This week’s Reading Streets literature story is The Bremen Town Musicians. I thought it might be fun to do a simple puppet show retell. My class are very good readers and would put a lot of drama in their retelling using lots of expression.
At Haynes Marionettes is a cute printable puppet head collection. I will use 3 of the puppets and adjust the 4th puppet to be a horse. A fun FLASH story interactive for the kids to read along with is HERE.
Anyway, we did a lot of fun acting today while reading The Bremen Town Musicians.
Education.com has a cute coloring page that you could use to add math facts to or just as a fast finisher or a retell. The possibilities are ENDLESS!! . You could also do cereal box puppets. We did those last year covering a cereal box with construction paper and making stick puppets to retell a story. Here are some pictures. The link is for Cereal Box Puppets is here for you to check it out. It’s fun to do a puppet show as a retell too. Yeah!
Some interactions and some other games can be found HERE.
Veterans Day Report Writing and Handprint Art Project
This week is Veterans Day. We will celebrate the day by honoring soldiers who have died in the line of duty, protecting Americans in the U.S.A. I will teach the kids all 5 branches of the military; Army, Air Force, Coast Guard, Navy, Marines. We will also share that they all have their own song (with lyrics) and their own cool uniforms. We listened to them and watched them march out with the flag on utube.
Veterans Day reports. I love Henry’s description of bombs “such as the smoke bomb”. Spoken like a true 2nd grader! 😀
HERE is a Veterans Day Crossword Puzzle. The kids really enjoyed. I told the kids about Mr. Moss’s dad, and how he was a flying navigator in the U.S. Air Force. He flew bombing missions in several wars. He is still alive and retired. I will also share a picture of my nephew Garrett, who was in the army and shares my birthdate with me.
We painted our right hand brown with a blue thumb and left hand brown with a red thumb. Then we did a white finger for the white tail feather and painted heads in white and a yellow beak (I outlined them in pencil first). Then we glittered red, blue and silver glitters over the tail feathers.
Veterans Day Youtube we watched. There are 2 others on my last year’s post HERE. I am the daughter of a U.S. Marine who served in 2 wars and was in the military for 8 years. He is gone now, but he is buried in a military cemetary in Southern California. I honor him this week and all other vets who serve, protect and defend our citizens at home and abroad. As a classroom teacher it is my duty to teach my students about Veterans Day each year.
I got this book for $6.00 and free shipping on Amazon and it’s a HARDBACK! Woo Hoo! I read is called H is for HONOR. It gives kids an education on lots of different things in the military.
Jill Biden’s book is a wonderful way to introduce to kids all that Veterans and their families sacrifice for us to be protected. I got a copy used for $6.00 which was hardback. It is hard not to cry reading it though, just warning you!
HERE is the link for some cute Veterans Day Bookmarks printables.
Then we brainstorm a list of things that military men and women do for us in the USA. I teach the students the 5 branches of the military; The Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, and the Marines, and what each branch protects.
Our finished bulletin board for Veterans Day 2012.
I told the kids about my dad, Mr. Russell, who was a marine in 2 wars. He was a great soldier and Marine for the U.S.A. I’m very proud of him.
We discuss how the military are stationed all around the world to protect us from terrorists and people who would harm our country. Boy are we thankful for our brave Veterans and all that they do!
They wrote about seeing the military men and women at Air Shows.
Some kids had uncles who were members of the U.S. Military.
Lots of kids have grandfathers who were in the military.
My nephew Tyler is in the Army reserves and he posted this poem last year on Facebook. I AM AN AMERICAN SOLDIER POEM. I loved it. So I added it to our cool bulletin board.
The students each chose 1 branch of the military to do a colorful seal as a fast finisher.
We had Marines, Navy Seals, Army, Coast Guard and the Air Force.
The military seals look cool, but the Eagle handprints look awesome!
We made our own themed stationery with an eagle on it. It’s easy from DLTK Kids link here.
. I show the kids several videos. Check out last year’s post on 11-11-11 on Veterans Day to see a few more great ones, as well as the tutorial on how we did the Eagle Handprint art project HERE on 11-11-11 post.
