We are studying insects lifecycles this week and we finished Ladybug Life Cycles. It was a lot of fun to paint some giant ladybugs and write a few facts about them.
Ladybug Paintings and Informational Writing by Kindergarteners in my class. Good job guys!
Ladybug Painting and informational Writing.
We made life cycles and labeled them too.
I read the kids some non-fiction books about ladybugs and they loved hearing about how they hatch and eat their own eggshells! And they look like little spiders when they first hatch from eggs! They are called “Larva”. They eat like little pigs for weeks!
We wrote facts about Ladybugs.
We put on 2 curly antennae on top of each ladybug head. Then added wiggly eyes and a smile in white crayon.
Then they turn into pupa and make a little cacoon and stay inside of it until they have morphed into the flying insects they become as adults.
The Ladybug Art and Writing made a cool bulletin board out in the halls. This is our final bulletin board of the year. I love doing art with kids!
A Science Spin we read from Weekly REader (All About Ladybugs). I save the good ones.
Lots of good facts here! Great handwriting too!
Here are our cool “Informational Writings”. These are KINDERGARTENERS too! Didn’t they do a fantastic job? I gave them white paper and they painted their “oval” in red, orange or yellow. Then we glued on a head, 6 legs (1 x 4 inches) and 2 wiggly eyes. They drew on smiles with white crayon. Then they glued on black circles I had some mom helpers cut in different sizes. Next year I’ll add a black line down the back of the painted ladybug before adding the “spots”. It would have looked better. Live and learn!
Did you know ladybugs were cool AND cute? WE did.
Books we will read for insect week this week.
We brainstormed a list of facts about ladybugs, and some describing words on a giant piece of red butcher paper shaped like a ladybug. That is a great way to instill some background knowledge or schema before writing projects.
Ladybug painting by Mrs. Moss’ class of kindergarteners.
For more activities I did when I had 2nd graders check out a previous post I did HERE or another oneHERE.
Here is our cute little ladybug art. We also did a life cycle, but I forgot to snap a picture. Here is what we did last year
A fun printable that I laminated for a center is HERE at a Kids Heart. Then I bought some dry black beans in a bag and the kids pick up a handful and drop them on the board. They add the two sides of beans together and write an equation. It’s a lot of fun at center time. I just printed them without spots.
Grant did an excellent job on his writing. He is a very good writer!
Writing is SO important. It is reciprocal for learning to spell, phonics and sounding out, handwriting, and reading. It helps improve all 4 areas of Language Arts. That is why I do it every single day. Kids in my class are real good spellers and I believe this is why. (I also do sound spelling on white boards “word families” every single day. It helps with all of the above also.
A fun Insect Center.
I’ve also done the caterpillar larva and praying mantis larva during this insect unit. Once I bought live ladybugs and we kept them in the butterfly house for a day and then went out and let them go. You can get them for about 5 bucks for a ton of them at Home Depot in the spring and early summer. You can also buy the larva HERE at Insect Lore for about $15 bucks.
I had these insects out at a center too. Most of the kids can tell you insects have 3 body parts and 6 legs.
We made little ladybug puppets with this song on the back too. It was fun to sing to the tune of “If You’re Happy and you Know It!”
OH I WISH I WERE A LITTLE LADY BUG (2 TIMES) I’D BE SHINY RED AND BLACK I’D EAT APHIDS FOR MY SNACK OH I WISH I WERE A LITTLE LADYBUG!
This Monday is Memorial Day. We get the day off so we can honor all those who protect our country. I teach the kids about the 5 branches of the military; Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard. Most of them know a few branches but not all or what they guard and protect. HERE is some Vocabulary to go over with the kids. I had them copy the word. Fast finishers copy a few times.
I love this book called H Is for Honor: A Military Family Alphabetby Devin Scillian and Victor Jushasz. It is a look at military life for the entire family. What boot camp is like, why soldiers make sacrifices, and how much letters from home mean to those serving far away.
I read this to the kids and we talk about some of the sacrifices that military families must make so their loved ones can serve us as Army and Navy and Air Force men and women.
This eagle painting is out of handprints in brown for the fingers and palm, and the thumbs are either red or blue. The white tailfeather is just a pointer finger in white paint. I added red and blue and silver glitter to the red and blue and white painted thumbs. The kids added the white heads, and beaks. Then when they were dried we added a wiggly eye.
This was something my nephew Tyler put up on his Facebook page one day. I typed it up and added it to a poster I keep up in my room during our study of what Memorial Day is all about.
Here are pictures of all the branches of the military I found online for free. The kids chose their favorites and colored them and we make a cool mural of all the symbols and uniforms of the 5 branches.
I make a big brainstorm of all the kids’ ideas on the board. Then we write a few more as sentences beginners; such as….I am proud of our military because they….or….Thanks to the military men and women of the …..or…On Memorial Day we remember all the military men and women for…..
Some coloring pages I leave out for fast finishers and some stationery sets I got on TPT. HERE are some Cute Ones. Some of them I added the words Memorial Day or a flag to. A cute math coloring page I found HERE too that I just changed a few of the harder equations. I also cut out “Presidential” and put “Memorial Day” instead.
