for their guitars. We doubled them, cut them out, stuffed them with newspaper strips to make them 3D, then added the string, the triangles and the “frets”(brown parts).

And we learned some new Spanish words from each other….like “Cinco” for 5 and “Mayo” for May!

Here is our finished bulletin board with Cinco de Mayo writing all about the Mexican Fiestas.

I have a tortilla maker I bought at OLVERA STREET, a tourist spot in Los Angeles. You can get them at Mexican markets or at cooking supply houses.

Here is what the MASA HARINA corn tortilla dough looks like made up…it’s fun to play with! Kids love it.

Tortilla Maker…..

Use 2 pieces of parchment paper and place dough in between them on the tortilla press…..

Smashing the dough between 2 sheets of parchment paper…..it will look like this! A perfect corn tortilla!

Then fry them in a frying pan…1 minute on each side! I made these for dinner for the hubs! Yummy!

Check out the tutorial on my cooking blog….The Weekday Chef HERE!

The dough is in the Mexican food section of the grocery store and is called Masa de harina.

A great story I read the kids is called THE TORTILLA FACTORY by Gary Paulsen The Link is HERE. Lots of kids have seen how they make the flour tortillas at the burrito restaurants here but not so much the corn tortillas
. Front Cover

We love this Cinco de Mayo Tissue Party Flower craft for kids. It’s simple, easy and fun! And, don’t forget super colorful!

Craft supplies you will need:

Tissue paper

Pipe cleaner

Scissors

Craft instructions:

Cut large squares (6X6) out of the tissue paper.

Have the children choose and stack about 10 squares of different color tissue paper.

Show the children how to accordion fold the tissue paper stack using about 1 in folds.

Then, have the children place a pipe cleaner in the middle of the folded tissue paper and secure it by bending the pipe cleaner over the middle of the folded paper and then twist the ends together.

Once done, have the children starting pulling the tissue paper pieces toward the middle, starting with the top piece. Have the children hold on to the bottom piece as they do it.

And, voila, the children now have Tissue Paper Flowers for Cinco de Mayo!

Kiboomu: http://www.kiboomu.

In the past I’ve made churros and pinatas, and we’ve even done a large pinata filled with candy, but it was over so fast I didn’t feel it was very fun for most of the kids. I’m not going to do real pinatas again. But I have done tiny individual ones from a paper bag. Link HERE for last year’s Cinco de Mayo activities. Last year we did the flag of Mexico and some Mariachis, and cute Sombrero hats using Fiesta stickers from a party store. Link is HERE at Party Cheap.

Another year we decided to make Marracas out of empty, rinsed out, vegetable cans I’ve been saving up all year. The kids filled them with dried beans and rice. Then we colored some designs on a white piece of paper cut to fit around the can. Lastly we added a piece of yard with pony beads tied on the knotted ends. It looked great!

I found some paper that looked kind of AZTEC-Y so I copied it and Added the Cinco de Mayo label..

Normally I have the kids bring in a washed out string bean or corn can. Here was a finished one with the yarn and beads added to the ends. This year we ran out of time though. But they are cute and easy to make.

Mexican Maracas….were one of our Vocabulary Words too. So put popcorn and black beans inside and taped them shut with book tape…..then add some yarn with colorful beads tied onto the ends…

After the beading of finished Maracas you just HAVE to do The Mexican Hat Dance!

Da da…..da da……..da da…..clap clap! Mexican Hat Dance! I had hats all over the classroom! I have all these hats just for this one week of school. haha.

These are the stickers I had to add to the Mariachi guitars…. they
were from Oriental Trading…

One math game I made up is CINCO math Bingo and I used mental math and place value problems I made up on the spot. They had to add and subtract in their heads. For instance, I’d say, “what is 132 plus 20” or “What is 340 take away 300?” Then they would put the bingo marker on that number. Or I’d say, how much is 3 quarters worth? Or one quarter plus a nickel? Lots of fun and pretty challenging too! I used the website dk

Weekly Readers we read on Mexican culture…..

I saved a few of these Weekly Readers on Hispanic Culture.

It would be fun to come up with a Jeopardy game with simple questions on fiestas, traditions and foods wouldn’t it? Yeah, I don’t know if I’m that ambitious!

