Hi everyone! I have a couple of things to share with you today. First of all, here is the view from my classroom right now.

 

All of the white stuff is actually snow falling. Bleh!

Now, onto the ideas. I have come up with a way to display, store and send home our writing projects. . .attaching the writing to file folders and labeling the edge for organizational purposes. I think I would file them all and then send home at the end of the year. For example, for the last couple of weeks we have been working on Narratives. We just finished the final draft yesterday. 

Here is what it looks like stapled into the folder:

Here is my display on the wall:

 

I also wanted to share our big flower project. We made a big flower and labeled the parts. I did these last year as well.

 

You can grab the labeling printable by clicking here.

Prayers to Boston . . .

 

 

 

Red Butte Garden Visit

This past week Red Butte Garden came to our classroom to introduce our plant unit. They generously gave us all of the materials (including the grow lights) for us to continue growing the seeds we planted. The seeds we were supplied are called Brassica Rapa, or Wisconsin Fast Plant. It was developed for use in the classroom. It completes it's life cycle in 40 days. Meaning we planted seeds last Thursday and by March sometime we will be harvesting seeds to use next year. This morning we were greeted with sprouts (even with 6 inches of snow on the ground).

Here are a few pictures from our adventure:

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. :)

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!"