My cute entry table all decorated for the holidays coming up…..
I have a few bins in my storage room for Patriotic holidays. I usually put it up end of May and leave it up through the summertime. I add red and white flowers to my greenery baskets around the house too. Silk geraniums work well.
I love this Uncle Sam and red, white and blue quilt I have in my living room. So Patriotic!
For Fast finishers I had a few coloring pages kids could choose from before going to centers. One of them is HERE. A cute minibook to copy, color and read is HERE. We only did 4 pages.
Memorial Day Table Decor
Now I just need to finish decorating the house for all the Patriotic holidays coming up. I leave the decor up from Memorial Day through 4th of July. It is fun to change it up around the house. And I got some new white couches, so it is fun to switch up the pillows. I have a few navy and red ones that work great!
We’ve been having lots of fun learning about Frog Life Cycles! Here are some of the Frog Art and Writing we did this week. And we did a Frog Life Cycle cut and paste too. Check them out!
Frog Life Cycles on top, Frog Art with that curly tongue in the middle, then we wrote Frog reports. They are really great!
I shared a few pictures I found on the internet with the kids. This is one GIANT frog! Big ones are called Goliath Frogs. (go figure).
We read a Scholastic News on Frogs and a few cute books on frogs too.
A few of the books I show the kids during Frog Week.
This is a great book to read showing the life cycle from egg to tadpole to adult Frog.
We cut and colored some colorful frogs for art this week.
Here are the kids with their frog life cycle wheels! Whee!
A fun Math hands on activity I do is these subtraction Frogs on a Log. They are lots of fun to do. And kids love to play with them in centers.
Here are the Frog Life Cycles we did. So Cute. The kids wrote the names of the 4 frog stages too. A freebie life cycle wheel I found is HERE on TPT. I also found some cute frog bookmarks HERE at TPT. Both are free.
Our bulletin board outside has all of our frogs on it. It is very colorful!
Some great little Frog Facts.
I loved this little report. It is as good as any first grader could do it! Good Job!
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!
This also was an awesome Frog report. I am proud of all of the kindergarten kiddos. They did a good job on this INFORMATIONAL WRITING.
Frogs DO make a ribbit sound. 😀
We made these frog life cycle wheels yesterday to finish up the unit. They turned out cute…just like these kiddos!
The kids had their choice of colorful wiggly eyes to glue on their frogs. I had some giant eyes to choose from, and all colors.
Frogs are always a really engaging science topic for little kids. I love Frog Week!
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 isHERE
I copied off the words to a song we sang about frogs and we glued it onto the back of the frog art.
A CUTE little printable book to copy and color is HERE at TPT and is Free. It is in the same vein as Brown Bear Brown Bear. But THIS ONE at TPT was my favorite. I used this one for the life cycles above. The kids had to color and cut and paste the pictures onto cloud shapes.
5 Little Speckled Frogs Song. I made these felt frogs to go with the song.
Five Little Speckled Frogs (song lyrics) Sat on a speckled log Eating the most delicious bugs. Yum! Yum! One jumped into the pool Where it was nice and cool Now there are Four green speckled frogs Four Little Speckled Frogs Sat on a speckled log Eating the most delicious bugs. Yum! Yum! One jumped into the pool Where it was nice and cool Now there are Three green speckled frogs (keep going down to none)
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. We glued our song on the back of our colorful frogs and sang it together. The UTUBE song with words link is HERE. A coloring page frog printable can be found at this link HERE. Have fun enjoying our FROGS!
We finished our unit on plant life cycles this week and took home our little radish plants. I forgot to water them the day before so they were kind of hanging by a thread. I have a natural black thumb I have come to believe. It just isn’t my forte. I can cook, and decorate, and I’m a pretty good artist and party planner. But my plants around my house are always looking a little beat up.
I start with this lovely book called THE TINY SEED by Eric Carle. It tells how plants travel by wind, water, animals and humans planting seeds. It is also on a youtube, but I usually just read the story to the kids.
Then we look at dried Lima Bean seeds that I’ve put in a bowl of water for 2 days. Each child gets a napkin and a tiny magnifying glass. The seed coats get very soft and peel off really easily. We look at the little root at the tip of the lima bean too and we talk about how that turns into longer roots that grow down into the dirt. Then we get seeds and plant our own plants into pots of dirt. I usually do radish seeds because they germinate in 3 weeks. (if I don’t kill them before then!) A link to a fun lesson plan using Lima beans is HERE at A to Z Teacher Stuff. A link to a cute lima bean plant coloring page with labels to cut and paste is HERE at Kindergarten Crayons. Another one is HERE at TPT “Magic Beans”. It is a cute one too.
Some years we take the lima beans and “sprout” them in cute little construction paper “Sprout Houses” stapling a baggie filled with wet cotton balls inside and hanging them onto the windows for a week.
The next day I read the kids Flower Garden by Eve Bunting. It is a beautiful and colorful book that I love and they always do too. Then I have the kids look at my poster of Parts of a Plant too and we discuss the parts. Then we color a picture of a flower and label the seed, root, stem, leaf and flower. While they are coloring I show this short video that has a great visual (with clay-mation) on the parts of plants.