Color Word Match Game

A Cinco de Mayo Fill in the Blank I made up can be found HERE at this link. And of course we HAD TO DANCE! We layed the Mexican Hats all over the floor and groups of 3 kids danced around them. I should have made a video, But we danced to this one and it’s pretty good too!

Enjoy! Arriba! OLE! And HAPPY CINCO de MAYO!

Earth Day Projects

Earth Day 2014 – Remember to clean up some area of your community this week in honor of International Earth Day April 22nd. It is a holiday celebrated all across the world in every country! And FRIDAY the 25th was Arbor Day.

WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD….

I see trees of green, red roses too

I see them bloom, for me and you

And I think to myself

What a wonderful world

I see skies of blue, and clouds of white

The bright blessed day, dark sacred night

And I think to myself

What a wonderful world

The colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky

Are also on the faces, of people going by

I see friends shaking hands, sayin’, “How do you do?”

They’re really sayin’, “I love you”

I hear babies cryin’, I watch them grow

They’ll learn much more, than I’ll ever know

And I think to myself

What a wonderful world

Yes, I think to myself

What a wonderful world.

You could plant a tree or some flowers, clean up a park or beach with your family, or recycle clothes and old toys.

This week we celebrated and learned all about EARTH DAY!

We wrote about Earth Day after reading a bunch of books on recycling, reusing things, and reducing garbage and pollution.

A fun contest is finding all the words you can make from EARTH DAY. A printable link from ABC teach is HERE.

I got the beads from Oriental Trading over the summer…I added green and blue beads for making these
cute bracelets out of chenille stems cut to their wrist size and twisted when they were done. SUPER EASY!
They also have Earth Day inflatable GLOBES
you can get for about $1.00 each. The link is HERE at Oriental Trading!

My favorite Earth Day Book to read to the kids to teach them about Recycling, Reusing and Reducing our water and energy usage and trash.

We did some beautiful watercolors of the earth and some rainbows too. Happy Earth Day!

What is Earth Day all about? All around the world people who care about pollution, ecology and going green help educate others about how we can improve our habits in regard to trash, using cars and vehicles less, walking more, and conserving our Natural Resources like water, trees, oil, coal and electricity.

Everybody did a great job making their own Earth Day promises.

We saw some windmills up in Lehi on our field trip to Thanksgiving Point. Windmills make natural power without any pollution.

Reduce, Recycle, Reuse
(Tune: “Three Blind Mice”)
Reduce, recycle, reuse.
Reduce, recycle, reuse.
Now’s the time to choose.
There must be no excuse.
It’s up to each one of us to do
our part to make the Earth clean, it’s true.
So let’s work together, yes, me and you!
Reduce, recycle, reuse!

We also learned about solar power from black, solar cells. Mrs. Moss has a cool robot that moves on solar cells. We learned that reusing things like rechargeable batteries are better than just buying new ones.

Good job guys! I liked all of the summaries I read. The kids had definite ideas about how they can help protect the earth and conserve energy and water.

We wrote about ways we can help celebrate Earth Day!

Here is what my class came up with; a brainstorm of ways to help on EARTH DAY and always!

Some of the books and Weekly Readers we read to find out how we can help clean up the earth and Go Greener! We can do the 3 Rs; Recycle, Reduce and Reuse.

Everybody made a badge to wear on Earth Day!

Do something nice this week to improve your community, your yard, recycle something or redo an area where you live to make it prettier, cleaner or healthier. Or else go plant a tree or some flowers!

Mother’s Day Classroom Gift Ideas

MOTHER’S DAY GIFT IDEAS….

This idea is taken from Holiday Crafts for Kids HERE. I would decorate a tin can with colorful washi tape and duct tape designs and stickers. Then add a cute flower on a stick with a clothespin attached (for holding a recipe card).

Every year it seems like I reinvent the wheel and come up with another kind of mom’s day gift. I love having the kids write a card. I have them put their handprint on the front in some cute way. Then they write a really nice letter inside telling their mom things like; I think you cook ______ really good. My favorite thing you do with me is ________. Things like that with specifics. I loved learning that one of my boys loved me to make Taco Salad. I never knew till I got his first grade card!

Then we make some sort of gift. Here are some I’ve done in the past.

Decorate a cookie or cupcake or make little beaded bracelets.

