Mama, Do You Love Me? Eskimo Activities

We just finished our Amazing Arctic Adventures using the book “Mama Do You Love Me” as the springboard to learn about the Inuit People of Alaska.

We wrote stories after watching some videos about the Eskimos and the Iditarod and life in the North.

We called them Amazing Arctic Adventures……

Here are some of the book I bought on Amazon and a Scholastic News we read. I also bought DOGTEAM BY Gary Paulsen which has beautiful illustrations by his wife and talks about the dogsled races of Alaska like the Iditarod.

File Folder Fun had some cute matching activities to identify the animals of the arctic I copied the matching game on 5 different colors of cardstock and gave 1 set out to each table to introduce the new mini unit. They worked cooperatively to match up all the Arctic Animals. Great game! One that was too easy for my group but has homophone matching with igloos and eskimos is HERE at File Folder Fun.

Here is our finished Watercolor “Northern Lights” and Arctic Animals Adventure stories

The Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights

Watercolor Polar Bear, wolf and igloo made a pretty Northern Lights nightscape.

This video above is about 8 minutes and it shows how hard and simple the life of the traditional Inuit people are. It shows the children eating raw seal meat like candy. The kids were enthralled by it. I read them a few library books with Arctic Animal facts too.

Mama do you Love Me? by Barbara M. Joosse is such a sweet book. I have the tape too. So we listened to the tape and I had a copy of the text for kids to read along with the tape. There are kayaks, dogsleds, icebergs, lots of good vocabulary words.

I showed the kids this cool short 2 minute video on the winner of the 2012 IDITAROD RACE showing what “Mushing” is really like!

Winter Writing project called Arctic Adventures.

Beautiful Northern Lights watercolor pictures

ART A cool arctic snowy owl art project I found at Family Fun and it uses pine cones and pillow fiberfill. I have an old pillow I think I will rip open and bring to school to use up the pine cones I’ve been saving and make some cool snowy owls.

Loved this one too from LKSD.org. It gave me an inspiration for some of our our art projects below.

MATH Make multiplication problems on the dogs and eskimos and answers on the dogsleds for a fun math match-game. SPELLING Another cute art project I found and the link is HERE at Heidisongs.com. You could white out the SIGHT words she has OR put your own spelling words for the week inside the picture instead. That’s what I’m doing. I love linking my spelling activity to what we are learning about.

It looks like she used a coffee filter around the eskimo head…CUTE and EASY!

My inspiration for these lovely watercolors and polar bears is from That Artist Woman’s website where she did some polar bear winter landscapes with first graders using watercolor paper, paint and gesso HERE.

MUSIC

I have a pretty song I play in my classroom called “Northern Lights”. HERE. and I typed up the words And I have a book I read the kids called The Fiddler of the Northern Lights by Natalie Warnock HERE. Both are great. I have also collected lots of animal blacklines from color books of arctic animals, inuit people, dogsleds and igloos. My goal is to teach the kids about life in the far north; the land of the eskimos and the Northern Lights.

More books we read as we were writing and finishing the Arctic Animals unit this week. The whole thing took us 2 weeks of writing time to finish.

VOCABULARY CROSSWORD PUZZLE Puzzlemaker Online will help you make a crossword puzzle with words to go with your Arctic animal unit VOCABULARY. Here are the words I used to make mine. Inuit/people of the arctic polar/white arctic bear fox/tricky white animal snowshoe hare/white bunny northern lights/colors in the sky snowy owl/talons and beak bird caribou/cousin of the reindeer narwhal/whale with a long, pointy tusk walrus/ocean animal with whiskers seals/polar bears and eskimos love to eat me eskimo/inuit people dogsled/team of animals for racing iceberg/big ice flow Iditarod/dogsled race in Alaska Arctic/cold area of the North. OR just check out the one I made HERE at puzzle-maker.

Pretty good story writing going on here. We shared each other’s stories in class when we were finished.

Then we made a cool bulletin board. I love the watercolor below showing all the arctic animals in Mason’s story with the Alaskan huskie dog, a snowshoe hare and a wolf. They were all “friends” Nobody wants to eat each other in 2nd grade fiction!

