Patties Classroom – Page 9 – Good Stuff for Elementary School Teachers

Martin Luther King Activities for 2nd Graders

Every year I read the kids a book on Martin Luther King. It is a black and white BIG BOOK with lots of pictures of what was going on during the 50s and segregation. It is interesting to show kids pictures of “white drinking fountain only” signs and ask them “IS THIS FAIR?” and they are unanimous in their disapproval. I wonder why the adults of the day couldn’t see it for what it was.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Writing Project…

Martin Luther King….we wrote what great things he did for the Civil Rights of others….

Cute paper I found this year…..too bad they didn’t have a capital I like they should have!

I’ll have to change that next year….. my bad……

Then we did directed portrait drawings of Dr. King…..check them out!

Directed Drawings of Martin Luther King….for art…..

Martin Luther King freebie paper I found a cute one at TPT. Thanks to Flying into First Grade’s blog. It was really cute paper and a graphic organizer too!

Check out Flying into First’s TPT freebie here.

A cute song to sing is HERE at Cupcake for the Teacher. It’s sung to the

tune of “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands”.

Every year I read the kids in my classroom a non-fiction big book . It has pictures depicting the civil rights movement in black and white photos, taken during the time of King’s peaceful protest era.

Here is the ISBN number. It is an old book I was given by a retiring teacher 20 years ago.
It is always amazing to me that the kids are shocked by the unfairness they see in actual primary source photos of the time. When I show them the pictures of “colored bathroom only” signs in the book, or the “blacks sit to the back of the bus” signs, and I ask them, “Do you guys think this is fair?” they always will unitedly chorus in the negative.

Then we draw a little American flag on a pole on one side of him, and a few little fireworks on the other side. I teach them to do the fireworks just starting with an X and then adding a few, longer criss crosses to the x.

When we are about done, I ask the kids to print at the top in Blue or Black crayon or marker: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (I have to teach them what Jr. means, they always want to know).

The book has pictures of the police using firehoses or dogs on people they think are “out of order” and women shouting at black kids entering the first southern desegregated schools. Nobody in my first grade class thinks these things are right. It still amazes me that adults of that time thought they
were okay.

So I think this little bit of history is important to share. To get kids as young as six thinking about ways to protest things they don’t like, in a peaceful, yet effective way is a good thing. Especially in this era of lawsuits and bullying, and crazy violence. For kids to see that there are lots of things in this world, run by adults, that still are not fair is important, in my opinion. And to show them that one calm, but focused voice, can help create change. And even kids as young as six can see the differences between things right and things wrong.

So we do a portrait of Dr. King and put it on the bulletin board along with writing projects by the students about what their “dreams” for the world would be. It’s always funny to see things like: “I dream that there will be no more bad guys”….and stuff like that. But it’s good to get kids to synthesize what they learn in a new way. So I do it for that reason. Hey, world peace isn’t just for the Miss America Pageant you know!

These portraits always turn out really resembling Dr. King. The key is to model each and every step and explain as you go. Some of them turn out a little comical, like a Mr. Potato Head, but others are really artistic and well done. I can always spot my budding artists by January of each new year.

We recite this poem together….and try to memorize its message!

Last year’s group did little crowns with “I Have a Dream” for the world messages…..

Thanks Dr.King for teaching us how one voice can change the world!

Snowman Art and Winter Acrostic Poems

We’ve had a lot of snow in Utah lately. It is fun to write winter acrostic poetry and make Snowflake Snowmen, on a particularly snowy day in January .

Our cute Snowflake Snowmen turned out great!

Have you ever heard of Snowflake Bentley? He did a book in the early 1900s of snowflake pictures from an old fashioned camera. He found that no two were ever alike. I showed the kids the book about his life and the book of pictures he published of hundreds of snowflakes. I own both of these books. They are awesome!

Then I teach the kids how to make a snowflake from a circle the parent helpers cut out for us. I think we cut them down to 5 and 4 inch circles this year so our art projects could be smaller than last year.

Snowflake Snowmen and Winter Acrostic Poems

ACROSTIC POEMS:
Then after that we make a giant list of W words, then I words, then N words on the board as the kids help by brainstorming. Then we start writing the acrostic phrases or sentences (depending on how you want to differentiate) or lower grades could just copy the word.

Winter Acrostics

Snowflake Snowman Art

Snowman Bulletin Board turned out cute!

I had the kids not cut on the outside of the circles so the outlines would stay intact.

We did a lot of brainstorming of W I N T E R Words before we began our sloppy copies.

Then we made chose a hat color and some centimeter squares to make scarf and button patterns. Most kids also added a pattern above the hat brim too. Then we made swirly designs and snowflakes with crayons on the light blue paper. Some kids added some doily snowflakes and glitter glue too.

The winter acrostic poetry turned out really pretty. We just make a big brainstorm on the board of all the W starter words for good sentences. Then everybody chooses one and writes a sentence on sloppy copy newsprint lined paper, then I edit their writing.

Then I gave each child a 1/2 inch strip of brown for the twig arms. They cut off 2 little bits for the 2 “fingers” and add them on the ends of the “arms”.

I edit with the help of a parent (30 kids takes awhile) and then the next day we rewrite them on this cute Winter Acrostic paper and decorate snowman and the snowflakes on the paper. Decorative paper is a real motivator to finish for young children.

I have a monthly WORD BANK I put up with words the kids might use in their winter writing…..Each month the shape changes as well as the words.