Make a recipe book with recipes from the students and a real recipe from the moms on the back. Copy them into a class book. Put a picture on the front of each and decorate with scrapbook paper.
Make a silouette with each child’s black silouette on the front and a letter/card on the back.
Get some rinsed out baby food jars or small sauce jars from the kids. Use a solution of half water half glue. Paint on 2 inch squares of pastel tissue paper. You can also use modge podge. Fill each glass jar with a voltive candle. Wrap with tissue paper and ribbons when dry.
Get Dollar Store whisks and fill with any type of wrapped candies. Wrap up with celophane and ribbons. Add a note “Whisking you a Happy Mother’s Day!”

2. Have kids bring in some short, fat cans like pinapple or fruit cans or could even be soup cans. Cover with pastel scrrapbook paper. Line the top with a coordinating ribbon. Cover inexpensive Bic pens with floral green tape and add a flower to the eraser area. Put the finished “flowers in your “pot” by adding rice or dried beans. Voila! A cute pot with flowers.
Pot some soil in a small ceramic or clay pot. Have students paint hearts and kisses and flowers on with acrylic paint. Tie a ribbon around the rim. Add alphalpha or grass seeds to the dirt. Let it grow for a week or so. When it is high send it home with a cute scrapbook paper note that says “I love you with every hair on my head!”.
Make bath salts out of Epsom salts and scented oils. Wrap in celophane with cute ribbons. Attach a poem; Roses are red, violets are blue, here’s some bath salts I made just for you! Stamp a KISS on the bottom of each card with red ink.

Free happy Mother's day Themed printable stationary(stationery) and happy Mother's day border paper for school teachers and students

Bath Salts Recipe-

3 cups Epsom salts

1 tablespoon glycerin

perfume (or lotion)

two drops of food coloring

Combine glycerin and food coloring. Add perfume to make a fragrant mixture. Then add to Epsom salts. Stir thoroughly. When it’s dry wrap in celophane and pink ribbons.

Here is how to make a box for your mother’s day presents.You can make another one that will fit over this one and make a little “box” to put a cute treasure inside. One year I got kits to make up beaded bracelets from Oriental Trading. It was surprising how well the kids did on beading. It was easy for them. Then we put them inside a cute box made from hot pink paper and put some heart stickers on the top. You could use scrapbook paper or neon papers.

One of my favorite gifts was from my youngest son Daniel when he was in first grade. It looked like this.

Cards are still my favorite gift as a mom. If you don’t do anything else, send home a heartfelt card. We lost this boy when he was 17 years old. All his little school cards to me are so much more precious now. I’m so glad I still have them.

His little letter to me at age 6 in first grade…..sniff…….

Easter Fun with Peter Rabbit Pop Up Books!

Did you know one of the most famous books in the world is Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter? It outsells other Easter books by far. I have 3 different illustrated copies of the Beatrix Potter story book.

The Tale of Peter Rabbit in a Pop Up Book retelling was really fun and turned out sweet.

What do we learn from reading this story? Well, for starters we learn Peter didn’t obey and got into trouble. We learned mother knows best! And we learn not to steal from other people’s gardens!

We did 3 pages of retelling and 3 pop up pages with the last one having Peter running out of Mr. McGreggor’s garden as fast as he could go!

I remind the kids that the problem in the story was that Peter did not mind his mommy. And because he didn’t mind, he got himself in a heap of trouble. And I ask them to listen for the ending where his brothers and sisters get rewards for being good, and he loses his reward and has to go to bed with no dessert.

Our whole class showing off their Peter Rabbit pop up book retellings…..

Cute coloring job guys!

He turns out to learn a lesson about obedience AND not being a thief!

Here are the pop up book pages in order…..

Their printing is getting so beautiful! You can tell it is another sign of Spring!

The students did some cute backgrounds on each of the pages, the Peter is the pop up.

I have 3 copies of the Peter Rabbit books. The oldest book I bought for my own children many years ago. It is very dog earred.. It was published in the early 60s. I think Ms. Potter is long gone now, but her books are absolutely timeless. I bought the whole gift boxed set of all of her little stories in little pastel 7 x 9 hardback size. They are super cute! The students love to look at the cute pastel pictures and they love the darling characters.

The pop ups make the Peter Rabbit look 3D.

A flannel board story you can download at this link HERE at For Shared.com.It would be a cute addition to this activity.