The next day I read the book Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert. And we do a mural of the parts of a plant, each child doing a flower, a stem, a root and a leaf. Then we mix them all up and glue them on each other’s roots and stems. It turns out looking like this. (I cut out a long strip of brown for the soil and glue that on before school starts onto a piece of blue butcher paper. Then I usually glue on a small sun in the top corner of the mural before we start. I tell the kids plants need sun, water, dirt and air to grow.
While the kids are coloring and cutting out their mural pieces, we watch the youtube below on what plants need to grow. Then we look at a Scholastic News on the needs of plants and parts of plants.
Other books we read during the week as we make a mini book and watch our plants grow are these; BOOKS on PLANTS AND SEEDS
Flower Garden by Eve Bunting
Sunflower House by Eve Bunting
The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle
Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert
From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons Frog and Toad Together by Arnold Lobel Jack in the Beanstalk by Stephen Kellogg The next day we read From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons. It is a true science book so I do skip over some of the parts. It is very detailed. But I love how she makes science interesting to kids. Then we color and cut out and staple together a mini book on parts of a plant and how plants grow. I found a cute one HERE at Worksheetplace.com. It was a freebie download and the kids loved it.
Some years we do a terrarium out of a 2 liter clear soda bottle. We add dirt and succulents from my home garden, and shells and little rocks to it. It is a great activity but takes a lot of time cutting the bottles in half. 2 Liter bottle terrarium instructions HERE We are almost done with our unit. The last thing we do is discuss parts of the plants we eat. I have lots of little cards of fruits and vegetables and we put them in categories in a pocket chart; leaves we eat, roots we eat, stems we eat and flowers/fruits we eat.
This is the side of my black filing cabinets. It is the magnet center. Every few days I change the activity. Lots of times it is math or science.
One of my centers I have made up is Parts of a Plant for the magnet center. Here is what it looks like. The kids love to put the 3 plants together and label them. A fun song we sing is this one: MUSIC (use percussion instruments) A Seed Needs (To the tune of “Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay” ) I see you are a seed, Tell me what DO you need? I need some soil to grow, And then the sun to glow, Water to make me wet, Air for my leaves to get, Space for my roots to spread, I’ll make your flower bed!
by: Iram Khan
CELERY SCIENCE EXPERIMENT
Lastly we do another science experiment using celery in a cup of water and adding food coloring to different cups of celery to see what happens when the celery drinks the water through the stems. Check it out….We do THIS experiment at teaching tiny tots.
Community Helpers is such a fun topic to study in school. Kids love to make police hats and badges for art and a puppet to start a puppet show writing project. We always sing a few songs about different occupations, read these fun story books, and do some riddles on the same topic.
Community Helper Stories. Here are some of the fun stories I read the class. For social studies we learn about communities and what that means, and we talked a lot about helpers in our community.
Community Helper Books I read to my class during Community Helpers unit.
Then we made a brainstorm on the board of all kinds of community helpers. We would make a puppet out of 2 of them and think of a story idea with a problem that could happen to one of the puppets we chose. Then we had to come up with a solution to the problem that another puppet (community helper) might come and fix for us. We made a list of problems and a list of helpers. Then we decided on 3 opening sentences to get us started and everybody chose one.
I modeled how to start a puppet show with the class. Our class story had a baker that had a fire start in his bakery and called the fire department and had firemen come put out the fire. Then the baker gave some cupcakes to the firemen and they became friends after that. (gotta have a happy ending people!)
Here we are doing a match game using community helpers and what they do for us. The kids had to match up the occupations with a riddle of what they do. We did it in small cooperative groups of 3 or 4. Here are my little police people matching up their cards. (some of the boys were too “cool” to wear their hats home.) Isn’t that so funny? Gotta be macho in Grade 2! tee hee…..)
We also did a few worksheets on vocabulary words from the Reading Streets story and some community helper songs.HERE are a few songs I thought were fun. I played my autoharp and we sang to a few familiar tunes. I had the kids do a few fun activities like a Venn diagram comparing and contrasting Urban communities with Rural communities.
Here at First Palette.com was a lot of free printables of community helper people to use as puppets.We put heads on bodies out of paper and glued them to tiny popsicle sticks.
My goal was to have them write a fictional story with a problem, a solution and the setting would be a community helper’s place of business. We are learning about story structure. Then they buddied up with a partner who did their puppetry for them while they read their story in a microphone.
Here are the finished puppet shows and puppets. I forgot to take a pic of our puppet theater I got out for the occasion.It was cute seeing them taking it all so seriously. Some of them got “stage fright”. Good thing we had a microphone! It took us all week during writing workshop to finish the puppet shows. Then we read and shared them in the afternoon. HERE at only passionate curiosity are some cute visuals you could put up in a pocket chart. Another cute one that is free and downloadable is HERE at k-3 teacher resources.
Here is our finished bulletin board. I also had a magnetic match game with these little community helper cutouts they could match up at the magnet center. I’ll take a pic of that too.
Some of the kids made more than 2 puppets, and some had extra visual aides…..like wedding cakes or butterflies.
Lots of great illustrations happened here…..yup!