In our “Arctic Adventures” we brainstormed possible problems living in the arctic, and some solutions to those problems. The setting was somewhere in Alaska or Canada, Greenland, or Iceland. The characters could be any Arctic animals or the Eskimo Inuit people.

I think they turned out wonderful and very creative. And the combined pictures look so pretty too. What do YOU THINK?

Polar Bear Activities, Polar Bear Polar Bear,

We did pretty watercolor pictures with winter animal cutouts added…..Link HERE to the tutorial.

At DLTKs website they did a lot of other things with Polar Bear, Polar Bear. And they also have the puppets that you can copy in black and white or color to use to make your own big book, puppets or minibooks for your students. I love their website HERE.

Everydayteaching.com had this cute polar bear art project.

I also do some fun activities with Polar Bear, Polar Bear also by Bill Martin, in the wintertime.Eskimos and characters from Stone Fox by John Reynolds Gardiner, which I like to read in the wintertime, and all the arctic animals are our characters in an ARCTIC ADVENTURE STORY.

Another link for Polar Bear activities is HERE at dltk teach.

Here at filefolder fun is a cute arctic animal matching game that would be great for a center during this unit. Some free polar bear writing paper can be found at Classroom Freebies.

Marco the Polar Bear Poem
Marco the Polar Bear white as the snow,
Sat down on the ice near the cold water’s flow.
“Lunch! I need lunch,” he said “I’ll make a wish!”
He stuck in his paw, and up it came with a fish!
Author unknown

One World, One Ocean Activities HERE.

Link HERE to see more at lksd.org.

Polar Bear Facts: Link HERE to Kidsoup

The polar bear is the world’s largest land predator.
They can be found in the Arctic, the U.S. ( Alaska), Canada, Russia, Denmark (Greenland), and Norway.
Females usually only have two cubs and they have these babies in a cave that they’ve dug in a large snowdrift. The babies are about the size of a rat and weigh only a pound.
Male polar bears may grow up to 10 feet tall and weigh can over 1400 pounds. Females can grow to 7 feet and weigh up to 650 pounds.
In the wild polar bears live up to age 25.
A polar bear’s fur is not white. Each hair is clear hollow tube. Polar bears look white because each hollow hair reflects the light. On sunny days, the polar bear’s hair traps the sun’s heat to keep the bear warm.
Polar bear fur is oily and water repellent. The hairs don’t mat when wet, allowing the polar bears to easily shake off water and ice.
Polar bears have wide front paws with webbed toes that help them swim. They paddle with their front feet and steer with their hind feet. Their paw pads are rough, helping to them from slipping on the ice.
Polar bears have been known to swim 100 miles at a stretch.
Polar bears primarily eat seals.
A male polar bear is called a boar and a female polar bear is called a sow.

LINK HERE for a copy from Mathcoach.

HERE at Jan Brett’s website are lots of pretty blacklines of all of her winter characters that you can use to do activities with polar bears as the theme.

I love Bill Martin Books! And I love doing Polar Bears as a theme in winter.

Valentines Day Card Holders

These are the Valentine Holders we do every year to collect Valentine cards in. Super cute right?

And we line them along our bulletin board in the hallway so it is easy to walk along and drop the cards in. I also have them write about what they LOVE ABOUT THEMSELVES. It’s a hard assignment for most kids. But an important one.

Start by taking a rectangle piece of butcher paper from the rolls. Then fold up the bottom to make the heart pointed bottom.

Then staple the Valentine Holder together, just the top pieces at the seams. I usually staple twice on each one.

Next, cut 2 rounded edges along the top of each one. I do all of these steps for the kids or I get a mom helper to do it a week before Valentines day.

This is one of my centers on Valentines Day….filling the hearts of your friends. So sweet!

I usually choose the colors of red, pink, purple (2 shades) and white. The kids get to choose which color they like. We make 1 for the principal and 1 for the teacher to. That’s me. LOL.

Then we decorate them with stickers, die cut punch outs, copied heart designs on colored paper etc. The kids get to choose whatever they like. Some years I buy small doilies too in heart shapes.

Finished heart valentine holders

Another game we do is HOT POTATO HEART, using a small stuffed heart to pass around. When you are out you get to choose a treat from a bag of treats.

Here everybody is being silly for the camera, playing hot potato. Then as part of this center we also make a heart bead bracelet using pipe cleaners and pony beads. I usually have bought some special heart beads of some sort too.