Word Work Activities and Poetry/Songs
At ABC Teach there are some cute snow similes to start everybody thinking about great words to describe the winter season. It is a great warm up. Here’s a poem we read as a chant or rap using drums and bongos and snapping our fingers.

Snowflake Poem we rap to…..

These 2 songs are really fun to sing. I have percussion instruments and 3 xylophones that the kids can play to the songs. It’s a good way to do some shared reading with an element of fun in rereading the text.

Snowflake Snowmen

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.

Winter Acrostics with sentences that remind us of winter things….

Finished bulletin board of our snowflake snowmen and winter acrostic poems.

Some of the snowmen books I read to the kids during the Snowmen project. I have about 8.

For spelling this week we made a snowman and wrote our spelling words on his belly. I don’t know what those boots are for though, nobody did! Who ever heard of a snowman with boots?

Spelling Activity using a snowman…..students wrote their words on the belly!

Winter Poetry was fun to do in snowy January

It’s a favorite art project of mine because it has so many dimensions to it with the glitter, the scarf and buttons, the cut out snowflakes too.

This song is fun to start out standing in a squat and then growing as you sing “tall, tall, tall”, and then when you are melting go back down to the squat slowly while singing “small, small, small….”.

I had to include this cute picture of my grandbabies with their daddy constructed snowman. Cute right?

SHAVING CREAM FUN:
Another fun “snow” activity I do in January is to bring out shaving cream and put about a golfball sized lump on top of everybody’s desk. Then I read them Katy and the Big Snow. They are the snowplowers (using their fingers) as we travel to Geopolis and do North, South, East and West using a N or S or E or W written in the “snow” which is the shaving cream.

By the time the story is over the room smells great and the desks are really clean. We wipe them off with a paper towel (not much cream is left after mooshing it all over for 5 minutes!). It is always a fun winter activity we do. I just ordered the Fancy Nancy winter book. It looks like fun too.

Here are some of my January classroom decorations I put out in place of all the cute Christmas ones.

January Snowmen decorate the classroom today…..

Here is my Winter bulletin board with just a few of the songs I put up to sing throughout the month of January.

Last year we did a fun art project using a 7, and 6 inch cut out circles of white, and a 5 inch circle head for “SNOWFLAKE SNOWMEN”. After showing the kids how to fold the snowflake circle into a pie shaped piece and cut the edges into SNOWFLAKES we make our snowmen on LIGHT BLUE paper. I had 30 students this year so I cut down the sizes to smaller 3, 4 and 5 inches and used 10 x 13 paper instead of a whole sheet of construction paper. The snowmen still filled 3 bulletin boards!! lol.

The hat for the SNOWFLAKE SNOWMAN is 31/2 square in black with a 1 x 5 inch brim for the cute little craft.

We had lots of fun making snowman art and stamping snowflakes with white paint…..this year we made our snowflakes out of white crayon and star shapes with lines on the ends.

Cutest winter bulletin board of the year I think…..now we just have to write our Snowman Stories!

Here is a sample!! Then we add snowflakes using white paint and some stamps we got at Lakeshore Learning Oriental Trading also has some cute ones Here.

Lastly the kids did a pattern on the scarf using small squares of construction paper about a centimeter size. This year I got some metallic colored squares and I think that might make a more glittery looking scarf.

Snowman Story paper…

Then lastly we do snowman stories just for some creative writing fun. Each snowman must have a personality. So they have to be really good at some kind of snowman talent. Then they have to also have a problem, a solution, a setting (city somewhere in the U.S.) and lots of describing words.

I’ll post our SNOWMAN STORIES very soon. They are always very fun to read.

Well, the snowmen are really cute too!

Germs and Colds and Sneeze in Your Sleeve Puppets

We finished our Healthy Lifestyles unit. It includes nutrition, exercise and germs and cold prevention. Oh, and getting enough sleep. The last day of activities we did was learning about Germs and how we can keep our hands clean and using tissues when we cough so we don’t spread our germs around to others in the classroom. Here are some previous Nutrition activities we did.

Paper Bag Puppets for teaching about Germs, Colds and Flu Season and Staying Healthy!

The Puppets had a “Ahh-Choo” poem attached and we sang songs to our puppets.

Germ Buster Girl Puppets for teaching about Cold and flu prevention….

Boy Germ Buster Puppet for teaching about germs, and Cold and Flu prevention….

I read the kids 2 books; Germs Make Me Sick by Melvin Berger, and SHERM the Germ by Bobbi Katz.

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Germs, Germs Germs, and Germs Make Me Sick are 2 really cute books. They are favorites of the kids too!

2care2teach has a cute poem. We usually use a poem with our art and find a familiar tune to sing it to (ABC song, Itsy Bitsy, Bingo, Jimmy Crack Corn etc.). Kidscoop had a really cute song to the tune of twinkle twinkle.

The Sneeze Song

(Tune: “Pop Goes the Weasel”) (Check it out HERE)

When I have to cough or sneeze

This is what I do. (Point finger.)

I hold my elbow up (Hold up elbow in front of face.)

And in to it kerchoo! (Pretend to sneeze in elbow.)

KKEERRCCHHOO! (Say this line as you dramatically pretend

to sneeze in your elbow.)

HERE at Livespeaklove I found a really cute ACHOO! BINGO game that has words that have to do with staying healthy (cover mouth, wash hands, sleep, exercise, healthy food etc.). I use this for a center game the week we study health.We made some paper bag puppets to go with out GERMS unit.

