Cinco de Mayo Craft – Mariachi Guitars

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.
Cinco de Mayo…..kind of like our 4th of July…..

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!  

Here is some of our writing we finished on Friday….

We started our Cinco de Mayo celebration this week by doing a choral reading of FIESTA 
a book in one of the reading series at our school.  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!
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…then had the kids color them with markers as a fast finisher all week. Most of them got done with it by Friday. 
Here was a finished one with the yarn and beads added to the ends. 
Then we cut them out and glued them on cans.. We put popcorn and black beans inside and taped them shut with book tape…..then added some yarn with colorful beads tied onto the ends…
After the beading of our finished Maracas we HAD to do The Mexican Hat Dance! 
Da da…..da da……..da da…..clap clap!  Mexican Hat Dance! I had hats all over the classroom!  It was fun! 
These are the stickers I had used last year and still had plenty….I think they
were from Oriental Trading….We put them on hats last year, and this year we added them to
the mariachi guitars.

Beading the maracas from tin cans…..

 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!

Springtime Acrostic Poems and Pom-Pom Flowers

Our Springtime Acrostic Poems and Paper “Pom-Pom” Flowers

 We finished our Springtime Acrostic Poems

The students wrote about rain, baby animals, and plants…..


I have a collection of spring books we have been reading too…..including the Beatrix Potter collection and some Jan Brett, and a bunch of springtime books to go along with our study of
plants.
Books in my Plant unit that I Love:
1. Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert
2. The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle
3. Flower Garden by Eve Bunting
4. From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons
5. From Seed to Sunflower by Gerald Legg

And then we made these pretty paper flowers from 8 strips of 1 x 24 paper. You fold the 2 sides evenly  to the middle…..then put a few dots of glue and glue the strip so it looks like 2 raindrop shapes or a figure 8 (sort of). Then do that with all 8 strips. Every 2 strips of paper together will make a plus sign or cross shape.

Then after making a criss cross or plus sign shape with 2 of the strips glued together, do that with the remaining 6 shapes. Then glue a plus sign to another plus sign overlapping so it looks like an x and a +. .

 Do that with the other 4 strips too. Then glue both pieces together to get a 3D flower. The whole flower takes the kids about 15 minutes to make. Then we glue a real fuzzy pom pom in the center and add a stem and some leaves. If you want smaller flowers just cut your strip length shorter. You could also make them using just 4 strips but they wouldn’t puff out as much. Or you could go crazy and use 12 strips….maybe to decorate for a baby shower or something.

Here is our finished bulletin board…..it makes a pretty cute one dontcha think?

Well, not as cute as my newest grandbaby, and my first grandson! Meet Baby Dylan!

 Our caption is “April Showers Bring Spring Flowers”

 We finished the flowers off with a fuzzy little pom pom in the middle, added leaves and a stem.

 Here is a pic my hubs shot of 3 generations of our family…..me, my daughter and oldest granddaughter Marisa on her 6th birthday party!

Isn’t she a cutie? It was an Ariel and Nemo party. It was so cute to watch 10 little
girls having a great time with a bubble machine and lots of prizes!

And pizza, soda and cupcakes to top it off….
The games were fun;….musical chairs, Nemo hot potato while a bubble machine was going on…and
we also made some little pony bead bracelets on chenille stems…super fun!

        Kids are so much fun. It was quite an awesome week, yup it was! 

Earth Day Activities

Today is Earth Day! We learned a lot about how we can keep the earth’s environment clean.

We painted coffee filters like earth for Earth Day 2013. 

We read books on how to keep our environment CLEAN and how to reduce trash and pollution. 

And we read about Michael Recycle, and the 3Rs (Reduce, reuse, recycle). 

Then we wrote things we can do to help. 

We can do lots to keep the earth clean. 

We’ve been working on planting veggies and herbs and flowers in pots. 

We also learned how to conserve water. We can turn off the faucet when we brush our teeth! 

We can walk instead of drive in the car……

We can pick up litter at the park or school grounds….

We can recycle cans, bottles, and old clothes and toys…..
Or we can reuse things like paper bags and boxes or make them into something new! 
Like these plant holders we decorated and made out of tin cans and scrap paper.
We planted vegetables of all kinds, and herbs and sunflowers too……
Everybody chose something different…..

And we’ll be able to see the roots growing from our Root Viewer…..