Hi MOM! Happy Valentines Day!

This year I found little metal penguins and hearts and star beads to add to our bracelets. Kids just did their own bracelets

I had to show you my cute decorations at home that I put up.

I love Valentines Day Decor! So sweet.

And we decorate the classroom pretty good for Valentines Day too!

The 3rd center is decorating a Valentine cookie with frosting and candy. Here are some finished cookies we made this year.

Valentine Cookie decorating

We had a mom helper at every center…thanks everybody! Here we are decorating cookies….

A pretty finished Valentine cookie.

All the kids loved decorating their cookies. They were huge so I told them only eat half before lunch.

Bulletin board with “I LOVE MYSELF BECAUSE” writings and our finished Valentine Card Holders.

Valentines Day Card Holders and “I Love Myself” writing….

The 4th center for Valentines Day centers is Valentines Bingo using conversation hearts as markers.

The heart bowl has cool prizes for winners. Everybody gets a candy prize though, thanks to
the parent helpers who each brought a bag of candy. Yum!

The Valentines Party sure was a fun day for everybody. Hope yours was too!

100s Day Fun

Thursday was the 100th Day of school. We HAD to celebrate!

Our 100s day badges we wore all day.

And our 100s Day hats of course…..Patties Classroom kids 2013 on 100s day.

And we drew pictures of what we will all look when we turn 100 years old…haha….I don’t look forward to THAT I don’t think, from the looks of it….lol…

Look what I have to look forward to! Lots of grey hair and canes and stuff.

And some kind of red problem area that will happen to my hands! EEK!

One of the assignments was to bring in a brown bag of 100 edible things and write 3 clues on the bag for us to guess what was inside. Then we put all the stuff in a big bowl, mixed it up and passed out cups of 100s Day Trail Mix!

Then I passed everybody a 100 dollar bill (fake of course) and asked them what they’d spend it on if it were real?

Here’s what they all came up with. Some of them would give to the poor. Loved that.

And many of them would buy toys for little brothers and flowers for their mom. Sniff…..

And some of them would buy a Disney Cruise vacation! Let’s GO! I wish 100 dollars went as far as they think it will go….snicker….

Poem we read with 100 words.

We read as a class a short chapter book called 100 Days at the Black Lagoon School. It was hilarious. I had a whole class set. We also read the Fancy Nancy book above and the Scholastic 100th Day of School.
I put 100s day stickers on everybody’s writing too.

It’s a lot of fun to mark the 100th day of school each year. I love doing all the fun activities.

We had a lot of fun on 100s Day!

A Froggy Fable and Frog Life Cycles

Reading Streets A Froggy Fable inspired our Frog Facts Reports and Oil Pastel Frogs

Our Reading Streets Literature book had the cute story A Froggy Fable by John Lechner last week. We decided since we had already written fables a month ago that we would write non fiction frog fact reports instead. They turned out really nice.

My kids LOVED watching this Youtube to introduce kids to Frog Life Cycles.

I am trying to teach thematically with the new Reading Streets Literature Series we adopted this year.It is my favorite way to teach. So we spent a few days going through the writing process. We wrote sloppy copies, had a teacher edit, rewrote and then did an illustration of a tree frog.

I have the kids do a frog life cycle, a beautiful art project Frog, using Crayola oil pastels, and we write an Frog Fact report too. We compare and contrast Frogs and Toads and read lots of interesting books and some old Scholastic News magazines I’ve saved on Frogs and Amphibians.

We had tadpole and amphibian as two of our vocabulary words this week, as well as all the amazing words in our Reading Streets literature book.

Our frog fact books and cute, green, construction paper Frogs from last year were cute too. Here was our finished bulletin board. This would also be a fun art project to link up with Reading Streets A Froggy Fable.

Here are our finished FROG FACT BOOKS we filled with interesting Amphibian facts. Did you know that frogs only have a row of upper teeth, and they have forked tongues? Yeah, me neither!!

Frog Puppets we made one year on sticks.