I try to get them to learn the vocabulary in the writing process. The one before sharing is illustrating. So they learn what to do to become great illustrators; at least 4 colors, no white showing. HERE are a few songs I thought were fun. I played my autoharp and we sang to a few familiar tunes. Then I read them a few stories on people that help out in our communities. We are a mixture of urban and rural where we live. And a mixture of both where houses are outside of a city is called Suburban.
Community Helper Puppets and Stories we shared last week to go along with reading The Twins Club.
Bulletin Board of our Community Helpers and our Puppet Show Stories….
We also did a fun activity using URBAN, SUBURBAN, and RURAL. We did a Venn Diagram to compare and contrast both. The kids did it on whiteboards while I did the one on the doc camera.
Kids did a venn similar to this one….
Then we came to the rug and did a brown bag activity where they each got 3 cards (using the COMMUNITY CHARACTERISTICS CARDS found below at UEN) and they had to decide which bag labeled Urban, Suburban and Rural, to place it in of the 3 Vocabulary Words.. HERE at Utah Education Network are all the activities and some lesson plans to go along with it taken from our Utah core
Each bag had the caption “URBAN” or “RURAL or “SUBURBAN” and kids had to come up and place picture in the right bag. The class all helped.
There are many youtubes about communities highlighting our vocabulary. I liked this one and it was a short 5 minute video. There are longer ones with reading blurbs on each scene too. ..
Nice Handwriting and illustrating on all of these cool puppets guys!
It was fun to listen to such creative stories. We have some budding authors in our class!
Community Helpers Puppet Shows
Our vocabulary for the week were the amazing words from Reading Streets. I keep them in a pocket chart all week and we do short activities with them every day from acting them out, to switching around the words and then matching them back with definitions. Then we tested them all on Friday. 30 kids all got 100%. Way to go parents!! Woot!
This little artist in my class won the illustration contest. We have lots of other good illustrators too!
Another fun things to do in this unit is to play Community Helper Bingo. A VERY easy one is HERE made by Michelle Prinzo. It would be great to put these words in the pocket chart to help the kids learn the vocabulary of different types of community helpers.
Our finished puppet shows and puppets were awesome.
It is a fun reading unit and a great story to compare with Country Mouse City Mouse. I have 3 different versions and it’s fun to read them to the kids and get a different response and perspective on each one. And we are thankful for all those community helpers we rely on.
We are learning about recycling, plants and seeds, and being a friend to the earth in honor of Earth Day, which is coming up very soon. (April 22nd).
Earth Day Activities we did in my Kindergarten class this week.
Earth Day Writing Projects
I love this part of the year where spring is starting to bloom with tulips and daffodils everywhere, new birds and nests all over the trees, and the weather is starting to change and get warmer. My students are loving it too.
I visited Thanksgiving Point recently to see some of the gardens and loved all the tulips in a variety of colors.
We’ve been so lucky to have springlike weather early in Utah this year. I love it!
I wish my garden looked this wonderful. The colors of all the flowers was just fantastic.
So we did watercolor painting on Monday using coffee filters to make the earth. I put out watercolor paints and used a spray bottle to get just the blue and green wet. Then passed out paint brushes and coffee filters. This makes it easier than using cups of water which always spill. I just walked around respraying the blue and green with water. Then we glued the dried “earths” onto black construction paper.
Then we colored some rainbow cutouts that say “Take Care of Our Earth”. You can also download GOOGLE EARTH onto your computer and show the kids the earth all the way to the close up school from way up in the sky as it moves closer and closer to your neighborhood. It is way cool!
Kids do lots of neat things all around the whole world on Earth Day to help and to participate.
I have lots of neat books on Earth Day and they help remind us that we are keepers of the earth. We can help keep it clean, and we can reduce garbage and water usage, even when we are only 5 years old! We read a few Scholastic News on Earth Day that I have collected over the years too.
And I found some cute math graphing activities HERE at TPT on the theme of Earth Day that are freebies! Yay! There were also some cute pieces of stationery for writing.
Just some of the 20 books I have on EARTH DAY topics. I have downloaded copies of things from the U.S. EPA Department too that have many free activities for kids. HERE at epa.gov is a color book. HERE is a free activity book to download too with mazes, math and other fun things.
After that we colored rainbows and glued down hand die cuts to show how the earth is “in our hands”. Then we sang a few earth day songs and read some books on how we can recycle.
BOOKS
Flower Garden by Eve Bunting
Sunflower House by Eve Bunting
The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle
Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert
From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons My favorite is Michael Recycle. It is a really funny one on a little superhero comes to help us learn how to take better care of things in our homes and yards.
Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert is a great book we read right before planting veggies and doing our “Planting a Rainbow” Mural. We added the “parts of the plant” after designing our own flowers and leaves. The insects and butterflies are stickers.
Planting a Rainbow mural.
We colored our own mini book on steps to being helpful on Earth Day. Then we wrote a few ideas on how we can do our part. And we planted our own radish seeds into pots of dirt. Then we made a mural of our own “Planting a Rainbow” like the book above. It turned out really pretty. We all did either a leaf, a flower, or a glued on a seed or stem.