I’m proud to be the daughter of a U.S. Marine. He is gone now, but I love and miss him. And I think of him with honor and pride on this Veterans Day. Thanks pops for all you did for America! Happy Veterans Day everyone!
My students exercised their right to vote in the Mock Presidential Election in our classroom. It turned out that my students called it pretty close.
President Obama won by 2 votes. I have a pretty international classroom so it was a good cross section of American voters. I thought it was interesting how close they were to the actual results.
There are so many fun picture books on the theme of Presidents and running for President in an Election. These would be great springboards to writing a paper on “If I Were the President” or a letter to “Dear Mr. President” asking for some things kids might come up with that America needs. Those would be pretty priceless!
We were writing about Veterans Day this week so I had to choose. Maybe later in the week we can write a letter to the winning candidate.
I told the students a little about the two candidates. Then we voted. They already had their minds made up (no undecided voters HERE!)
Presidential Elections for Kids are a great way to teach some current vocabulary about how we vote in America…..candidates, elections, undecided voters, ballot, etc.
Our school happens to be a polling place too. So we walked down the hall to the gym and looked inside to see what a voting booth looks like and there were some American citizens voting right while we peeked in!
Here is one of the voting booths we saw in our school gym. Too bad we couldn’t all traipse inside and see what it looked like close up. That would have been a small riot!! LOL (my kids can be kinda rowdy!)
Here was our tally after only 6 people had voted. It’s an even tie; all votes are equal.
Here was their “official” ballot. They had to bubble in their choice, then color his picture, and cut him out. I put glue on the backs as they came up to vote. The cute graphics and ballots and things can be purchased from Hooray for Election Day TPT store item from Casey Dawson for $5.50.
I sent away for a set of Republican and Democrat stickers from Scholastic Book Clubs to make our chart with. I used red and blue butcher paper and then some scrapbook striped paper for the poster chart. A friend gave me a few poster decals and I gave her a sheet of stickers.
After 15 votes it looked like Governor Romney would take the lead……
But, alas, at the end of the day, he was overtaken by President Obama, who won the mosts votes; 12 in all to Mitt Romney’s 10. I was the last to vote. And I lost. Oh well. We Americans get behind our presidents. Good luck President Obama. I hope we have a good 4 years ahead of us!
Did you know there are not only service dogs but now service monkeys?
Tara and Tyree were rescue dogs. Lots of kids in the class have pets like dogs, cats, fish and birds.
We started by reading a few Weekly Readers on Dogs. And I had a lot of cute Dog read alouds we did throughout the week.
Then we talked about our favorite pets and why we love our pets. Most of the class have fish as pets this year. We didn’t have very many dogs or cats, but we did have a few birds.
For red ribbon week we focus on Drug Awareness and Saying “NO” to drugs. Since Red Ribbon Week is always the end of October we also have Halloween art projects that sometimes can be linked up. We then talk and discuss ways to say no when someday we are offered drugs, or a drink or cigarettes and how to creatively say no, maybe in a funny way. ANTI DRUG SLOGANS from Mrs. Moss’ Classroom…..
Here are some funny slogans we have come up with; “We won’t get caught in the WEB of drugs” with a spider web design and a cool, black spider. Or a haunted house picture with “Drugs will HAUNT you!” and the students decorate around the house with witches, pumpkins and ghosts. Here are some funny rhymes we could say when offered drugs that are kind of funny and cool; iTune out drugs,,don’t huff, don’t puff, stay away from that stuffIt’s no lie, drugs will make your mama cry, drugs druel, sports rule!
WRITING: We wrote all about avoiding smoking, drugs and alcohol.
A fun wordsearch on the side effects of alcohol can be found HERE at Too Smart to Start. There are also many interactive online games HERE too. We drew pictures of ourselves as Winners!
The students wrote about why it would be “A GRAVE ERROR” to take drugs or to smoke. Then we decorated the tombstones with Halloween ghouls, pumpkins, black cats and other fun stuff.