We are watching potato roots growing like crazy too!

Then we played a sorting game to decide what type of recycling each item needs to go with; paper, plastic, glass or metal……
Also, here is a Word Scramble on Plants  I found at ABC Teach. The kids loved it!
Then we made Earth Day bracelets. I got the “going green” beads from oriental trading. And  HERE  are some
foam peel and stick shapes for Earth Day. You could make bookmarks on foam 2 x 4 pieces.
  We had a great Earth Day 2013! 

RAD KIDS graduation!

We were featured on Channel News TV on Friday for our RAD KIDS Graduation! It is a self defense program backed by the Elizabeth Smart Foundation.

It  teaches kids what to do in dangerous or stranger-danger situations. They learn how to fight off an attacker, how to yell “Get Back, You’re not my mom!” and pepper the aggressor in the eyes with their fingers and do shin kicks.

 We practice for 8 hours during the week with trained RAD KIDS teachers. Then they practice with the “RED MAN”, who acts out the part of the aggressive stranger. Go Brody, kick him!

Kick him, Get away! Scream “No, No, you’re NOT my dad!”

 They learn the tricks that strangers use to lure kids into their cars; “I’ve lost my dog, will you help me look for him?” Of course kids naturally want to help. Hopefully they will think twice if it ever happens with this valuable training.

 Here were our cute teachers, Mrs. Sheffner and Miss Maggie.

They were with us every step of the way, helping us, coaching us, yelling what to do!

Our principal came to our graduation, explaining the program to parents.

They learn to scream if anybody were to grab them and strategies to get away if they are grabbed by a stranger. They also learn fire and gun safety rules, the importance of wearing seat belts and a bike helmet, and how it is OK to tell if somebody is hurting you. Nobody has the right to hurt you. They start out each day reciting that.

Practicing all our moves together, “high hammer!”, “block!” 
Get him Grace! Pepper his eyes!
Yay! Cambria got away, go girl! Everyone cheers for you. It is VERY EMPOWERING!

Even the quiet, shy kids learn to yell and become fierce! I like that. Everybody cheers for their classmates!

Go! Get away! You can do it! Parents all watch from the chairs.

One of my parents is a producer for Channel 2 News. She organized the TV station to come record and do a story on us. See how cool it was by linking below!  It was a very exciting day for all!

Second Graders Learn Skills to Keep Them Safe | KUTV.com

Peter Rabbit Pop Up Books

 The week before Spring Break we read the famous children’s book The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter. 

 Did you know it is the most famous children’s book worldwide? Yes it is. I have 4 different copies from 4 different printings. Each has a different illustrator. But they all have the same text. I love this story.

 It has a moral to the story that Peter should have obeyed his mother when she told him not to go into Mr. McGreggor’s garden. He disobeys and gets into all sorts of scary trouble. Shoulda minded his mama!

 The kids color the pictures and do a simple retell and glue on pop up pictures of Peter in various situations in the garden. It always turns out really pretty.

I took a few pictures of some of them. The kids chose their own covers from pink, yellow, green or blue. Then they went to work constructing their pop up books. It only took 2 reading periods. They are pretty fast at any task I give them now. 

They are proud of their pop up books.  

Happy Easter Everybody! Hope you all get some good treats from the Easter Bunny! 

Capacity Man or Gallon Guy

We did a fun activity as part of our measurement unit. It is called Capacity Man or Gallon Guy.  This week we will be making  Gallon Robot to teach cups, pints, quarts, and gallon. I start by having the kids watch the above video. I also have a poster in the class that shows cups, pints, quarts and gallons. So we have a little discussion. Then we look at Brainpop’s game on the web during our computer time. It’s a fun interactive game you can find HERE. My students love to learn these things and play them on the ipod too.

Gallon Guy Art Project

Gallon Guy is a kind of Capacity Man.  It will help teach the different types and vocabulary for liquid measurements. Measurement is limited in our core, but since this is a gifted class of kids, I thought I would add capacity for enrichment, and also it is in our Envision Math series.  I do like this Monster Math Guy a lot better.  He has all the liquid capacity terms and you could have the kids copy him but make their own “monster” or “robot” art project just using the cups and pints and gallons in correct sizes but choose their colors and make their own monster face.  You could call it your measurement monsters.