I sometimes do a cute Frog and Toad activity using the story “The Lost Button” story taken from the Frog and Toad are Friends book. It is using buttons and problem solving skills to decide which button shape Frog has lost. Check it out HERE. And we take some time comparing frogs and toads and their differences. A great Frog versus Toad comparison I showed the kids is HERE at the Virtual Vine. I also have a Weekdy Reader that compares them in pictures. A good Anchor chart idea and graphic organizer comparing frogs and toads isShe has a free graphic organizer frog versus toad printable that I copied off for the kids to fill out.

Fun Froggy counters for math and a big floor puzzle would be fun to this little unit. I love to teach this way having all my centers match the topic I am teaching; in this case FROGS!

We looked at lots of pictures of tree frogs from the rain forest and saw them in all colors of the rainbow. That’s probably why there is a blue frog here; we saw one in the Weekly Reader we read! HERE at Scholastic is a great frog life cycle printable.

We used 1/2 inch wide and foot long strips of red paper rolled around our pencils and glue under the mouth for the froggy tongues. They add a little 3D to the art.

I collected rocks last summer from Bear Lake to do this activitys . But when we made ours, some of the kids did ladybugs and others did rainbows. Next year I’ll add the wiggly eyes and the green legs underneath….cool idea from Brimful Curiosities.

Some printables including a life cycle you can copy can be found HERE at treeonline. . This is definitely a red eyed tree frog!!

5 Green and Speckled Frogs is a song we sing and use finger puppets along with. The kids LOVE singing to it HERE at dltk Kids. I have the book above and we just turn pages as we sing the familiar tune. I made the frogs with 2 layers of green felt, some yellow felt for the mouth, dark green for the eyes and wiggly eyes and glue gunned them together. I left a slit open underneath for fingers and then polka dotted them with Sharpie marker. They are fun to bring out once a year when we sing the song.

Here is my copy of the songbook and 5 little felt finger puppet frogs I made from green and yellow felt and glue gunned wiggly eyes on them. I leave them at the science center with all of my books on frogs.

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)

Another thing I like to do during all my science units is to make a “graphic organizer” shaped like the animal we are studying; in this case, a frog!

Here’s an old one I had tucked away…..no quote marks on this one, but sometimes I’ll write out the facts the kids find and put quotation marks and then “said Tommy. It helps the kids learn how to do quotation marks.

Graphic organizers shaped like the item you are studying is a great way to keep your facts and information up during a unit so it can be referred to often. Kids learn a lot better this way….with lots graphics and repeating of information.

Frog Jokes JUST FOR FUN!

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!

These jokes would look so cute written on these little bulletin board pieces, wouldn’t they? I’ve got to get a set of these!!! And a few more froggy jokes!

Frog Facts Report writing…..

I also have these Frogs on a Log addition and subtraction center that is fun. It is great for practicing skip counting by 2s and 3s as well as subtraction on a number line in the younger grades. I have the logs

all from 1 to 10. You could also just make “logs” with 1 to 10 marked on brown construction paper hand drawn “cylinders” and use frog counters below. They come in neon colors the kids would love!

A poem we sang to “Jimmy Crack Corn” tune…

Lyons 25 Note (G-G) Bell Set with Case

We sing this song to classroom instruments like Xylophones Here at Musician’s Friend as well as using some percussion instruments from my musical instrument drawer. Check it out in my music instrument store at page top.

My students LOVE playing this in pairs and it is only $20.00!! It doesn’t matter what notes they play to the beat, it always sounds pretty. Check out my store page above and you can order one. I use the 3 I bought at least once a week when we sing piggy back songs to core information poems.

Posters and Scholastic News we read about Frog Life Cycles and we compare and contrast Frogs and Toads.

Cool posters add a lot when left throughout the unit. We actually hung this one out in the hallway when we were through with our reports and bulletin board and lots of kids loiter reading the captions under the pictures.

Beautiful Non Fiction AND Literature I have collected to read to students or use for facts in our reports.

The bulletin board looks as colorful as real tree frogs of the rain forest. Ribbit….

Groundhogs Predict Weather

This February 2nd is Groundhog’s Day. For fun we are going to be doing some Groundhog Activities for the day. I thought of writing comic strips or puppet shows. But for a fun activity after math I passed out some Groundhog Gameboards. I told them to design their own Candy Land-Type game for Groundhogs Day using 10 Math Facts in Multiplication, 5 cards, 4 positive and 4 negative situations to land on.