We read some Weekly Readers on Drug Awareness and RED RIBBON WEEK, which is celebrated all around the United States.
My favorite 2 things our school has done in the past were;. To plant a red tulip in October and we all got to enjoy them in the spring when all 600 of them came up. The kids remembered Red Ribbon Week that year. Another year we all painted red handprints on a giant piece of butcher paper and we glued them all together down one wall of the school. Each child later put their name on the hand. And another was using red cups in the chain link fence out front to spell out a drug free message for all the community to see. WEAR SOMETHING EVERY DAY THIS WEEK! This year the PTA had the whole school wear different things all week just for fun. CLEAN, DRUG-FREE, and SOAR! Monday: “Give Drugs the Slip” Wear slippers to school! Tuesday: “Stomp Out Drugs” Wear boots to school! Wednesday: “Shade Out Drugs” Wear sunglasses to school! Thursday: “Sock It to Drugs” Wear crazy socks to school! Friday: “Turn Your Back on Drugs” Wear your shirt backwards!
From Lesson Plan SOS a great idea so kids can see how similar candy and over the counter drugs are. Skittles can be confused with lots of dangerous drugs in pill form.
I saw these candies in Pill Bottles from Williams Sonoma. They were pretty cute. But don’t get fooled! These are definitely for Halloween!
MUSIC I got this song off a Red Ribbon Week Website and added a few different words to it. It’s from Dewey. DRUGS ARE SPOOKY RAP! Have kids snap or clap to the rythm of the song. Or sing it to the tune of the ABC Song. Drugs are SPOOKY! They”re not cool! So Let’s Promise to be A drug-free school They’re no treat, they’re a bad trick! Drugs can make you awfully sick. Because I think that you’re the most, Hear our friendly Sunrise ghosts: Say Boo to Drugs! Say Boo to Drugs! Say Boo to Drugs! Here is our finished writing and artwork for Red Ribbon Week.
We watched a video from McGruff, the crime dog and then we wrote our own speech bubbles for what we would say if somebody offered us drugs, cigarettes or alcohol. Some are pretty funny.
MATH – Copy a 100s chart for each child and then follow these directions. Color in the red ribbon and then give place value instructions for them to color each one red. Example. 20 + 10 = what? Color that red. 50 – 10 + what? Color red. 45 plus 1 = what? Color red. 12 +10 = what? Color red. Adding 10 or taking away 2 or 10 or adding 20 is great place value practice for kids.
We decided on all sorts of things we could spend our money on instead of yucky cigarettes and drugs. Including these cute Candy Corn Gummies and Sour Bats!!!
We had a SPIDER DAY! We read about spiders, wrote spider poems, made spider art and sang spider songs!
Here is one of our cute SPIDER ART PROJECTS.
Here is a cute video to play while making spiders.
Some cute Spider stationery I found at Activity Village will be fun for the kids to do spider poetry with. A spider acrostic is fun to do. HERE at Joglab is a link to help with brainstorming words that begin with each letter of SPIDER. The kids come up some some good ones too.
I start by writing their ideas on the whiteboard using the letters of SPIDER. They were really good this year at coming up with great brainstorming words!
Then for our SPIDER ACROSTICS we chose the best word we liked and wrote out a sentence.
Here are our cute SPIDERS ART PROJECT. We called them “SPIDERS ON A STICK!”
Then I edited all 22 kids’ spider acrostic poems and then the students rewrote them on this cute spider paper.
They turned out really great! I loved their Spider Poems!
And they really loved their spiders on a stick!
DIRECTIONS FOR SPIDERS ON A STICK 1. Cut out 2 circles that are 4 – 5 inches. 2. Cut out one circle that is a half inch less and fold it in half and glue it. 3. Cut 1/2 inch strips that are about 8 inches long (8 for each student). 4. Copy the wiggly eyes and get some dot stickers from Walmart and some wooden skewers from the Dollar Store. 5. Fold the legs 2 at a time accordian style and glue the ends down to one of the circles 4 on each side as the picture shows. 6. Glue down the head piece (smaller circle) that has been folded in half. It is sandwiched in between 2 larger circles and glue it close to the edge of the circle. Then glue wiggly eyes to the top of it. 7. Glue the wooden skewer down at the bottom of the spider in the middle and then glue the last circle on top of the skewer and the legs. 8. Add colored dots to the spider. Optional….add fangs with some leftover black paper and glue to underside of the head.