Take Care of the Earth. Plant a plant or tree on Earth Day, April 22nd.
We wrote about things 5 year old kids can do to help keep our earth clean and green!
We decided to plant little seeds into biodegradeable pots from Home Depot. I think I got these at Walmart for $2.50 for 24 of them. Then I got free seeds and potting soil (excellent resource) from Thanksgiving Point. The guys in charge of the gardens there do a few classes a year for teachers and gardening enthusiasts and they gave me a box full of stuff for free. Such nice people there!
TERRARIUMS (using empty 2 liter bottles)
A really fun activity to teach seeds and plants is to make individual terrariums. A good step by step how to is found at this link to Teaching Tiny Tots HERE. I love how she used ivy. I’d like to use fast growing grass seeds or radish seeds so the students can see the roots and how they grow up into stems and then on the radish, leaves. Start by reading the book From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons. She is a master of children’s science books. 2 Liter bottle terrarium instructions HERE
I made this pretty Earth Day banner that says “LOVE OUR EARTH” and strung it up on twine. Then I added blue and green ribbons to the ends. It is neat. You can get a free copy HERE. as the banner on our bulletin board.
Another fun activity is making these EARTH DAY Bracelets on a pipe cleaner. They are easy using green and blue pony beads and some foam beads I got at HERE at Oriental Trading is some foam shapes that have peel and stick. I’d take pictures of the kids and make a picture frame with them.
You could also make some blue and green playdough for Earth Day. The recipe is super easy. I would add some blueberry Koolaid for a cool berry smell and blue color.
Ingredients for Play Dough
1 cup flour
½ cup salt
1 cup water
2 tbsp canola oil
2 tsp cream of tartar
blue or green Food coloring
Mix it all up in a mixing bowl and blend for a few minutes. Add 1 package Blueberry Koolaid for a cool smell. Put into “snack bag” size ziplock baggies.
HERE is a cute bookmark and writing paper. HERE is a mini book we copied and read. And HERE is a bingo game. It was a little advanced for my kiddos having terms such as “fossil fuels”. But it would be great for older kids 3rd grade and up.
The students did a good job coming up with ideas for me to write on the board. So we did a brainstorm of Things like picking up trash at the park, turning off the water while brushing teeth, recycling old clothes and toys, planting flowers and trees, and not being a litter bug.
Here are our finished pots and seeds to finish off our week of projects. I like doing radish seeds because they only take 3 weeks to germinate. So the kids won’t have to wait long to see some stems and leaves sprout!
Happy Earth Day April 22nd! Plant a tree, or a bulb, or some veggies in your backyard today!
We had a lot of fun yesterday having our family over for dinner and egg hunting and making Easter Egg Cupcakes.
With these Easter Bunny Cupcakes, the ears are a large marshmallow cut on the diagonal and dipped in colored sugars.
My youngest granddaughter decorating her Easter cupcake. You GO GIRL!
Easter Cupcakes using colored coconut and jelly beans. The chicky beak is made from a fruit roll up.
Cute little Bunny and Chick cupcakes. We also made little “nests” using coconut and jelly beans.
I had 5 of my 6 grandkiddos there for Pin the tail on the bunny, and some bubble blowing too.
We just had them close their eyes and they were pretty good about keeping them closed while they tried to find the bunny’s behind.
Here we are adding the “tails” to the Pin the tail on the bunny. Megan was the winner! Yay. I found a freebie HERE at partydelights.
I loved watching the daddies help their youngest kiddos hunt for the eggs. It made me tear up a little. sniff…
My oldest son and his youngest daughter. It is neat to see him being a daddy.
And my son in law is also a great dad. Here he is with his youngest and my only grandson.
And I got a GREAT picture of all my grandkiddos after collecting all the eggs.
Here are my two youngest grandkids hunting together. Aren’t they sweet?
“Hey I think I’ve got more than you do. You better get busy dude!”
And I loved seeing the kids hunting for eggs, playing games, creating and loving it. We are all artists. The kids love to be artistic and create beautiful things. It gives them a sense of pride to create, no matter how old they are.
Coloring eggs is a yearly tradition in our family. We have always done it. And it is now the next generation carrying on the tradition for the 3rd generation. Traditions are great things to develop in your family.
These were my oldest granddaughter’s eggs.
And her sister’s eggs too.
I was feeling my creativity too on Easter Sunday. I made this cool veggie and dip platter shaped like a spring scene.
Hope you all had a fun Easter! We have one more day of Spring Break! Enjoy the day!
I know I will. I think I’ll go eat a cupcake now. 😀
Have you ever made terrariums out of 2 liter clear, plastic bottles? Just cut them in half, fill the bottom with some rocks and potting soil and plantings. I use ivy and creeping charlie out of my garden and placed them in water for a few days hoping they will grow roots. So, ivy will grow pretty much from a cutting. Or you can plant seeds.
Plants and Seeds Unit Activity was Making Terrariums out of a clear, 2 Liter Soda Bottle!