I found this cute pic at Squidoo HERE. It looks fun and easy.

We learned that 4 quarts = 1 gallon, 2 pints = 1 quart, 8 pints = 1 gallon, 4 cups = 1 quart, 16 cups = 1 gallon, etc.
 This gives you the idea how to structure your own Capacity Man.  I’m going to use similar sizes and colors to this guy to make for my classroom. A nice blackline master of all the shapes can be found HERE at Education World.

robot kids craft
HERE at No Time For Flashcards I found this cute robot we could use as an idea of where to start on
our “Gallon Guy”. The kids could design their own robot faces for their gallon guy “robot” instead of the paper plate which looks kinda plain.  Let’s be creative with our gallon guy!  Plus we can get rid of some of our paper scraps in the process! 


You’ll need 3 sheets of paper, each one a different color to make the cups, pints and quarts.  Then I used a gray 8 x 9 piece  for his head and a blue 10 x 10 piece for his body.
This cute rendition of Gallon Guy or Gallon Girl is from Coon Dogs. 
The cutest one I found online was this one….It’s from HERE is a free download from Amber Polk at Adventures of a 3rd Grade Teacher.  It is really cute. It’s a Gallon Man with the body of a Superhero! That would be so fun for my kids too.  She has a download for the quart, pin, cup face and chest area.  I’m thinking I’ll still do the robot head.  Even though superhero is also a cute idea.   2 cups is a pint. 2 pints is a quart, 4 quarts is a gallon. 4 cups is a quart, 2 quarts is 1/2 a gallon. Kids can learn and memorize these Capacity Measurements with their Gallon Guy.

 So HERE are OUR Capacity Robots.  The kids named them everything from Gallon Guy and Gallon Girl to Gallon Bot 3000. They all turned out looking quite cute.  I like the superhero idea too but I thought my little guys would do a better job making a creative robot face with scraps of recycled construction paper.

Here was my sample and our class brainstorm for names for the Gallon  Robots. They each named their own guy. 
Teaching Volume and Capacity through this art project was great!  
Capacity Man, Gallon Man, Gallon Guy…it’s all the same…..
Some added necks and buttons to their Gallon Guy Robots too….
This one had 3D parts on the face…Love the Billy Bob “Bot”  hehe…
Yes this gallonator looks like a Gladiator, doesn’t it?  
Gallon Girl …but she’s having a bad hair day…..:
Gallon Girls and Guys – All the kids really understood capacity measurement after this activity….
SUPER gladiator!  Eek! He’s a little scary looking! 

We did 5 measurement centers to go along with our math unit in measurement this week. HERE is the link to our measurement centers.

Hope you enjoyed our Measurement Men!  

The kids learned how to tell me how many cups, pints, and quarts were in a gallon.    Her FREE LINK is HERE. It is by Amber Polk. It is really cute weather you go the superhero route or the robot route, both are great learning tools. And our robots turned out really fun!

St. Patrick’s Day Classroom Fun

HERE at Mathwire is a game I tweaked to fit my Leprechaun Day theme . It is a game called Math Parking Lot.  I did a few cute graphics on the sides and am calling it Leprechaun Lot. I don’t know what kind of cars they drive, do you?

We did these cute POTS OF GOLD with Rainbows and a leprechaun riding the rainbow. We also wrote about “A Person I Treasure”. They turned out really pretty.

Evan Moore has a cute Leprechaun Shape book that would be a really fun to use for spelling. The words will go on 6 little rainbow paper strips we will make into rings and write each word twice on the front of each ring. And another word twice on the back. They will be able to do 12 words. Then we will hang them up on strings in our room for March. Cute right? HERE at Evan Moore is the shape book link. I just used the front and back and had the kids glue them together with the rings stapled to the bottom. They look cute hanging in our room. I should have taken a picture!

We did another writing assignment this week; we made up funny similes, a type of metaphor,  to describe Leprechauns. My sentence frame went like this:
LEPRECHAUNS ARE AS ____________AS A ____________
and as ___________ as a __________. If I caught one I would trap him by…._____________. Then I would ask him for these 3 wishes; ____________, ___________, ____________. 
My only directions were that each sentence had to have a describing word as well as each wish. They turned out wonderful!     
 Here is our Hallway Leprechaun bulletin board
We wrote metaphors….A leprechaun is as sly as a fox!
Then we made leprechaun heads…and glittered the buckles
The kids curled orange butcher paper around their pencils before gluing them down. I like how somebody thought theirs needed a mustache….hehehe…
I gave them each a piece of green glittery shamrocks to add to their hat. 
Then we wrote the Leprechaun metaphors….and what we’d do if we caught a leprechaun.
How would YOU TRAP A LEPRECHAUN
 Then we wrote what 3 wishes we would wish for….
 They were very creative wishes!
Some wished for more than 3 wishes…that’s so tricky!
Here are the Pots of gold and rainbows too.  