We read lots of science books on Spiders and several Weekly Readers to give us information on Spiders. And we had a big spider discussion to be sure everybody knew what they eat, where they live, how many legs and eyes they have and when they breed and how they make an egg sac.
These are some of my favorite books I’ve purchased over the last few years. I get a lot of books from Scholastic and I especially look for science books in my book orders. Lots of times you can get some cool sets of books on a topic. Those are the ones I go for most.
Kids in my class really seem to love science and non-fiction books.
Here are a few of them showing off their Spider Art Project.
I am very proud of their Spider Acrostic Poetry.
I copied off this cute compound word matching game and had the kids color it when they got done. Then we cut them all out and laminated them for a center game.
A fun Spider writing activity from Amy Lemons is super cute and the eyeballs on her spiders are so clever! I had to have some! She has a free download on her cute blog!
Afterwards, we sang some spider songs and we did a spider crossword. It was a fun day!
This week we will be making and studying skeletons! Since our district is having a short week with only 2 1/2 days we are going to be reading Halloween fun books and doing spiders, skeletons and fun pumpkin math and activities.
The Skeleton Dance
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dancing bones, Dem bones, dem bones, dem dancing bones, Dem bones, dem bones, dem dancing bones, Doin’ the skeleton dance.
The foot bone’s connected to the leg bone. The leg bone’s connected to the knee bone. The knee bone’s connected to the neck bone. Doin’ the skeleton dance.
The thigh bone’s connected to the hip bone. The hip bone’s connected to the backbone. The backbone’s connected to the neck bone. Doin’ the skeleton dance.
Shake your hands to the left. Shake your hands to the right. Put your hands in the air. Put your hands out of sight!
Shake your hands to the left. Shake your hands to the right. Put your hands in the air. Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle… wiggle your knees.
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dancing bones, Dem bones, dem bones, dem dancing bones, Dem bones, dem bones, dem dancing bones,
Doin’ the Skeleton Dance!
Lyrics from Super Simple Songs -Thank YOU!
The directions for this cool skeleton art project are HERE. They take 8 pieces of 1 x 18 white and 1 x 18 black strips. Then the head and hands and feet are copied on art paper. The folding is the hard part for kids. Glue 2 strips together same color end to end. Then glue a black and a white together at a 90 degree angle like this.
Weaving a skeleton body for art.
Then comes the fun part. Cross the white over the black in front, then the black over the white turning it a little as you go. It will always look like an L. Some kids crossed it behind and some kids crossed it in front. It doesn’t matter as long as you are consistent. It was pretty easy for them, they got into a rythm.
Skeleton art project
When they got to the end of the strips they glued the last 2 bits together. Each of these make an arm or a leg. The middle is done same way just use 3 inch x 18 inch paper to weave back and forth. Glue 2 legs to the middle and 2 arms to the top of middle section. A cute skeleton head and feet can be found at Family Education’s site. HALLOWEEN CENTER GAMES I made up some GHOST BINGOcards at DLTK HERE. They will be fun for a centers game. I had half Halloween words, half Halloween pictures.
G
H
O
S
T
TRICK OR TREAT
BATMAN SIGNAL
DRAGON
3 GHOSTIES
SKELETON CANDLE
CARAMEL APPLES
GHOULS
HALLOWEEN NIGHT
3 CANDLES
BLACK CAT
I have a dozen skeleton heads and a sheet ofskeleton heads for math. I will use it for a math game for the kids to choose a number between 8 and 12 and figure out all the addends they can make as number sentences with that number as the sum. We could also do skeleton shapes with marshmallows and toothpicks. Here is an example of a cube’s skeleton shape.
The skeleton of a cube made with marshmallows and toothpicks or clay and straws The idea is from N Rich Maths.