I like to read the kids the story Jack and the Beanstalk. And just for fun we read a different rendition of it in the form of a reader’s theater, which is ALWAYSfun! Some retelling picture cards to color I found are HERE at Sparklebox. Or you could make up your own creative writing titles (Jack and the potato plant,Jack and the Cornstalk, Jack and His Cow, etc.) That would be a hoot to write a creative story using Jack and the Beanstalk as a springboard!
Some kids added shells to their soda bottle terrariums, to make them look even prettier!
Also At Sparklebox.org are some PUPPET FACES for acting out the parts in the reader’s theater. HERE is a cute reader’s theater HERE at Grandview Library there is lots of other reader’s theaters. We will soon do The Little Red Hen too. It’s a fun one.
I think K loved doing this little science activity more than anybody else. She loved her terrarium! (notice the pride on her face). She would only put in one plant because she added some veggie seeds to hers and wasn’t sure they would have enough room to grow. I hope she isn’t expecting a bean stalk! 🙂
After reading the Jack and the Beanstalk, write out a question to ask the class. We have a big discussion about how honest Jack was, and if the Giant’s wife was nice or not, or why nobody comes down the beanstalk?
These girls loved making terrariums too.
BOOKS on PLANTS AND SEEDS
Flower Garden by Eve Bunting
Sunflower House by Eve Bunting
The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle
Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert
From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons Frog and Toad Together by Arnold Lobel Jack in the Beanstalk by Stephen Kellogg We are also trying to learn to find the “main idea” in stories. At Brainpop I found a powerpoint on how to find the main idea.
Plants and Seeds are fun to study. Making Terrariums is a great activity for plant units.
We added a few shells to these terrariums too for interest.
Some fun color and sequence cards to go with the story are HERE at Sparklebox. These could also be made into a retelling book to add some sentences to. HERE at Worknotes.com are some easy reader’s theaters to try.
There is also a crossword puzzle of Jack and the Beanstalk at this link from ABC teach. It was a fun activity for my kids to do after reading the story and acting out the reader’s theater. My students loved doing it.
Close up of our terrariums
Clear 2 liter bottles make pretty good terrariums. I was thinking if I wanted to really seal them up I could have wrapped the seam in some 2 inch book tape, but all of the kids wanted to water their plants! Oh well.A good step by step how to is found at this link toTeaching Tiny Tots HERE.
We added some rocks to the bottom, then about 3 inches of good potting soil, then the plants, and topped it with rocks again (and a few pellets of plant food).
TERRARIUMS (using empty 2 liter bottles) A good book to read is From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons.She is a master of children’s science books.
Another fun planting activity I’ve done in the past is doing “Sprout Houses” in a zip lock baggie. That’s what we did last year. I pass out Lima bean seeds that have been soaking overnight. Then I pass out wet cotton balls. A link to a fun lesson plan using Lima beans is HERE at A to Z Teacher Stuff. We use the Lima beans as our seeds for our sprout houses which are another kind of terrarium. Tape them up against a window for light. Watch what happens in a week! I really like the kids to plant radishes when we’ve done plantings in a clear plastic cup because they come up within about 2 to 3 weeks and you can see the roots growing.
Wet Lima Beans and cotton balls in a ziplock baggie make cute Sprout Houses.
MUSIC (use percussion instruments) A Seed Needs (To the tune of “Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay” ) I see you are a seed, Tell me what DO you need? I need some soil to grow, And then the sun to glow, Water to make me wet, Air for my leaves to get, Space for my roots to spread, I’ll make your flower bed!
by: Iram Khan POEMS I always look for a poem to put on the back of art to sing or read together for shared reading. This is a great one for the backs of our puffy pumpkins we made out of orange butcher paper in the fall. See them HERE. . CELERY SCIENCE EXPERIMENT –We’ll do THIS experiment at teaching tiny tots. We added red and blue food coloring to 2 stalks of celery in 2 jars and watched to see what would happen when the celery drinks up the colored water. Here are some pictures after a few days.
Celery and food coloring experiment – you can see the celery turned red (left) and blue (right) at the tips of the leaves!
Ask what would happen to plants if people put pollution items in lakes and streams like oil, paint and car fluids and it went downstream and plants used that water to survive. Do you think the plants might get sick?
Our Plant and Seed Journals have lots of interesting activities in them like labeling plants, writing out what part of the plant we eat, crosswords, fill in the blanks, and this celery experiment.
MATH ACTIVITIES
A fun MATH ACTIVITY designing a garden for Frog and Toad for their 24 plants can be found HERE at birdville.k12. It is a math exemplar which are great math problems to solve that are challenging and fun. I will give the kids a page of clip art plants to color with 6 of each plant and they will choose the number of plants and their own totals to map out a garden “array”. The book is called Frog and Toad Together by Arnold Lobel. The chapter is called The Garden. HERE at Virtual Vine are some other Frog and Toad activities like compound words which are great to print.
Here are some pictures of multiplication arrays we’ve done after reading Jack and the Beanstalk.
Making Multiplication Arrays with vegetables in rows and columns.
I turned it into a lesson on “arrays” and multiplication. They lined their garden veggies up and multiplied the “rows” times the “columns” of veggies. Here are a few finished ones. Some did larger arrays and some just did 2 x 4. So it is a great lesson for differentiation with that open ended aspect to it. I also modeled one on the board and wrote in “column 1, column 2 and Row 1, Row 2 etc. So they labeled their columns and rows. Everybody did their totals a little differently.