At First Grade Fever she had these cute tooth fairy puppets the kids made that gave me an idea for our puppets. I may do a cuter one next year. I have 30 students this year though so I’ll keep it simple for now.

A freebie I found on Teachers Pay Teachers that had a cute apple experiment and some printable true/false quizzes is HERE at TPT. It’s made by Cindy First Grade A-Z. I printed up page 2 and 3 of this 4 page minibooklet on Germs HERE at TPT. It has a fun lotion and glitter experiment for kids to see how germs spread. Then they wrote about 5 ways they can keep germ free!
Hooray for Handwashing storybook
Have you tried Glo Germ with your students? It is kind of like that stuff you use to get from the dentist that you would chew and it would show you all the places you had missed when you brushed… Glo germ works the same way. I think mine cost about $8.00 for the size below on Amazon.

I bought some of this glo germ in yellow for the black light experiment. It is fun and gets the message out how important it is to handwash and sneeze in our sleeve, not our hands, so we don’t spread sneeze or cold germs. But you could do the lotion and glitter experiment just as easily….

It sticks to germs and then they show up with a black light! It’s a great way to help kids understand how important it is to wash hands thoroughly to get rid of germs!

Shake hands with the first student and then the best demo is to have that student shake hands with a second and so on….the Glo Germ trace will usually go to 5 to 6 students.

You can get a small black light for less than $10.00 check it out HERE.

I got a lot of free curriculum from PUFFS Tissues from Proctor and Gamble way back in the early days of my teaching career. But I couldn’t find a link anymore to the teachers free stuff. But I did find an old lesson plan that I got a few good ideas and websites from. The link is HERE. A fun “Germinator” online interactive game is Here.

We also talked about how exercise can keep you healthy during winter months and NOT to become an inside couch potato. We did dodge ball for P.E. then listened to our heart beats with real stethoscopes to see how much faster they were beating after we worked out. We talked about healthy eating and getting enough sleep last month too when we studied nutrition and wrote our Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly innovations. Link is HERE at Patties Classroom.

The kids wanted to listen to each other’s heartbeats too. I have 4 class stethoscopes so we got around to everybody by the end of P.E. Here were the cute puppets we made and added the Ahhh-Choo Poem to the fronts.

“SNEEZE IN YOUR SLEEVE or ON A TISSUE” PUPPETS…..

We sang the Soap and Water Song to my percussion instruments. Look in my STORE above and check out the xylophone packs. They are only $20.00 and the kids ADORE playing them to music. They are also really sturdy. I’ve purchased 3 for my class.

We read 2 Weekly Readers I had saved from Years ago…..back in the dinosaur age when I started teaching….snicker….

And we also read some fun books about keeping healthy. We are about done with our health unit!

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This is a great book to read when you are done with your mini unit; HOW DO DINOSAURS GET WELL SOON! It is a really cute story the kids love it!

The Jane Yolen Dinosaur books are really funny and a quick read that kids LOVE! This one is about taking care of a cold.

It is always a short but fun 2 day mini-unit during the winter months. Hope you all are staying healthy this sneeze and cough season! Don’t forget to drink lots of water and exercise too! Keep Well!

Reindeer Art and Santa Letters

Reindeer Art

We wrote Letters to Santa before we left for Christmas Break…..

They were really cute how they asked lots of questions about the reindeer, what kind of cookies Santa likes you to leave, and stuff about Mrs. Claus.

These 3D reindeer had the cutest little, red noses and long, black eyelashes!

They also thanked Santa for things he brought them last year….so SWEET!

I remember wanting an EASY BAKE OVEN for Christmas! Some things never change do they? lol

Here’s 3 of my cute little Grandkids visiting Santa on his lap at the Lindon Polar Express one night last week. It was so cold, but a lot of fun too. Check out my blogpost HERE from last year.

Here I am waiting to board the Polar Express…..I think it was 18 degrees outside. Jeez it was COLD!

Here we are all watching the movie Polar Express before riding the train. It’s a fun thing to do in the Lindon community. My brother-in-law is one of the train conductors and gets us an appointment to ride. He’s a lot of fun too.

My hubs is in the back and my daughter is in the front of the train with her 3 kiddos. I’m snapping the picture. It was fun going to see Santa on the Polar Express!

And here is a cute little letter my first grade granddaughter wrote to Santa and left under the tree. It was cute how she had a red and green pattern going….notice the corrections she made and let Santa know what color those pattern letters really should be….

Rudolf and all the writing made a cute bulletin board for December in the hallways!

I hope everybody got what they really wanted this Christmas…..I know I did….. I had company, a few parties to go to, lots of chocolate for me to eat, and watched Christmas Vacation and It’s a Wonderful Life. I still have to watch ELF!!

And I ALWAYS take a picture of all of my shopping, wrapping and finished work right before everybody rips into it and all that effort is but a memory. lol. I should have taken the “after” picture, which isn’t quite as pretty. haha…

I love this time of year. I think this was my favorite moment of it all. Grandkiddos are the bomb! So are grandkids in tutus. mmmhmmm…. Have a HAPPY NEW YEAR everybody!

There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly….Food Pyramid and Nutrition Activities

This past week we’ve been learning about the 5 food groups, the food pyramid, healthy choices for exercise, food, and washing our hands so we don’t get germs or sicknesses spreading around the classroom. Here are a few fun activities we did!

First we read the story There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly….after which we made our own!

I put the story at the listening post this week with the felt lady and animals activity and it has been super popular! Go figure. I used this store purchased felt lady to design our paper reproductions.

