Animal Characteristics

We have been studying animals and their groups.  This was my culminating activity.  First I made six copies of the sentences.  Then I cut out all of the sentences and put them in envelopes.  I divided the class into 6 groups and gave each group an envelope and poster.  To make the poster I cut out the animal group words and glued them at the top of a 12"x18" piece of white construction paper.  Then each group had to read the sentences and glue on the correct ones for their group.  When they were finished, I had them draw pictures of the animals that could be in their group.  It was a very fun activity!

Here's the finished product:

Poster Headers
Sentences

Cloud People! So much FUN!

I am finally starting to get into the swing of being back at school.  It has been crazy with the new common core and a lot more kiddos in our classroom, plus being a mom.  I need about 5 more hours to update our blog, do our massive pile of laundry, and clean my classroom.  Has anyone else felt that the start of the school year has been a little more crazy this year (possibly it has just been me). We have been studying about clouds.  I made this cute activity to go with our study.  I used it for an assessment.  It was so much fun!!!  I borrowed this idea from the First Grade Parade.  Here is the link...http://thefirstgradeparade.blogspot.com/search/label/weather   Here is a picture of the finished product.   

I also have a vocabulary book, fact and opinion, adjective activity, and experiment.  

Click here to download!

Soil Books

Soil Books to wrap up our week long study of soil.  I made a three page staggered book out of buff copy paper(Makes five actual pages).  The student's wrote "Soil" on the top page and labeled the other tabs: sand, clay, silt, texture, and soil.  I had them match the definition of each word to the page with the correct label.  Then they got to illustrate each page (See photos).

Click here for the sentences

Sun an Moon Fun

We have been combining science with writing and have had a lot of fun!  The students completed a Venn diagram comparing the sun and the moon.  Then they wrote compare/contrast stories.  Here are some examples:

This project sparked a few other stories like "Comparing My Mom and Dad" and "Comparing Apes to Chimps!"  I love the first grade imagination!  Next, students completed a Moon-"Can, Has, Is" click here to download, and a Sun-"Can, Has, Is" click here to download.  Then, using words from the "Can, Has, Is" charts, the students wrote cinquain poems about the sun and the moon download flow chart here.  After the students filled out their flow charts, I typed the poems for them.  See the project below~

Ladybug Fun!

On Monday we had a great time examining LaDybUgs and learning some fun facts. We also filled in a ladybug fact map and did a cute art project that a great friend of mine  made.

Click here to print

Free Moon Fact and Opinion

We are just finishing up our study on the moon.  Here is a Fact and Opinion activity for the moon.  It has been a lot of fun.  Can I tell you how much I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, my smart board.  It has made our moon unit so interactive.  I can't imagine how I ever taught without it. 

Click here to download the moon fact and opinion.  I also included an anticipation guide that I used with my class at the beginning of our moon unit....

Parts of a Plant Project.

Happy Thursday Everybody! We are in the midst of learning about plants. To go along with this we made a big flower to label. I cut out some patterns using file folders for the kids to trace. They then added a stem and cut out their leaves by folding green paper in half. After that they glued the correct label to the corresponding part of the plant.

Click here to download

Have a great evening. :)

Chick Life Cycle

This week we have been studying about life cycles.  We have been fortunate enough to get some eggs and an incubator through the extension office of Utah State.  It has been very exciting.  We got twelve eggs and we had eleven of them hatch.  The kids thought it was the coolest thing ever...  I made a book that went along with our study of the life cycle of a chick.  Sorry it isn't to cutesy, but it went along perfectly as we watched the chicks hatch.  

Click Here to Download

Living Things

To introduce Living Things, we talked about the differences between living things and non living things. Then I let each student pick a living thing to make out of construction paper scraps. They glued it to a paper and wrote what made it a living thing; such as needs air, needs water, etc. I glued them all to a big tree to display in the hall.

Fall Senses

This was a fun Fall activity. We talked about the seasons and our senses. We made a cute book on the five senses to go with it. For each sense they drew pictures and wrote fall words.

Click here to get a copy of the book.

Worms!

To kick off our plant unit, I thought it would be great fun to start off with how the nutrients for the plants get into the soil. What better way than to bring in some WORMS! We almost had more fun than our class Christmas party. I even had another teacher come and see what all of the noise was about. It was great.

To start with we read a book about worms, and I had the kids "Think, Pair, Share" about what they learned from the book. Then we watched this great youtube video on GIANT worms! Holy Cow! (Since we can't watch youtube videos at our school, I downloaded it using keepvid.)

Then I gave all each group this chart (click on the Earthworm anatomy link at the bottom) to study the anatomy of a worm. Each child was given a worksheet (I used the picture from the poster) so they could label the external parts of a worm.

Finally I brought out the stars so the kids could really check them out. I gave them magnifying glasses to get up close and personal. Then the kids had to draw their worm and write an observation about it.

After our observations we gently placed the worms in a jar so we could create a habitat for them to live in our classroom.

If you ask my students how the nutrients get into the soil they will proudly tell you, "WORMS POOP IT OUT!"

Pumpkin Brace

We all saw this great pumpkin brace (scroll down a bit) on pinterest, and immediately wanted to do this with our kids. We couldn't find the instructions, so we made up some of our own.

Here is what we came up with.

For the "whole pumpkin" each student will need: 1- 9x10 orange construction paper, 1- 1x2 brown construction paper. I had the kids cut their own pumpkin out, add the stem and then glue it on the left hand side of a 12x18 piece of black construction paper.

For the "parts of a pumpkin" each student will need: 1- 2x9 orange construction paper (skin), 1- 2x9 orange copy paper (flesh), small handful of shredded orange copy paper (pulp), 1- 3x4 white (cut multiple seeds from), 1- 1x2 brown construction paper (stem/peduncle). As we put the "parts of a pumpkin" side together, I showed the kids a cross section of a pumpkin we had left over from some of our pumpkin investigations from the day before. It made it easier for me to reinforce the different parts with the real thing in front of them.

Here are the words we used to label our pumpkins.

This is a definite addition to my yearly pumpkin unit. It was sooooo much fun!

Pumpkin Seeds!

Click here for printable.

373 of them to be exact! Today we counted our pumpkin seeds from the pumpkin we cleaned out yesterday. We made a poster out of orange bulletin board paper and grouped the seeds by 10's and 1's. We put the seeds into tiny baggies. This is what it looks like: ( I am also including the link to the printable for the title and numbers.)