PARTS OF A PLANT – MAGNET CENTER
Parts of the Plant Magnet Center Idea….
This idea was taken from a Red Butte Garden docent that came into my 2nd grade classroom and did this magnetic parts of a plant one year. I loved it so much I made one that very day! I have the parts of a yellow sunflower plant I made up and laminated and put magnets on the backs of all the pieces, along with the labels that I place out at the magnet center. Kids love to put the flowers together and label them.
I hope you enjoyed my plant and seed unit! It’s been a very popular one with the kiddos!
I love to decorate for the seasons and for all the holidays. Easter is coming up and so I put away all the St. Patrick’s day decor and got out the stuff for my Easter Table Decorating. Easter Table Decorating – I love all the spring colors and baby chicks and bunnies here on my kitchen table. My Kitchen buffet has some new pictures and cute little eggs everywhere. I always start my Easter decorating in the kitchen, and do the Easter Table Decorating there first. Gotta have a lovely Easter Dinner table, now dontcha? Next I go into the entry way and decorate the little table there. Those are two
areas I fuss over the most.
Easter Decorating is about done at my house. Yay Next I do my formal dining room Easter Table Decorating. I We got a new rustic, whitewashed, dining table and these cute blue nailhead trim chairs for the formal dining room. We hardly ever use this room except on holidays. Formal Dining Room table. I love the yellow and green and coral decor in here. I love to decorate the entry table with these cute bunnies, eggs and chicks. This sad Mr. Bunny lost his eye in a doggie-bunny stand off. Our bad boy Bruce bit it off. We called him Brucifer THAT day. snicker…
I do the coffee and end tables last. I have gobs of stuff. I have to stay away from Hobby Lobby this month! Eek!
I love this little bunny pair on my family room end table. It goes with the brown/neutral decor in there. Darling little “Chickies” and bunnies. My grandkids love this light up Easter Bunny house. Great Room table has some of the leftover doo-dads. My 3 Easter bins are almost empty! Woot!
The kitchen island always has some bright and cheery flowers of some sort. These have some egg pics along with the florals. These mercury mirror glass eggs are my favorites. I used to have more of them. But since the grandkids…..well….you know how that goes. 😀
I think I’ll add some Easter Egg picks to the greenery all over the house. Maybe there IS an excuse to go look at Hobby Lobby tomorrow after all!! I’m getting ready to spray paint these old chairs and this cute bench. But for now, they are covered in stuffed animals for the grands to play with.
Josie girl was 3 in this picture.
Easter Egg Hunt last year at our house. I love my little grandkiddos and watching them hunt for eggs.
Next I’ll do the grandkids’ two tables for Easter Sunday Dinner. I’ll have my Chicago peeps here sometime around Easter. So I will need two tables for all the 6 grandkiddos to sit. And THAT will be such fun! Happy decorating! And Happy Easter!
Springtime Poetry and Kite art and Weather Activities.
Well, Springtime in my classroom means we do some weather activities.
We write about things that happen in the spring including flowers, sports, bugs, baby animals, and all kinds of weather!
We sing the song below about Clouds to the tune of “Itsy Bitsy Spider”.
We will be starting our weather unit when we go back on track. Spring is the perfect time to start since we get all types of crazy weather in springtime.
Weather activities are really interesting and fun to kids of all ages.
We will make some Cloud Flip Books and write facts underneath each type of cloud picture. Then we’ll add the cotton balls to depict each type of cloud.
Here are the cotton ball clouds and the name of each type of cloud.
Cloud flip books…they turn out really neat.
CLOUD TYPES FLIP BOOKS AND CLOUD ACTIVITIES….
This poem I typed up and we put one on the back of our Cloud Flap Books. I always do poems on the back of art for shared reading. It is so good for kids to practice those sight words while singing. We will sing them to a familiar tune like ABC song, Jimmy Crack Corn, or Row Row Row your Boat.
. Check out the Scholastic News website for great info and pictures on Clouds. I order the Scholastic News every year. A lot of times I save the science ones to use with my units.
For more Weather Activities we read this Cloud Choral Reading and these 2 books on Clouds and the Cloud Poem too!
The Weekly Reader/Scholastic News have a product called Science Spin that I’ve saved over the years. I order that every year for an extra dollar or so per student. I use them because I have no science textbooks. I also order a lot of science reading literature and always keep it at the SCIENCE CENTER. It is the most popular center most days.
Cloudette By Lichtenheld, Tom I’ve accumulated quite an array of weather books over my 20 years of teaching. Here are a few. The two above are my favorites.
Some of the Weather Books and Scholatic News on weather we read during weather week…..
The next day we did some Water Cycle Activities. We Read a Weekly Reader on the Water Cycle that had a cool diagram.
We made these Water Cycle Wheels too…I like the vocabulary listed …we test on two of these words; evaporation and precipitation on our weekly vocab quiz. A Cloud and Weather Vocabulary word sort can be found HERE free at TPT.