Cute kiddos and their cute Pop Up Books. Everybody chose a different colored cover for their books. They were very artistic!

I LOVED this coloring job. What a cute background!

I have a whole collection of her books in 4 x 5 pastel hardbacks that the kids love reading as a fast finisher during the week before Spring Break.

It turned out to be a fun writing project. Later in the day we had an Easter Egg Hunt, but I forgot my camera. Yay me! I’ll post some pictures if my mom helpers that day send them to me. THEY didn’t forget their cameras. 😀

Here are a few of my collection of BEATRIX POTTER books all about springtime animals and their human-like adventures they go on.

Well, I hope you loved the pop up books! And we sure had a great Easter Egg Hunt. I think most of the kids got at least 10 eggs. We had over 300 hidden eggs! You should have seen it when I blew the whistle and kids went running wild all which ways! Super cute! And it was over in mere moments!

And HERE at Nick Jr. is a link to some fun Peter Rabbit games and activities for kids to keep them busy at home this Spring Break. Happy Easter Everyone! See you soon!

Geometry Shape Books and Pattern Block Art

I wanted to do a few fun projects to go along with our geometry unit in math. We wrote little mini books called “My Geometry Book of Shapes.” They each had 8 pages with 8 shapes. Most were 3D shapes but there were a few 2D.

My Geometry Book of Shapes…..I once was a sphere, but now I”m a soccer ball on the UTAH REAL team’s game!

Open ended math writing prompts are differentiation naturally. I like to add a writing prompt to my math once a month and get 5 birds with 1 stone. (math problem solving, differentiation, punctuation and creative writing practice mixed in with some cool art!) And talk about engagement…. Kids LOVE these kinds of multilevel, multisubject projects.

Here’s one of the cool books I read during this unit; The Greedy Triangle by Marilyn Burns. It’s a great one that talks about 3D shapes and 2D shapes in a fun way.

I found some fun worksheets to look at “edges and vertices” of shapes too. This goes along with our math unit in Geometry. Check them out HERE at ezschool.

We started with “I once was a sphere, but now I’m a _____________. They had to fill it in with a real world something with that shape. Then they had to add a describing adjective, and an adverb of time or place.

In the past I have bought Pattern Block Stickers for this design art, but this year I had 30 kids so I just punched out lots of colorful pattern block shapes out of the Ellison Die Cuts. It took me over an hour to do enough! Whew!

Lines of symmetry in a few of these pattern block picture designs

I had them make a pattern block sticker design using hexagons at the center. I told them to do anything they wanted but that I was looking for a few to be symmetrical. I ended up getting about a third of the class doing symmetry designs and 2/3rds that did other designs. Then I post a question;
WHICH OF THESE DESIGNS SHOW A LINE OF SYMMETRY? It is fun and challenging for the kids to pick out the truly symmetrical designs!!

I love how colorful and creative these pattern block art designs look too on black paper. I’ve seen them done on white paper plates too, but I think the darker color looks cool. Maybe we will try them on yellow plates one year, that might be cool!

Can you find the symmetrical one in this pattern block picture group? There is only one!

This is a fun center for the week too, magnetic pattern blocks. I have a magnet center in my room just made from using the side of a black filing cabinet. I have a rug in front of it and lots of magnetic games for fast finishers in math.

How about symmetry in this Pattern Blocks Design; there are a few!

Tell Which Designs are SYMMETRY?

They turned out really fun to look at and share. The students were very creative and did a beautiful JOB!

HERE’S THE WRITING PROJECT:

Making a Geometry Book. The pages in it go like this…..”I once was a _________ but now I’m a _________. Fill in with circle to sphere, or triange to pyramid, or square to cube. (I once was a circle, but now I’m a sphere shaped basketball in a Laker’s Game.)

The students then draw a picture of a real life example with a sentence to describe how it is used or where they would find it.

Another Example: I once was a square but now I’m a cube of ice in a cold glass of Coke. Then they draw a glass with cubed ice inside. It’s a lot of fun.

Each child does 5 to 7 pages and it takes a few days of writing time. But it’s great integration of math and writing.

Grouchy Ladybug Life Cycles and Telling Time Games

We learned to tell time to the 5 minutes this week. I also taught the kids “quarter till”, “quarter after” and “half past” vocabulary. They also know the difference between analog clocks and digital clocks. Here are some other fun activities we do during the time unit.