It’s always a lot of fun on St. Patrick’s Day!
Those nasty leprechauns…..they knocked over chairs, dumped out bins and
packs of crayons and even wrote a misspelled message on our board. Some
kids even found green footprints all over the bathroom sinks! 

There is also a TPT St. Patty’s  Day prompt writing page that is SUPER CUTE! It is from Kimberly Santana and she gives it out free on her TPT page. Well, we also made LEPRECHAUN TRAPS. Check them on the next post!

  A fun 100s day chart to do with St. Patricks Day can be found at Little Country Kinder TPT store.  Hope your St. Patty’s Day was filled with rainbows!

2 Leprechaun Hundreds Chart Hidden Picture Activities for

St. Patrick’s Day LEPRECHAUNS

This week is St. Patrick’s Day. So we did some LEPRECHAUNS! These were the ones we did last year. But this years are even bigger and better! And very GREEN!

 I like to make cards for some of the holidays we celebrate. These always turn out cute. The handprints are orange paint. Then a die cut peach circle glued and the faces made by the kids. Top with a black hat, green strip of paper and a yellow square. The black inside part of the buckle is just made with black marker. Oh, and don’t forget the wiggly eyes.

Then we choose from 3 kinds of stationery and write cards to our parents. 
Some really fun St. Patrick’s Day Pinwheels can be found HERE at Craft Jr. It is one of my favorite sites for crafts. This one was milk and food coloring and a little DAWN dish detergent on the end of a toothpick. It will fizzle the milk pretty good if you only touch here and there in the areas of the food coloring.
Here we are doing it in my class but watch the video below to see how it’s done. I use toothpicks and only touch the very edges one at a time of the dots of food coloring. It will fizz and last longer. 

 They are cool rainbow experiments to go along with your Pots of Gold!  Check it out HERE to find out how to make green Leprechaun Quicksand (Oobleck).

I made this Leprechaun and Shamrock BINGO last year for the kids to play at a center. They use the green glittery shamrocks as counters. It is filled with lots of cool vocabulary.

Gotta play a few games of Irish Bingo for St. Patrick’s Day!

And we ALWAYS make leprechaun trap inventions. They are very cool and we show them off in the school library for a week. Kids have lots of fun trying to “LURE” a leprechaun to our class. I’ll post them on Friday when they are due along with some of our writing leprechaun metaphor writings.

And we graph our favorite type of potatoes in math. It could be potato chips that win this year! That’s my downfall…..sigh…..

Happy St. Patricks Day! 

Dr. Seuss Day Fun

 We read many books by Dr. Seuss wearing our pajamas on Dr. Seuss Day!

 We made cool HATS! with the Read Across America Pledge on the back!

We danced with THING 1 and THING 2! 

And then of course we had to paint THING 1 AND 2 using our handprints!

 We played games and did a few contests too!

 We had fun dancing and doing some Dr. Seuss Trivia with Mrs. Robert’s Classroom.

 Then we got some fun suckers from the PTA! They were so cool!

 Here is Brody in his cool “Trouble 2” Shirt. It looks like Thing 2!

 Some kids answered the Trivia questions for some cool prizes!

 Here we are doing the Trivia Challenge. Did you know Dr. Seuss wrote over 40 books for kids?

Thing 1 and Thing 2 also read stories to us! 

 Then we got to go to the cafeteria for some Dr. Seuss Cake cut up by the PTA ladies.

 Doesn’t it look delish? Well, it was. Thanks PTA!  Here’s our cute PTA President. She works so hard!