Here’s a cute VIDEO and SONG about Groundhogs Day that my students will LOVE!

They made up their own Groundhogs Day Games!

They needed to use their groundhogs in colors to match their Groundhogs Day Gameboards….

With cards telling Groundhog consequences….super cute!

We started making Groundhog Gameboards using math multiplication facts. We copied some ideas from Candy Land (using bridges and colored groundhog cards to move to different locations on the board) but overall we made up our own fun boards and wrote out fun things as they land on colors and pick a Groundhog color card. Here were some of the CARD consequences they came up with today…. PICK A GROUNDHOG CARD GAME….1. Fell into a snake hole, miss a turn.2. Snowy avalance ahead, hop forward 3 spaces.3. Chased by a bobcat, run ahead 2 spaces.4. Go over the Groundhog Bridge.5. Fell into Shadow Swamp, skip your turn.6. You saw your shadow, stay in your den for 1 turn.

We had poems and songs on the back of our Groundhogs Day games that we read and sang too…..

And they all put 10 multiplication math facts into their games….

A CUTE art project and prediction chart I found at this Mrs. Williamson’s Blog.

We made a prediction on weather the groundhog will see his shadow or not. There were 12 votes YES he will and 9 votes no he will not. We’ll see the results tomorrow in the news!

A cute PATTERN for a Groundhog Art project is HERE at Finally in First.

Groundhog Day ART- This would also make a cute HAT with just a brown strip and the hands just to the left
and right of the head like he’s peeking out of his hole. I LOVE the teeth!

These were the first few that got finished with their Groundhogs Gameboards…..we haven’t played them yet….

They will be excited to play each other’s games on Groundhog Day, February 2nd!

They added math facts on their boards. It was fun seeing the kids color their boards and add matching groundhog colored cards with questions of all kinds on them. These kids are very creative!

We got these blacklines out of the January Teacher Helper Magazine….

HERE at ARTIST HELPER is a website where you can get a printable gameboard and some little groundhogs to copy off if you want to make your own. I got mine out of the monthly teacher helper magazine for January.

Groundhogs for consequence cards or multiplication math facts…. Everybody got 10

Isn’t this the CUTEST cupcake you ever saw? Groundhog Cupcakes would be a sweet treat today!

I showed the kids an old Candyland gameboard…to get some cool ideas….

Another site that has lots of Groundhogs Day Activities is HERE at Artist Helping Teachers.

Then we brainstormed some fun things we could write up on cards or spaces on the Gameboards

We Sang this Groundhog Song to the “I’m a Little Teapot” Tune….

We read a few stories about Groundhogs too. And we read some funny poems about groundhogs and sang songs. We also had a vote on if the groundhog will see its shadow tomorrow or not. I’m hoping we don’t have 6 more weeks of WINTER! Brrrr…… We will watch the youtube of Punxatawny Phil to find out. HAPPY GROUNDHOGS DAY 2013!

I found this Darling video about Groundhogs. Did you know they were Woodchucks? They are so cute!

Penguin Tear Art and Stories by 2nd Graders

Every year in January when it is super snowy cold outside, we get out the penguin books and magazines and we decide to write a story copying the style of Helen Lester in one of my most beloved children’s books: Tacky the Penguin.

Our Bulletin board of penguin stories and tear art penguins.

Tacky the Penguin is my favorite children’s story book of all time.

My very favorite children’s book is called Tacky the Penguin by Helen Lester. She is a wonderful children’s author. The story is all about a comical, odd bird who does not conform and doesn’t fit in. (hmmm…maybe I feel a kinship to this bird, ya think?) I love books like this because of course, by the end of the story, all those who didn’t really like Tacky, grow to love him when he saves the day. The author has written a slug of similar books starring Tacky, and he cracks me up in every single one. It teaches kids a lesson too: that just because somebody is different doesn’t mean they don’t have a lot to offer. (yeah, all of us oddballs have something in common….).

Trenton the Scientist Penguin gets himself into a lot of trouble!

And who wouldn’t love an opera singing penguin from Bangalore? Hmmm?

Love the cute “microphone” she is singing with….too funny!

I think this artist penguin has an art easle here with an abstract of falling snow…..sweet!