I drew this Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly freehand! Woot! The animals are below along with the rhyming text.

The kids had fun reading the story text along with dropping the corresponding animal down the lady’s mouth.

I had a parent helper cut out the “tummy” and put a piece of old overhead projector acetate behind it and tape it up. Then the kids colored them and we backed them with colored paper, leaving a little place from her hand down to her hemline open to retrieve the “animals”. They colored animals that went along with the story.

I also typed up the words to go along with all the animals in The Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly….

These have been very engaging for the students. They really loved doing this activity to go along with our Healthy Lifestyles unit.

I am going to have the kids write their own “I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a ______” innovations. I have typed up a story frame. We will work on it for a few days and I can’t wait to see what creative things the kids come up with!

Everybody’s Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly looked a little different.

Then we did a fun activity putting different foods in the “Old Lady Who Swallowed Stuff’s” belly. I had each table of kids discuss what should go in the trash and what she should eat to make her healthier. We talked about things that we should eat sparingly like cookies, french fries and candy.

We have read all of these innovations on the original “There Was an Old Lady” books. Some of them were really funny. i There was an old lady who swallowed a fly

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly

This Activity was really cute for a CENTER GAME. Use a MRS. BUTTERWORTH’S empty syrup bottle to “feed” the old lady words using beads and pipe cleaners. I saw a cute picture of it on Pinterest. It’s from Housingaforest.com.

Some of my collection of “There Was an _______ Lady who Swallowed _______” books.

Check out another book title THERE WAS AN OLD LADY WHO SWALLOWED SOME CLOVER and activities to go with it HERE. She makes the old lady to “feed” by placing this picture in front of an empty tissue box.

We could have been saving tissue boxes all year. This would be cute to do in March to go along with St. Patrick’s Day! Another one I found is HERE at kidzclub. It is free and printable. Click here then go to black and white. Don’t click on the picture. Another activity I had for a fast finisher is this wordsearch HERE from Buildingstrongchildren. The book text you can use to sing along is HERE at bogglesworldesl.com. Just click on the old lady page links. Cute pictures too! A MATH roll and cover “Old Lady” is HERE at TPT.

Then we watched this Youtube on Healthy foods and we listened to a 5 a Day song tape from DOLE while we worked on coloring and cutting out our Little Old Ladies. HERE are a bunch of printables for kids on Healthy Eating topics.

We read this reader’s theater on Mr. Energy and how he keeps his body in good shape by eating right. We didn’t have time to do the puppets.

Here is a list of book to read kids to help them understand the good things we can eat to make us healthy and fit. Check them out HERE at Babble.com.

We read this scholastic news, watched the Magic School Bus video to go along with it. Then we used my two classroom stethoscopes and listened to our own hearts beating after we came back from P.E. on Thursday. Some of the kids listened to their neighbor’s hearts. They were amazed!

Stethoscopes for listening to our healthy hearts and pedometers to count our steps at recess. We talked about how important exercise is and how eating lots of fatty, fried foods can line your arteries with yucky goop called cholesterol that can block your blood’s flow from your heart and cause heart attacks. Everybody had a relative who had heart issues. They were very interested in heart health! Amazing!

Well our Government is going from the food pyramid to the “food plate” thinking it will be easier for kids to understand. Maybe it is. Check it out above. A fun online interactive game we will play in computer lab is HERE.

We colored this “food Groups” worksheet and stapled it and the foolish old lady on the back of their Little Old Lady health projects so they could read them to brothers and sisters at home and replay and act out the story.

This was a very funny poem about a lady who overeats on junk food that the kids LOVED! And we also read the riddles and they figured out what food groups were the answers.

A fun center that the kids loved was my felt food pyramid with felt pieces to place in the right places. Then they each made their own pyramid for their desk as a fast finisher this week.

The Food Pyramid Flannel Board activity center……

Good nutrition Worksheet we did this week.

We also used the vocabulary words Nutrition and Healthy this week as part of our 10 vocabulary words. Everybody got 100% on the test too! Woo Hoo!

These were really cute made up on the kids’ desks….I think I got this from 5 a Day at Dole. Check out Dole’s Website HERE. I’ve gotten lots of free activities from them because I asked.

We will keep writing our innovations on the book The Little Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly and post them next week when we are all done! I can’t wait to see the finished stories!

Thanksgiving Pilgrims and Indians

This week we read a few reader’s theaters on the Pilgrims and Squanto and the Indians. Here are a few puppets HERE I found to make to go along with the readings. We also usually do a few Scholastic News’ on the subject of the Pilgrims and Mayflower too.

These Social Studies books will show kids of today how much more we should appreciate what we have in our lives and how much easier they have it than the Sarah Morton’s of the time of the Pilgrims.

Great Social Studies BOOKS on Pilgrims
Sarah Morton’s Day: A Day in the Life of a Pilgrim Girl by Kate Waters
Samuel Eaton’s Day: A Day in the Life of a Pilgrim Boy by Kate Waters
Story of the First Thanksgiving, The by Elaine Raphael
Story of Thanksgiving, The by Nancy Skarmeas
First Thanksgiving, The by Linda Hayward
Thanksgiving Is… by Louise Borden (This is a good one for a writing project)
First Thanksgiving, The by Garnet Jackson
If You Sailed on the Mayflower by Ann McGovern
Story of the Pilgrims, The by Katharine Ross
Thanksgiving Day by Gail Gibbons
Thanksgiving Pilgrims.jpg
Make up these finger puppets (BELOW) for the kids to color, cut out, and then sing this tune while they move them around and dance to the music.