Books: The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle

Five Little Ladybugs by melanie Gerth

Are You a Ladybug? by Judy Allen Tudor

Ladybug Life Cycles by Justin Martin

I love Eric Carle books. One way I love to introduce telling time by 5 minute increments is using the book “The Grouchy Ladybug”. It has clocks on every page and they have incremental times listed. It’s a good springboard for telling time.

We read the book and then we make a ladybug clock. I just found a basic clock pattern and copy it off on red construction paper. Then I add a half circle shaped, small, black, head and have the kids give it a face with white crayon. Then we add 6 black legs and we accordian fold them so it looks kind of funny. Here are our ladybug clocks.

Very Grouchy Ladybug Clocks – great for a math extension….

A cute activity that I bought from Oriental Trading is called Telling Time Flip Chart. The kids love it for a math learning center.

Telling Time Flip Chart game is on sale for only $13.00 bucks now too! Check it out! HERE at Oriental Trading.

A fun activity that I do every year is we make our own analog clock faces from red cardstock or construction paper. It is fun to make them look like ladybugs!

Here is a link for a telling time worksheet HERE at ABC teach.

CLOCK MATH
Every day for a few weeks call out different times and have them put the hands on their clocks. Be sure to also introduce half past, quarter past, quarter till. These are really difficult concepts for young children to get so I introduce it in first grade. I also have a magnetic clock I keep on my white board. I draw 4 lines on the fact to “cut” the clock into “quarters” or fourths. I point out that 3 and 9 are the quarter past and quarter till numbers.

We also like to paint ladybugs and do the Ladybug Life Cycle or a Ladybug report

Fun Game: Find a partner and use both of your ladybug clocks. Decide to do “o’clock” or “thirty” for doing elapsed time. Then decide how many hours difference there is going to be and make up a sentence. Example: 3:00 is 2 hours later than 1:00. 12:30 is 3 hours later than 9:30 etc. Elapsed time is another very hard concept for young kids to get. This is higher level but some of your high kids will get it and you will be differentiating for those who can do it.

ART: Paint a ladybug on art paper. When dry use black markers to make the line down the middle and dots on his back were traced using the top circle and bottom circle of a dixie paper cup. Add 2 wiggly eyes. Paint yellow, orange and red. Wait for color to dry.

LADYBUG SONGS TO SING!
(We put these songs on the back of our ladybug painted art)
Ladybug Song (Tune: If You’re Happy and you Know it, Clap Your Hands)
Oh I wish I were a little ladybug,
Oh I wish I were a little ladybug,
I’d be shiny red and black,
I’d eat aphids for my snack,
Oh I wish I were a little ladybug!

Ladybugs (Tune: Oh My Darlin’ Clementine
I’m an insect, not a spider
I’ve got 6 legs instead of 8
I have 4 parts to my life cycle
I eat bugs that farmers hate

We put the 2 songs above on the back of our painted ladybug art projects and sang it together.
SHARED READING

“Five Little Ladybugs”

Five little ladybugs climbing up a door, One flew away and then there were four.

Four little ladybugs sitting on a tree, One flew away and then there were three.

I copied this free printable to go on the upper inside flap of each page from Enchanted Learning.

Three little ladybugs landing on a shoe, One flew away and then there were two.

Two little ladybugs looking for some fun, One flew away and then there was one.

One little ladybug sitting in the sun, She flew away and then there were none.

MUSIC: I found a cute song called Ladybug in my Soda on the website K-8 Kidstunes and got a copy for 99 cents in an MP3 download. The link is HERE but you do have to sign up a “kid” to get the cheap version. I have kids and grandkids so it’s easy now that I have signed up. It’s a funny song with a real catchy beat and easy to learn.

Cute Ladybug Life Cycle we did earlier in the year when we wrote insect reports…..This is a flap book where we write the 4 stages underneath each flap.

Here is our finished Ladybug Life Cycle bulletin board!

MATH:
A fun printable with black dots on individual ladybugs to print out can be found HERE at A Kids Math. You can print off a dozen of these to place in a center with a key. Kids write down their answers on an answer sheet and then check with the key.

This CUTE game from Posh Lil Divas was a great idea to add to a math telling time center. Check it out HERE!

My kids are working on telling time to the minute, and this online game helps! It’s fun to try some new ones in the computer lab!