So we start by reading and laughing at Tacky and all his antics in several books. Tacky does odd things because he is an “odd” bird.” (It repeats this phrase throughout the story). We brainstorm other types of penguins like scientist penguins, doctor penguins and football star penguins, and I ask what kinds of things each would like to do?

I take all their crazy ideas and we do a brainstorm on the board. For example, a rock star penguin might like to play guitar on stage and sing in a microphone. A football player penguin might like to tackle other penguins and throw football spirals, or make touchdowns in an icy stadium full of screaming penguin fans. This takes time and energy. But I may have a future Mark Twain or Hemingway in my group, who knows?

The artist penguin looks so cute like he’s a little frenchie complete with a beanie and a painter’s pallette.

Weekly Readers and Science Spin Magazines I have Saved over the years and the kids read these in small groups to get more of a background on Penguins of the Antarctic. I always read them the book Mr. Popper’s Penguins during this time too. It is a chapter book my teacher read to me one year. I still remember how much I loved it!

A Graphic Organizer for listing penguin facts one year when we did a Penguin Fact Book.

I always ask them to add 2 describing words to their stories after they are done. Word choice is an important feature. We like $100 words like “fantastic” and “awesome” and “humungus” a lot better than $1 words like “good” and “nice”And our word wall is papered with $100 words the kids have come up with. So you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every writing. A cute art project using a toilet paper roll can be found HERE

Gotta love a Super Hero Penguin, don’t ya?

For the penguins we tore little, 1 cm strips of white paper into a pile of “snowflakes bits”. Then we used a 9 x 9 inch square of bright blue construction paper and glued the little snowflake bits on the bottom of the page forming a small “hill” for penguins to stand on (or snowboard on….LOL ).

Football Player Penguin…so cute.

Here is a fun webcam to watch the penguins in their habitat HERE.

Got to have a penguin from Las Vegas, now don’t ya?

We had several “Rock Stars” in the group too!

We then drew a black “potato” shape on black construction paper and tore around it. This was the body. Glue that on the hill. Then we tore a black round head and tore 2 “finger shaped” flippers. I punched out white holes from a hole puncher and went around each desk and dropped 2 holes for eyes. They glued those on their heads and used a sharpie fine point marker to make tiny black dots on the eyes. Then they tore 2 small, orange feet and cut out a yellow triangle beak.

Cute soccer ball and soccer penguin.

Snowmen and Penguin math and literacy pages can be printed and some challenge added. I’ll use the Snowmen sentences to have the kids write their vocabulary definitions and the snowmen syllables for their spelling words practice.This would be a fun center if I laminate them on cardstock to reuse them different weeks during the winter.

Last Year we did Penguin Acrostic Poems to go with our art project. It was cute too. Here are a few.

Penguin Acrostic Poems.

Then we did Footprint Penguins. They took a LOT of time. The kids kept squealing that the paint was cold! lol. The small penguins are thumbprints. These turned out cute too. But the kids enjoy making their own tear art penguins much better I decided.

Here are some of the books I read to the kids

about Penguins.

This is a cute Snowman Syllables literacy page from Live Love Laugh’s Cute K website.

Hope you enjoyed the penguin stories and art. We sure had some good penguin fun writing them and being artsy, designing them, I’ll have to say.

Layers of the Earth Clay Models

We finished our study of rocks and minerals and the rock cycle. We made crystals, painted pet rocks, made flap books on the 3 types of rocks and we read many books too.

Just for fun I showed them the 4 layers of our earth in a coloring page model and then we made clay models using a metal BB for the inner core, and 3 colors of clay for the other 3 layers. It was lots of fun. Everybody chose different colors of clay. Then we pushed a popsicle stick into them and cut out a little wedge to see the layers.

Here we have the CRUST, THE MANTLE, THE OUTER CORE AND THE INNER METAL BB CORE. I bought regular modeling clay with a coupon at Hobby Lobby.

What are the four main layers of the Earth? Check out this worksheet HERE. We had fun making a clay model on a popsicle stick.

• THE INNER CORE – It is the fourth and innermost layer of the Earth. Here, temperatures reach 7,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The inner core is also made up of molten iron and is 1,500 miles thick. It will be represented by a metal BB.

My little student Svetha did a beautiful colored model and labeled the 4 layers of the earth Here.