By the way, LOOK what I found at the Dollar Store! Dancing SOLAR Pilgrims and a Turkey! Super Cute! They are solar powered so they dance to the light of a lamp. The kids loved them.

Solar Turkeys I found at Dollar Tree….SO I put them on my kiddie table.

The nearby lamp had them dancing the whole dinner through. We laughed and laughed at them!

My grandkids loved them too. I’ll have to show them to my 2nd graders too!

Oh Dear Pilgrims (Oh Susannah Tune)

Oh they left their homes in England and prepared to take a trip.

And they climbed aboard the Mayflower and sailed upon that ship.

The year was 1620 on a cold November Day

By the shores of Massachusetts they arrived in Plymouth Bay.

Oh Dear Pilgrims

Did seek to worship free

So you came here to America for Opportunity!

The first year was the hardest, but your neighbors all helped out

They met Native Americans with Squanto as their scout.

They helped the Pilgrims plant their crops, of pumpkins beans and corn.

They all shared in a harvest feast and Thanksgiving Day was born.

You could also do the Turkey Trot. (Hokey Pokey with different words)

Turkey Trot(Tune: Hokey Pokey)

You put your right wing in.
You put your right wing out.
You put your right wing in,
and you shake it all about.
You do the turkey trot
and you turn yourself around.
That’s what it’s all about!

Additional verses:
Left wing,
Drumsticks,
Stuffing (Stomach)
Wattle (Head)
Tail Feathers (Bottom)
Turkey Body

A fun choral reading about what kinds of foods they ate on Thanksgiving is HERE at Scripts for Schools. Another activity I did last year was making Indian girls and boys and writing about what their day was like. Check them out. Another puppet idea I found with BOTH pilgrims AND Indian boys and girls was Here at Making Learning Fun.

Native American children and how they worked and played….we did these last year. This year we ran out of time since we only have a day and a half this week before our Thanksgiving 3 day break. Woo Hoo!

We decorated them with fringe on the paper and symbols and chevrons and lots of dots and triangles to make them look like Indian pictograms.

Scholastic has a few good lesson plans for K-2 and a printable compare and contrast HERE. Just scroll down to the bottom for Thanksgiving Then and Thanksgiving Now sheet. We did this just as a whole class brainstorm. Another one to use for individual students is this flip book HERE from Lakeshore Learning.

Thanksgiving Activities and Multiplication Turkey Feather Arrays

Well this week is Thanksgiving. I like to have the kids do a cute turkey art project and write about what they are thankful for….usually.

Multiplication Array activities using art turkeys.

So as we are just learning the beginnings of multiplication, I decided to use the rainbow turkey feathers (rectangles of colored butcher paper off the rolls) to do multiplication “ARRAYS”.

Artistic turkeys and ways to use the feathers for more than just some colorful art!

Stuffed Turkeys with multiplication “array” feathers.

So I cut out 16 inch strips of 6 colors of the rainbow in butcher paper. We had red, orange, yellow, green blue, purple, pink. The kids had to draw columns and rows and make a rectangle, like I did on the doc camera. Then they had to count the resulting squares and come up with the 2 factors for their arrays.

The Thanksgiving Cupcakes for a party we hosted at school. I made Scarecrow Cupcakes and Turkey Cupcakes and topped them with some candies and paper toothpick toppers. They were so cute!

Turkey and Scarecrow Cupcakes. More TURKEYS! Yay!

These turkey cupcakes were easy to make. They were pretty tasty too for our Teacher Holiday party last Friday. If you want to see more check out my cooking blog called Weekday Chef.

Here were some more turkeys another 2nd grade teacher made for our party. These are cute too with white chocolate chip eyes.

Here are some of my class Making their Multiplication arrays on our turkey’s rainbow colored feathers!

We started with pretty easy arrays, 3 x 3 and 4 x 1.

Then the kids just did their own multiplication arrays after we did 3 together……some they did were simple, some were more advanced. (Differentiation at work!)

The kiddos got pretty good about coming up with the factors and products on their arrays using our turkey feathers.

Then after we were done making 6 arrays on rainbow colors, we rolled them into a raindrop shapes with the arrays inside, then glued them to the back of our brown stuffedturkeys and added the things we were thankful for on the top of the feathers.

Cute Thanksgiving turkeys with “reasons why we are thankful” written on tops and multiplication arrays inside the colorful loops!

Then we glued the feathers onto a stuffed (with newspaper strips)8 inch brown circle of butcher paper which was the turkey body.Then we colored turkeys and glued them onto the brown bodies. They turned out darling! They made such a colorful bulletin board too. And the kids had an easy time gluing on the feathers.

You can barely see the arrays on the insides of the colorful feather “loops”. Then on the outside we wrote 1 thing we were thankful for on each feather.

Then we glued the “stuffed” brown butcher paper circle bodies to these colorful turkeys we did for art and saved them. Here is a particularly artistic one. I loved it!

Then we wrote some Turkey Acrostic Poems to go with our artistic multiplication turkeys…..

Then we did an acrostic poem with the topic of Turkey. They had to come up with anything that reminded them of Thanksgiving Day. We had a big brainstorm on the board of all of the ideas the kids had for first words to make up T-U-R-K-E-Y poems.

After we brainstormed beginning words for our Thanksgiving Time Poems….