Rhyming Game 
It rhymes with call. 
If I trip over my shoelace I could ———(fall) 
It rhymes with hall. 
It’s round and it bounces-it is a —–(ball) 
It rhymes with wish 
You put food in it. It is a —-(dish) 
It rhymes with that 
You wear it on your head. It is a —-(hat) 
It rhymes with pat 
It’s not a kitten, it’s a —–(cat) 
It rhymes with run 
Up in the sky, there is a —(sun) 
It rhymes with sun 
If you’re having a good time, you’re having–(fun) 
It rhymes with snake 
You put frosting on it. It is a——(cake) 
It rhymes with cup 
The opposite of down is—-(up) 
It rhymes with sunny 
When something makes you laugh, it is—–(funny) 
it rhymes with not 
You cook soup in a ——(pot) 
It rhymes with say 
The opposite of night is——(day) 
It rhymes with away 
When you use your toys, you—(play) 
It rhymes with hop 
The opposite of go is—(stop)

Source: Hummingbird Educational Resouces

Handprint Thing 1 and Thing 2 for Dr. Seuss Day! 

We also read Green Eggs and Ham chorally. It was fun as tables reading parts to each other.

We made a list of rhyming word sets to write up some easy and wacky poems with!  That was lots of fun. Dr. Seuss made some wacky poems. It is easy to do!

 “I do not like Green Eggs and Ham, Sam I am!  We even had green eggs and ham in the cafeteria for lunch! We had lots of characters running around school giving out stuff. It was a blast.

Thanks Dr. Seuss. You made reading SO FUN! We had lots of good fun that was funny!

Phases of the Moon and The Night the Moon Fell

This video was the way I introduced our new Science Unit on Phases of the Moon. Our weekly Reading Streets story; The Night the Moon Fell was our literature story. It is a cute myth that describes changes in the moon.  It is a very beautifully illustrated story but maybe a bit hard for the kids to understand since it is a myth.

I also do a class choral reading of the story How the Moon Regained Her Shape legend. Both are literary stories that deal with how the moon changes shape.  Here are some other books we read throughout the week. Some are fiction, others are non fiction. I also have an Uncle Milty’s Moon in my Room. That’s fun to light up.

I have about 5 more moon books I use to teach the science. We just read one each day during the unit. Kids ask lots of questions in my class and we have good discussions. Lots of kids already have a broad knowledge of space since it interests them. HERE is a link that shows a calendar with pictures of each phase of the night moon in a given month. A fun oreo cookie activity with worksheets is a free download at the TPT store of Hilary Lewis HERE. It takes 8 cookies per kid. That’s a lot of cookies!

 I have a flashcard game I give out where one kid has the set with phase names in words, the other kid has the pictures. He picks up a picture, tries to name the phase and the other kid checks his card for accuracy. It’s a fun partner game and only 2 pieces of paper per partnership!  Laminate them with black paper on the back to keep them nice for next year. Moon Phase Flashcards are here.

I just leave these books out at our “Science Investigation Center” with 3D glasses and kids read the books after seatwork is done as a fast finisher activity.

 PLUTO ROCKS is a cool website I found where the guy who discovered Pluto’s 2 new moons will let anybody help him name the 2 moons! So we went online in the lab and voted to name the moons. There were about 12 names to choose from. Some kids got their 1st choice!! What a neat thing to say you have been a part of (about 450,000 around the world participated in the vote, as did our class)! Woo Hoo! And it coincides with the Moon story in our Reading Streets Literature series.

A really nice Moon Phases freebie  at Education.com is a great project for teaching kids the different phases of the noon.  Scholastic has a great little mini book to copy too. But the thing the kids loved best was a flip book find it HERE at Utah Ed Network. It was fun to cut, staple and flip to see the changes in the moon in 29 days.

I have the MOON IN MY ROOM above that I bought to go with this science unit. I turn out the lights and have the kids all sit around in a circle and look at the ceiling. It is a lot of fun but not so easy to store.
[SpaceUnit0322.jpg]

In my classroom I also have MOONSAND I bought years ago. The kids LOVE it. Recently I found a recipe to make your own moonsand. It is kind of a waxy sand that you can pinch into shapes and use molds and it stays that way. Lots of fun!

MOON SAND RECIPE

4 cups of fine play sand (You can buy a bag at Home Depot)
2 cups cornstarch 
3/4 to 1 cup water (less is better for spongier moonsand)
drops of food coloring to desired color

Or just buy it like I did I think at Target or else Steve Spangler Science. I get a lot of my fun things there. He has so many great ideas to make learning more fun.