• THE OUTER CORE – It is the third inner layer of the Earth. The outer core is made up of molten iron and is 1,425 miles thick. It will be represented by red clay wrapped around a BB.

We had a wordsearch with questions on the back of the coloring page model of the Earth’s Layers.

• THE MANTLE – It is the second layer of the Earth. It is the thickest layer, at 1,750 miles thick. Many minerals in the mantle are hot enough to become liquefied yet. It will be represented by orange or yellow clay.

• THE CRUST – It is the outermost layer of the Earth and is between four to 25 miles thick. It is made up of sand, dirt and rock. It will be represented by blue clay.

Everybody colored their coloring page of the Earth’s layers to match their clay model.

A cool lesson plan and free worksheet on layers of the earth can be found HERE at Volcanoes Alive.
Another one I liked is at aktsunami.com. It had a downloadable fill in the blank diagram that looked fun and both of these will go along with my clay lesson plan. Another great resource for Rocks is HERE at mjksc teaching ideas. One of their worksheets I might try with my students is HERE.

I liked this one a lot. I think next year I’ll try to find just green blue and red clay.

We learned about the Rock Cycle – mostly from this THINKQUEST and a few books and posters on Rocks, Volcanos, Crystals. I have posters like these in my classroom, plus we watched the Magic School Bus video on Volcanoes. Thanks to one of my mom helpers and Andrew, her son, we had a cool demonstration of a Volcano erupting using baking soda and vinegar and a model volcano.

Here is my class with their clay models of the earth’s layers. I think they liked doing them.
ROCK FAMILY SONG Check out this song about the different types of rocks HERE.

A fun wordsearch and a little quiz on layers of the earth to go with it can be downloaded Share PDF.net. It is a little tricky to figure out how to download it, just follow the directions (type in the code) on the upper left hand side of the page. If you go anywhere else it is all advertising tricks. Another one she had was giving each student a mini snickers bar unwrapped in a baggie. They press and sit and stand on the snickers bar and it becomes “changed” like a metamorphic rock, with heat and pressure. What a great idea!

HERE is a cute printable SONG about the 3 types of ROCKS!
Check out ROCKY’s Rock Cycle. Also HERE at Have Fun Teaching is a Rocks ABC Order Worksheet we also did. It has many of the vocabulary words we studied this week.This KIDS GEO.COM website is SUPER GREAT because it has cute songs to go along with WONDERFUL pictures of all 3 rock types.

I got this cute book Lets Go Rock Collecting on Amazon. It was just right for teaching the Rock Cycle to 2nd Graders. I have the Gail Gibbons book Planet Earth/Inside Out on order. It looks good too!

VOCABULARY WORDS THIS WEEK – all from our unit. We also used them for spelling words.

1. Igneous rock- rock formed from cooled magma or lava.
2. Sedimentary rock- rock that formed when sediments were pressed and cemented together.
3. Metamorphic rock- rock that formed when another kind of rock was squeezed and heated deep inside Earth’s crust.
4. Rock cycle- the process of rocks changing into other kinds of rock.
5. Fossils- the remains or traces of an organism that lived long ago.
6. Volcano- a mountain built up from hardened lava, rocks, and ash that erupted out of Earth.
7. Lava-melted rock that flows out of the ground onto Earth’s surface.
8. Magma- melted rock below Earths surface
9. erosion – when bits of rock and sand are taken away by wind or water and packed as sediment somewhere else.
10. crystals – a mineral having a clear structure with cut faces. (like quartz)

Check out the other things we did for Rocks HERE and for Crystal Experiments and HERE. I think we
did pretty good for a first try at this unit. The gal who used to teach it retired last year and we forgot to ask her to leave her stuff, so I had to invent the unit from scratch this year. I think it turned out great!

Winter Acrostic Poems and Snowflake Snowman Art

ACROSTIC POEMS:
My favorite form of poetry is ACROSTIC POETRY. It is easy and a good critical thinking skill to get kids to brainstorm lists of W words having to do with winter.

It is always funny when somebody says something off the wall, like Winnie the Pooh, for a W word on our Acrostic Poetry brainstorm. We all have a good laugh.