I was pretty impressed with words like TRADITION, RELATIVES AND EXTENDED FAMILY. Yup! These kiddos are very creative writers!

Turkey Day Acrostic Poems……

Kids are all doing multiplication arrays on the “turkey feather” papers for our Art Turkeys.

I think they love this little Thanksgiving Turkey Art project. What do you think?

We turned the arrays to the inside of the loops and on the outside wrote one thing we were thankful for on each feather. (so original…I know!)

We made little pinecone turkey placecards last year when I had a small class. If you want the tutorial it is HERE. They sure are a cute craft too! This year I didn’t get very many pinecones dropping off my tree. Maybe I’ll just have to make them with the 3 granddaughters age 3 to 7.

This is a fun song to sing on TURKEY MAKING DAY!

Albuquerque, He’s My Turkey!
(Sung to the tune of ‘Clementine’)

Albuquerque he’s my turkey
Oh he’s feathered and he’s fine
He wobbles and he gobbles
And I’m awfully glad he’s mine.

He’s the best pet You could ever get.
Better than a dog or cat.
Albuquerque he’s my turkey
And I’m awfully glad of that.

Albuquerque he’s my turkey
He’s so cozy in his bed
Because for Thanksgiving dinner
We had scrambled eggs instead.

I thought later how fun it would have been to “become” the turkey and write a persuasive essay on why you should NOT be eaten for Thanksgiving. For Read Alouds We read funny books like
T IS FOR TURKEY
And….A Turkey for Thanksgiving. Then we will do the Hokey Pokey (Turkey Pokey) for P.E. How do you think they will like THAT? hehe….

TURKEY TROT (Tune: Hokey Pokey) Great for P.E. Thanksgiving Week!

You put your right wing in.
You put your right wing out.
You put your right wing in,
and you shake it all about.
You do the turkey trot
and you turn yourself around.
That’s what it’s all about!

Additional verses:
Left wing,
Drumsticks,
Stuffing (Stomach)
Waddle (Head)
Tail Feathers (Bottom)
Turkey Body

MATH…..HERE is a Turkey Roll and Cover Multiplication Game from Fourth and Ten at TPT that’s a freebie. Another one that was addition using 2 or 3 dice was Gobble Bump HERE at TPT. We also played a Turkey Trivia SCOOT game which was HERE. I learned a lot and so did the kiddos!

Another funny Turkey book that all the kids kind of sing along to is 10 FAT TURKEYS by Tony Johnston.

“Ten Fat Turkeys are we….we spent all night in a tree….when cook came along, we couldn’t be found, and that’s all there is you see! I love that silly song.

At PARENT TEACHER CONFERENCES 2 weeks ago I had the parents write up a little letter on a turkey feather saying why they are THANKFUL for their little 2nd graders. The kids LOVED reading them and I found them in the hallways looking at them on the way to recess and lunch every day. Everybody loves a love letter!

I found some cute Stationery HERE we might use for an activity if we don’t run out of time!

Finished Thanksgiving Bulletin Board….Turkey Acrostic Poems and Thanksgiving Turkey Art.

MATH A Great game I put out for math stations was this one. It’s a Roll and Cover with turkeys and it goes up to 18 so my kids can use 3 dice. You have to Like Faith Wheeler’s FB page to get it but she has so many cute things it’s a great place HERE.

We chose our favorite Turkey Day food for our Weekly Graph today. What is YOUR favorite Thanksgiving Food?
The top winner in our class was…..Pumpkin Pie! I bet you are just floored by that! Well….My favorites on Turkey Day are….wait for it…..
ALL OF THEM!
HAPPY THANKSGIVING YA’LL!!

Weather, Clouds and Water Cycle Activities for Kids

We are about done with our Weather Unit this week. Here are some of our fun activities we did….

A song we sang about Clouds to the tune of “Itsy Bitsy Spider”.

We made Cloud Flip Books. We wrote facts underneath each type of cloud picture. Then we added the cotton balls underneath the flaps and then wrote about each cloud type.

Here are the cotton ball clouds and the definitions of each type.

Cloud flip books…they turn out really neat.

CLOUD TYPES FLIP BOOKS AND CLOUD ACTIVITIES….

This poem I typed up and we put one on the back of our Cloud Flap Books. I always do poems on the back of art for shared reading and we try to sing them to a familiar tune like ABC song, Jimmy Crack Corn or Row Row Row you Boat.

. Check out the Scholastic News website for great info and pictures on Clouds. I order the Scholastic News every year. A lot of times I save the science ones to use with my units.

Poster I leave up on the board during our Cloud activities.

We read this Cloud Choral Reading and these 2 books on Clouds and the Cloud Poem too!

The Weekly Reader/Scholastic News have a product called Science Spin. I order that every year for an extra dollar or so per student. I use them because I have no science textbooks. I also order a lot of science reading literature and always keep it at the SCIENCE CENTER. It is the most populated center every day.

The Cloud Book By dePaola, Tomie

Cloudette By Lichtenheld, Tom

I’ve accumulated quite an array of weather books over my 20 years of teaching. Here are a few.

Some of the Weather Books and Scholatic News on weather we read this week…..

Another thing I usually do is have the kids make a wind pinwheel as part of learning about tornadoes and hurricanes. It is just made with a square, and we curl up each triangle and pin it to the top of a pencil eraser. Then we go outside on a windy day and watch our creations twirl. This one had some cute stars and swirls on it.

The next day we did some Water Cycle Activities. We Read a Weekly Reader on the Water Cycle that had a cool diagram.