I have a giant skeleton on the front board with “parts of the skeleton” write on wipe off sheet to go with it that I made. It is a fun center for the students to figure out the names of all the bone body parts. I put in the first letter of each, or the first 2 letters on hard ones like W-R____ ____ ____ for wrist bone.
Activity Village has a fun downloadable game of how to make a skeleton rolling the dice and putting a part together. It also looks fun. It should be a fun day.
Who doesn’t love OWLS? We were reading about little desert owls that live inside of a giant Saguaro cactus in our Reading Streets literature story A Walk in the Desert. I thought we could do some little owl reports as our first study in our animal matrix; birds, mammals, reptiles, ocean animals, insects, and amphibians. We will cover all of these by year’s end.
First we did a KWL CHART about the things we already KNOW about owls, the things we WANT TO KNOW about owls. And we are adding things we LEARN little by little. This is a great strategy to develop background knowledge.
I think the important part is the THINGS WE LEARNED section. So I usually put that down in a separate place on a poster shaped like the topic and add to it all unit long. The kids help me!
Here are some of the books and resources I used for this owl unit of study. The kids loved hearing about Owlbert, and Gayle Gibbons book about Owls.
Owls by Gail Gibbons is a great book to start your unit with. It’s only $3.99 at Amazon.
Books: Owlbert by Nicholas Harris Owls by Gayle Gibbons Desert Giant (Saguaro Cactus) by Barbara Bash (This is a good Reading Rainbow video now too) Owl Moon by Jane Yolen
I also checked 2 desert animals and owl books out of our school library. After I read the books I put them all at a center with pictures from calendars of birds, stuffed and plastic bird models and anything I pick up that kids would be interested in and put it at the science center.
Owl Reports and Owl Art from Scrapbook papers.
After reading all about owls during read aloud, the kids helped me make a giant owl poster with all of the facts they thought were interesting. Then they decorated the cover of their owl research reports (informational text) which is what we will call them. The kids call them Owl Facts, but I had them each give their work a title. We are talking about MAIN IDEA and I find that if I make them think up a title to their work, they start to understand what a main idea is (what the main thing you are writing about, NOT the details).
Cute Quotation from THE BARN OWLS book.
Here is the Owl Printable that we used for our book cover with the title. Then we READ a shared reading of a Scholastic News I have about OWLS. After that, and the books, and a poster I made, and the Scholastic News reading, we started writing our “SLOPPY COPIES”. I told them to try and use 3 resources to put their non-fiction facts report together. More fun downloadables can be found at Wise Owl Factory.
Fun Owl cookies from graham crackers, marshmallows, chocolate chips, candy corn and vanilla wafers! OWL S’MORES! So cute!
Then I edited them one by one while they were doing their art and writing. It does get a little crazy if I have more than 3 in a line, so I usually tell the 4th and 5th kids to go finish their art and then bring me their writing. So there isn’t a waste of time.
I used the owl printable below as a cover for our Owl Fact books. Each child colored theirs and we typed out their titles and we added them to the covers.
Color Me Good has this great downloadable coloring page.
This was another cute one from Pinterest
Then we rewrite the reports after I red-pen edit them. This is very important. I found 6 kids using “there” instead of “their” and so I have my next mini lesson. I also saw very little capitalization at sentence beginning.
Owl Puppet Printable Free Here. I like to glue a poem on the back of all of our puppets we make…. Here is a cute one. A wise old owl lived in an oak The more he saw the less he spoke The less he spoke the more he heard. Why can’t we all be like that wise old bird?
So you know it helps me give kids one on one spelling and grammar help too. (Remember friend is fri like Friday and then end like the end of the story). Nothing I do as a teacher is more important than my individual conferences with kids.
Then after the 2nd writing is done on pretty stationery (an important motivational step) I usually hook final draft writing to a fun art or craft project. These students are gifted so they are motivated toward task completion. And I can compact my curriculum to include more art because of it. So we do 3 completed writing projects a week and several arts or an art and a craft.