Then we move on to I words, then N words on the board as the kids help by brainstorming and I will help by calling out generic words like “In, Nobody, White” etc.

Word Bank of January Words – I put up a new one each month. It
really reduces the “Teacher how do you spell….?” questions a lot!

It’s fun to then choose a favorite word from the lists we have made and come up with a sentence telling about your own favorite parts of winter.

As you can see, they all write about what THEY love about winter….or DON’T love….as the case may be.

After writing our Winter Acrostic Poems, we make snowmen out of cut snowflakes and white paint stamped snowflakes and colored paper hats and scarves, with colored dot stickers for buttons.

Winter.Acrostics and Snowflake Snowmen…..

Snowman Art using snowflakes is really a pretty bulletin board outside our classroom for January.

After everybody has the WIN of winter, we move to T words, then E words then R words. I write them as a LIST under each letter so it’s easy for the kids to choose a word to start with.

After writing our Winter Acrostic Poems, we make snowmen out of cut snowflakes and white paint stamped snowflakes and colored paper hats and scarves, with colored dot stickers for buttons.

Here are our finished Winter Acrostic Poems on our bulletin board. Super cute.

Well, the snowmen are really cute too!

I have a huge collection of Winter Books and Stories; non fiction and fiction that fill my bookcase. Here

are just a few of my favorites.

We sing Songs about Snowmen too. Here is one to the tun of Itsy Bitsy Spider.

Last year we did Penguin Acrostic Poems with footprint Penguin Art….

Here is the Footprint and thumbprint penguins painted black on blue paper. I added glitter glue stars afterwards. They

These stickers are really cute to add to the writing projects we do. I love them!

And here are our PENGUIN ACROSTIC POEMS….They were really cute too.

Penguin Footprint Art with baby thumbprint penguins too. This one took a LONG TIME to finish because I had to paint with the kids practically 1 on 1. So this year we did tear art penguins with penguin stories. They are almost done.

I have literally dozens of penguin books in my classroom library. I love all of the Tacky the Penguin ones especially.

My favorite Penguin Children’s Book of all Time. I try to do “Text Sets” of non-fiction books AND story books on the same topics or themes.

The they make their own sentences and we try to add an adjective to each of them. They always turn out beautiful and wintery sounding.

Martin Luther King Dreams

MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY

I have a black and white big book I read the kids every year near MLK’s birthday. It depicts real time pictures of how things were in the 50s in kid language, with pictures of Rosa Parks, signs of segregated bathrooms, schools and lunch counters, actual photos, and I ask over and over, “do you think this seems fair?” and I am always amazed how adamant the kids are that it is not. And I always wonder, “Why weren’t the leaders of the day not aware?”

After we read and discuss the pictures we try to come up with ideas of how we (the voice of 1) would also change the world for the better, like MLK did, without violence.

And once again I am always amazed how they come up with such wonderful ideas and thoughts. It is my favorite assignment of writing the entire year. It gives me hope for the future…sniff….sniff…

Being kind to animals was one theme that got repeated as well as keeping our world clean…..

Then we do a directed drawing creating a portrait of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Red White and Blue

with the American flag in the background and some fireworks too. It always turns out so darling.

Here are some other books I have amassed through the years to share with the kids. We also save every Weekly Reader and Scholastic News on the subject I get, and we read those as a class for background knowledge…..

I never have to encourage more writing on this assignment. The kids just go at it. It is a very emotional topic even for little kids when they find out such a good, peaceful man was assassinated senselessly. Here is our hallway bulletin board. We add the blue poem at the top as a caption.

There is so much one voice can accomplish…..we learn this from Dr. King. I LOVE this one….so articulate….many had thoughts about cleaning up the environment and about gangs

And this one…..”I have something to say to the world!” It gives me hope for our leadership of tomorrow with little kids like this today…..

More books on Dr. King in Kid language. Click on any of them to order…..

Being treated fairly, not littering, being kind and helping the poor were common threads…..

No more violence or killing was another common thread. It almost breaks my heart that kids know so much about our world and some of the things we wish we could shelter them from…..

You will love reading these….I always do. I smile and I sniff through them all. What a great job I have. I honor MLK every year and thank him for making schools like mine better today. We all look around our multicultural classroom and we all know this is a great place to go to school. 😀 We are so lucky.

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!