We made these Water Cycle Wheels too…I like the vocabulary listed …we test on two of these words; evaporation and precipitation on our weekly vocab quiz. A Cloud and Weather Vocabulary word sort can be found HERE free at TPT.

I loved this water cycle activity pack that I found FREE from TPT. Check it out HERE. It was easy for my kiddos. The water cycle wheel I got from another teacher I believe she got it from a book.

Pinwheels are a fun way to start the day learning about wind and all the types of windy weather and the damage it can do.

Some free weather stationery is HERE. And HERE is a printable of all types of weather in a cute blackline from Scholastic that you could use to make your own magnet matching game like mine below. You do have to subscribe to Scholastic and pay a small fee to get these though. I bought my game below from a teacher supply store.

This was a WEATHER center game. I had added velcro to the back and they used the carpeted wall to match the word to the weather picture. I left all the weather books at the Science Center along with this game.

I have an auto harp I play and the kids love singing songs to the music. HERE was a water cycle song we sang to the tune of “IT’S RAINING IT’S POURING”. I also have about 2 dozen types of instruments and some drums and xylophones so we never lose interest in singing to science texts. Check out my store above to see some great deals on musical instruments. I especially love the blue boxed xylophone. It was only $20.00 and I bought 3 for my classroom. The kids love to get them out when we sing and 2 kids will pay them to keep the rhythm with bells. Here is a pack of freebies from TPT Check it out!

The Water Cycle poster I keep up while we are doing our water cycle wheels and singing our songs.

Here is another Water Cycle Song:
Tune: Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush
Here we go round the water cycle, water cycle, water cycle.
Here we go round the water cycle, each and every day.
The ocean water evaporates, evaporates, evaporates,
The ocean water evaporates and makes tiny drops.
The clouds condense to make a raincloud, make a raincloud, make a raincloud,
The clouds condense to make a raincloud, and some feel really heavy!
The heavy drops precipitate, precipitate, precipitate,
The heavy drops precipitate, to make water accumulate. (puddles, lakes, rivers, and underground wells)
Then it’s time to start again, start again, start again,
Then it’s time to start again, the never ending Water Cycle!

We make a rotating water cycle wheel on a brad, coloring it and cutting it out. On the back we have a Water cycle poem or one of these songs I’ve typed up.

We read lots of books on the results of Wicked Weather. And the Phillipines Typhoon came right along when we were discussing weather damage.
SCIENCE EXPERIMENT: TORNADO TUBE

This is a Tornado Tube. I put 2 empty 2 liter bottles together with one of them filled with water. The kids loved coming up and twirling it around till it made a tornado. You can get the Tornado Tube from Steve Spangler Science. I think it is about $3.00 plus shipping.

We made a puzzle with the 3 types of violent weather types (lightening, tornadoes and hurricanes) and glued them down after discussing safety during each one.

I had the kids put together a page of 3 cool puzzles; tornadoes, hurricanes and lightening. This is what it looks like before .

The last thing we did was making a thermometer with paper.Check it out HERE. We talked about hot and cold, cool and freezing weather and what temperature each would be. Then I showed them lots of coats, sweaters, bathing suits etc. and asked what temperature each would be.

We made thermometers and learned what temperature spring, summer, winter and fall weather would be….

A few more worksheets are at Superteacher Worksheets.. Then we did some temperature worksheets like these Here at www.education.com. We had a great time learning about WEATHER!

A weather crossword I use in my weather unit is HERE at teach-nology.com. Some years I have them also do a WEATHER ACROSTIC POEM or we write a story after reading Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.

A cool reader’s theater script I found on the story of the water cycle can be printed free HERE at Grandview Library. It is from Enchanted Learning. It’s cute and would make the kids use their imagination. These are some cool Youtubes I found that the kids like. I have a hard time choosing between them but I usually show one or two during the 2 week unit.

Weather videos from Youtube great for learning Water Cycle.

Water Cycle Youtube with some fun singing.

Another cute song….on CLOUDS! In the book CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS there were lots of bad weather where food rained all over the city. If we have time we will use our short week next week to write funny stories about our favorite foods raining on our city in Sandy or Draper, Utah. That will be pretty interesting to read about!

Some Weekly Readers and Language Arts writing we did….

We used THIS STORY WEB to begin with problem, solution, setting and characters. A fun website that has lots of fun online graphics and activities is at Webweather’s site.

weather	hailstorms	hurricane	tornado
funnel	fog	cloudy	water vapor
cirrus cloud	stratus cloud	nimbus rain cloud	cumulus cloud
evaporation	precipitation	violent weather	lightening

Here were some of the WEATHER vocabulary words we studied for the week and added to our science pocket chart too. Weather is one of my favorite units to teach. The kids all love learning about it.

Pigs Will Be Pigs and Money Piggy Banks (Project Based Learning)

We are finishing our money unit this week and I gave some tests. Now I want to do a math extension using PROJECT BASED LEARNING. Our kid-lovin’ theme is PIGS!

Piggie Pie by Margie Palatini

FIRST off I ordered the book PIGGIE PIE and downloaded the reader’s theater format (since we are on a reader’s theater kick). So while reading the parts in this 4 paged, VERY cute choral reading reader’s theater, I was showing the pictures on the doc camera. Here it is Piggie Pie at Grandview Library.

I think this little CAMO PIG is hilarious! Oink!

Piggy Bank Art and Math Writing…

I just bought The Princess and the Pig at the Book Fair, but haven’t read it yet. And I love Pigs A Plenty, Pigs Galore! It’s another really cute book we will read this week!