Owl Art project using scrapbook and construction paper.
Here is our Owl art. I used cut out “feathers” from scrapbook paper, fabric, peel and stick corderoy, construction paper etc. The kids dotted some of the white and gray feathers with black markers. We used white round stickers for eyes and colored them with yellow markers and added wiggly eyes and a twig for their talons to sit on. The kids designed their own talons and beaks. It was fun to do and pretty easy. They glued finished owls onto blue paper.
Owl Art Project and Writing
Owl Brainstorm Graphic Organizer. I do this a lot for whole class writing; make the shape of the thing you are writing about and write the facts kids come up with on it in different colors.
My inspiration was from That Artist Woman where I get a lot of my art inspiration. She has a great tutorial that I used a portion of. My kids just taped on the twigs. And we used “masks” (banana shapes) for eyes instead of the 3D egg cartons. I used cardstock for the owl body so the paper feathers could be attached and not wrinkle up with glue. A few other worksheets on owls are here at Boggles World.
We made some cute insect models of ants out of egg cartons.
This week we finished our insect reports.We used insects after reading our Reading Streets Play on Ants. I had each student get an insect book out of the library, we wrote down facts in cooperative groups. Then we added those facts to our own “sloppy copies”. Everybody shared facts. Then I edited the reports.
Then we rewrote them on this nice insect stationery. I had 2 styles to choose from.
Then we illustrated them. I loved this dragonfly and all the beautiful background too…
Fabulous art here! I think Jack did this one. I gave them simple clip art insects to use as models.
Ant and Caterpillar poems in the pocket chart center….The kids had 5 poems to choose from.
There’s a ladybug poem and a cricket and one other.
We used egg cartons cut into 3 sections for the 3 body parts of the insects. They chose their own pip cleaners, wiggly eyes and made a tongue and antennaes. Some are very colorful! We made our ant models out of egg cartons cut into 3 body parts and painted.
We painted the egg cartons red or brown or black then when they were dried we added the pipe cleaners and wigglyeyes. We sang the song THE ANTS GO MARCHING 1 BY 1 HURRAH too. Kididdles has the words and click for the music too.
We made “ants” after reading our Reading Streets Literature play on the Ants and several other cute stories about the hard life of an ant. .
After we wrote our reports I had the kids draw pictures of their insects and color them.
Insect cards with facts on the back I got from the Dollar Store at the science center..
Insect Books at the Science Center
I like this one…its got character!
Gotta love a ladybug, right?
Dragonflies were very popular reports…..
Ladybug art….so beautiful! I have some really talented kiddos
Last year we made grasshopper life cycles. They were too easy. This year we did Insect reports. The wheel printable can be found at Lapbook Lessons. for a fun extension.
Some did praying mantises and others did crickets or grasshoppers.
Did you know there were 300,000 kinds of beetles in the world? Yeah, me neither!
Henry had a walkingstick and a buddy on his back!
I think we only had a few ladybugs in the bunch!
This insect was so nicely done, I was quite impressed by Kiera’s art talent!
We did a few worksheets too; a crossword puzzle and a cut and paste about insect vocabulary. The link for some great worksheets and crosswords is at Boggle Worlds.
Then we wrote reports on insects. They got into cooperative groups and had individual school library books on their insect of choice. Everybody shared facts with everybody else. They are very proud of their research reports.
Insect reports – the kids did whatever insect they chose.
Here is a close up of the ants and the reports
We are all proud of our little ant creations….
Here are some of the Cooperative Group’s posters….everybody added facts to the posters of Ants, Grasshoppers,, Dragonflies and Fireflies, Beetles and Ladybugs, and Honeybees/Wasps/Yellowjackets.
Insect posters….we kept adding to all 5 of them the whole unit long….
Science Center microscope with metamorphosis of a caterpillar slides….
Insects hanging out at the Science Center of our classroom….
My SCIENCE CENTER has insect books, write and wipe off activities and these insects with viewers. It also includes the microscope with slides of insects morphing. It is a popular center.
Great job everybody. I loved teaching you all about INSECTS!