I loved this water cycle activity pack that I found FREE from TPT. Check it out HERE. It was easy for my kiddos. The water cycle wheel I got from another teacher I believe she got it from a book.
Another thing I usually do is have the kids make a wind pinwheel for an ART ACTIVITY as part of learning about tornadoes and hurricanes. It is just made with a square, and we curl up each triangle and pin it to the top of a new pencil eraser with a straight pin. Get a mom helper to go around and help with this for young kids
. Then we go outside on a windy day and watch our creations twirl. This one had some cute stars and swirls kids colored on it. Print up your pinwheel on regular colors of paper (not cardstock, too heavy to twirl) and let them decorate them.
I got this from another teacher, but I’ve done them just with a square too. You do the cutting before passing them out.
Pinwheels are a fun way to start the day learning about wind and all the types of windy weather and the damage it can do.
Some free weather stationery is HERE. And HERE is a printable of all types of weather in a cute blackline from Scholastic that you could use to make your own magnet matching game like mine below. You do have to subscribe to Scholastic and pay a small fee to get these though. I bought my game below from a teacher supply store.
This was a WEATHER center game I added magnets to the back. I have a magnet center made butting two filing cabinets together at the backs. I left all the weather books at the Science Center along with this game.
I’ll also begin talking about taking care of our world and being a part of Earth Day which is coming up in a month. That will be our next unit.
I have an auto harp I play and the kids love singing songs to the music. HERE was a water cycle song we sang to the tune of “IT’S RAINING IT’S POURING”. I also have about 2 dozen types of instruments and some drums and xylophones so we never lose interest in singing to science texts.
Check out my store above to see some great deals on musical instruments. I especially love the blue boxed xylophone. It was only $20.00 and I bought 3 for my classroom. The kids love to get them out when we sing and 2 kids will pay them to keep the rhythm with bells. Here is a pack of freebies from TPT Check it out!
The Water Cycle poster I keep up while we are doing our water cycle wheels and singing our songs.
Here is another Water Cycle Song: Tune: Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush Here we go round the water cycle, water cycle, water cycle. Here we go round the water cycle, each and every day. The ocean water evaporates, evaporates, evaporates, The ocean water evaporates and makes tiny drops. The clouds condense to make a raincloud, make a raincloud, make a raincloud, The clouds condense to make a raincloud, and some feel heavy! The heavy drops precipitate, precipitate, precipitate, The heavy drops precipitate, to make water accumulate. (puddles, lakes, rivers, and underground wells) Then it’s time to start again, start again, start again, Then it’s time to start again, the never ending Water Cycle!
I have lots of books on the results of Wicked Weather. And Tornados and Typhoons come along right when we are discussing weather damage. SCIENCE EXPERIMENT: TORNADO TUBE
This is a Tornado Tube. I put 2 empty 2 liter bottles together with one of them filled with water. The kids loved coming up and twirling it around till it made a tornado. You can get the Tornado Tube from Steve Spangler Science. I think it is about $3.00 plus shipping.
If we have time a fun weather puzzle with the 3 types of violent weather types (lightening, tornadoes and hurricanes) is lots of fun. We glue them down after discussing safety during each one.
I had the kids put together a page of 3 cool puzzles; tornadoes, hurricanes and lightening. This is what it looks like before .
The last thing we do is make a thermometer with paper. Check it out HERE. We talk about hot and cold, cool and freezing weather and what temperature each type of weather would be. (Hot 80 to 100, Cool 50 to 60, Warm 70 to 80ish, Freezing 30 and below. Then I showed them lots of coats, sweaters, bathing suits etc. and asked what temperature each would be. They hold up the little pictures with the words hot, warm, cold etc.
We made thermometers and learned what temperature spring, summer, winter and fall weather would be….
Above is a fun WATER CYCLE SONG. A cool reader’s theater script I found on the story of the water cycle can be printed free HERE at Grandview Library. It is from Enchanted Learning. It’s cute and would make the kids use their imagination. These are some cool Youtubes I found that the kids like. I have a hard time choosing between them but I usually show one or two during the 2 week unit.
Weather videos from Youtube great for learning about Weather and introducing vocabulary for the unit.
Water Cycle Youtube with some fun singing.
Another cute song….on CLOUDS! In the book CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS there are lots of bad weather days, where food rains all over the city. It is fun to write funny stories about our favorite foods raining on our city in Utah.
Some Weekly Readers and Language Arts writing we d0…. Some years I’ve done the I Can poem above.
We used THIS STORY WEB to begin with problem, solution, setting and characters. A fun website that has lots of fun online graphics and activities is at Webweather’s site.
weather
hailstorms
hurricane
tornado
funnel
fog
cloudy
water vapor
cirrus cloud
stratus cloud
nimbus rain cloud
cumulus cloud
evaporation
precipitation
violent weather
lightening
Here were some of the WEATHER vocabulary words we studied for the week and added to our science pocket chart too. Weather is one of my favorite units to teach. The kids all love learning about it.
Another cute song….on CLOUDS! In the book CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS there are lots of bad weather days, where food rains all over the city. It is fun to write funny stories about our favorite foods raining on our city in Utah. 