Money Activities – we made our own piggy banks and wrote what we would buy with our money! hmmm….I wouldn’t mind a robot maid….HEY a girl can dream….haha…

2nd Grader Piggy Banks full of fake money.

Money Rap and Money Poems we snapped to….

We sang this cool MONEY RAP while snapping our fingers. The coin poem goes along with the Big Books I made up and we read those too. I keep forgetting to take a pic of them!

If You Give a Pig a Pancake is such a cute book! It’s one of my favs.

If You Give a Pig a Pancake by Laura Numeroff.

How Much Money is in your Piggy Bank?

Money Math Activities

Then I passed out a piece of paper with a pig coloring page and asked the kids to color it and then cut out 5 to 10 coins out of a piece of coin paper. We read Pigs Will Be Pigs by Amy Axelrod. It’s all about Pigs and how they spend their money. It is hilarious and the kids always love it. It’s perfect for the next part of our Project Based Learning.

This book, Pigs Will Be Pigs, is a kid favorite to do with a money math unit.

On top of the coin page was the phrase “HOW MUCH MONEY IS IN MY PIGGY BANK?“. They cut that out and glued it to the top of their papers. Then they went to work cutting out the coins they wanted. The minimum was 5 and the maximum was 10 (differentiation). Then they had to glue the coins onto the pig’s belly, add up the amount and put it in the bottom, right hand corner. We covered these answers by taping a 2 inch piece of construction paper to the answer and drawing a question mark on top.

This one was pretty creative…..if there are circle shaped noses, why not put coins on them? hmm…?

HERE is a TPT activity from Hooty’s Homeroom that is free to copy and download. It will make an easy flap book with the picture of the coins on top. I make these a lot because they only take one piece of paper. And it is a fun writing center idea.

Another fun song to sing or poem to read.

HERE on Pinterest I found Some printables for money.
HERE is a cute money boardgame that is free and printable from Peterson’s blog. It would be GREAT as a center game for the week. Kids love this game!

It’s funny to see what they think some coins will buy….I’d buy a castle too! Who wouldn’t!

Piggy Bank Writing Project……Who wouldn’t love a pony? I would!

Then we did our regular Envision math page and then recess. After recess,when everyone was done with their pigs, we went around to everybody’s table and tried to figure out their money question with our white boards. They had to choose at least 5 to do. When we got the answers we pulled up the question mark tab to see if we were correct. The kids love this activity and I do it every year. A cute pig puppet is HERE at Making Learning Fun. The pig is on the first page out of four.

But you just HAVE to have a pig with stars on it….stars make every living thing look better! Woot!

The last thing we did was write about our coin totals, and what we’d buy with our money! Those coins can buy lots of good loot! Also, we have been reading Charlotte’s Web, and with all of the other pig stories we read, we might have to do some pig stories later in the week. OINK!

Pumpkin Book Reports

I have a pumpkin on my front porch leftover from Halloween that I never did anything with. They were all so cheap the day after Halloween too. Well, one of my Teacher friends, Mrs. Lapadat, had a fantastic idea and gave out an assignment to do PUMPKIN BOOK REPORTS! They were so Awesome!

I think this Scooby Doo Pumpkin Book Report was my favorite. It was just so funny and cute.

Check them out! Everybody bought a pumpkin and decorated it like the main character in a favorite picture book! Here are my favorite ones. There were many!

I had not seen this picture book Very Brave Witch. It looked like a cute one though.

Grumpy Cat was super cute.

Substitute “Creacher” was a fun play on words. Loved the one eyed pumpkin.

I think this one is Parts? The pumpkin’s eyeballs were too funny.

Parts is a kid favorite! The tiny pumpkin cracked me up too. I guess 2 kids did the same book.

She invited me down to see them. That reminds me, I forgot to send a thank you note! EEK! I better have my kids do those tomorrow!

This was my funniest student from last year. And he did a funny pumpkin book report too! Hi Liam!

The Big Hungry Bear Book Report had 2 pumpkins! Glitter added a lot too!

They put the extra ones from the other classes into the library so we all could enjoy the Pumpkin Book Reports.

The Nutcracker was beautiful. I bet this one was a mom and me project! So pretty!

I had never seen the book Hoogie in the Middle, but the pumpkin matched perfectly! Amazing!

This Diary of a Worm is a fat little sucker isn’t he? haha….

Gotta love me some Cat in the Hat! This one was another one of my funniest students from last year. Hi Brody! I loved his so much too! Everybody loves The Cat in the Hat!

Another favorite Pumpkin Book Report of the students is Skippy John Jones…(don’t ask me why, I don’t get those books at ALL!)

Didn’t they make a movie out of this one? I haven’t seen it yet, but those twinky cupcakes are everywhere!

I loved how they used the stem for a witch nose in this pumpkin book report!

This one looks so much like the book I wanted to take it home! It was one of my favs! There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly!

They read their stories to 2 kids at a time in a kind of round robin buddy reading activity for our class. The kids got to hear 3 to 4 stories in the half hour we were invited to come visit.

Ho Ho Ho! How Santa Got His Job!

I bet this Rainbow Fish took lots of time to make!

This one was a triple pumpkin teepee! Woopee! I loved it. What a fun time we had looking all these cute pumpkins over!

They were the gosh darn cutest things I’d ever seen. I wish I would have thought of it! We all LOVED IT! Thanks 3rd Graders for some fun buddy reading!