This past week, we dove into all things spiders. While I don't care for the real creepy crawlies, this is one of my favorite themes, and the kids always love it! Warning: Long Post Ahead!

We began our week by discussing our spider schema. My kids knew quite a bit about spiders!

Then, we read the book Spiders by Gail Gibbons. It's a great informational text! After reading the book, we added our new knowledge to our spider chart. My kids are doing a great job at recalling details!
The next day, we read the book again and made a can/have graphic organizer. Each student used the organizer to write their own sentence about spiders, and we added them to our paper plate spiders.

Wednesday, we read The Very Busy Spider and practiced sequencing. We made sure we had a friend to go back and check the story to make sure we were sequencing correctly. My kids love our sequencing activities!

We used The Very Busy Spider again on Thursday to work on onomatopoeia. We wrote all the sounds words from the story, then each of my kids created their own Eric Carle inspired spider. I love how different they turned out! You can grab the student sheet here.

In math, we had so much fun using spiders to learn all about the number 8! I've shared before that we teach a number a week until we get to 10, and we really dive into learning all about that number. We count, write, decompose, count on to make it, etc. and our kids have such an awesome number sense! Most of the activities we did are from my friend Deeanna's spider pack.
On Monday, we introduce the number. First, we rainbow the number and glue cheerios on it.

Then, we use our floor ten frame to act out a spider chant Deeanna made up that helps us decompose the number {some are on the "web," and some are off}. After acting it out, each student gets their own ten frame. We glued black beans to be spiders, and the kids added 8 legs.

On Tuesday, we used a web work mat and spiders to practice decomposing 8 again with our song. Since we've been making equations since our second week, my kids are doing amazing now! The majority of the time, we do math on the floor, around the rug using clipboards. I don't know why, but I love doing it this way!

Wednesday, we graphed whether we thought spiders were creepy or cool. I was so surprised that so many thought they were cool! Yuck! After we make a graph, I always have kids tell me what they notice about the data instead of asking them specific questions. It always leads to great conversation! You can grab the graph here.

Thursday, we used our math stick to decompose 8. I've blogged about these before...we use them every week to match our theme and they are great for getting kids to recognize what decomposing is, and to visualize part-part-whole.

We ended our week by working on counting on to find a missing number in an equation. This was a little tricky, but by the end of the lesson, my kids were doing great!

After we did this activity, I let the kids use their spiders to make their own equation that equaled 8.

 We ended our week by making a special spider snack with crackers, Jif Whips, peanut butter chips, and pretzels. So yummy!

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Vickie

The past month, we've been learning all about 3-D shapes and my kids are having a blast! I even had one bring a book to me this morning and say, "There are 3-D solid shapes in this book!" {Insert happy teacher dance!} Here's a little recap of what we've done!
I like to introduce solid shapes the same way every year...with a snack of course!

I give the kids one of each and we talk about the attributes of each and chart before we eat them. For some reason, this really makes those attributes stick and they can immediately tell me how many faces and vertices each shape has.

After this introduction, we focus on a shape a day and work on sorting real life examples. We do this whole group and then on individual cut and paste activity pages.

Then, we review all the shapes together. We practice sorting with my shape sorting cards. When we sort, I make the kids tell me why the shape belongs in a certain group {for example, it has 1 vertice and 1 face shaped like a circle, so it's a cone}.

Probably my favorite thing we do is to make our 3-D shape people. My kids LOVED the 2-D shape people we made in the fall, and they were just as crazy about these! I didn't have time for the kids to make one of each of the shapes we learn, so I made copies of 5 of each shape and laid it out for the kids to pick the shape they wanted.

{I wish I could afford to make everything with cardstock!!}

Now, usually I pre-cut crafts for my kids, but on shape people, I always make them cut so they are working on and noticing the attributes of the shape.

The kids make the shape people by attaching eyes, arms, legs, hands, and feet to the body of their shape. I love these because the shapes are used over and over for the parts of the shape guy!

To finish, the kids write how many faces and vertices the shape has and attach it to their shape.

These little guys are always the perfect culmination of our 3-D shape unit!

If you'd like to check out these activities, you can click the picture below {and hurry while they're on sale today in the big TpT sale!}

You can also get this pack bundled with my 2-D shape pack if you need both!

I'm off to Tampa today to visit a Kagan model school...I am so excited!!

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Vickie

If you teach in a primary grade, you already know what a big deal the 100th day of school is. Our 100th day was this past Thursday, and we had a blast!

 At the beginning of the week, I had the kids work on a home project to fill a bag with 100 of the same item. This was so good for the kids to visualize that 100 doesn't always look like the same amount, but that the bags still had an equal number of objects.

 The day before our big celebration, we talked about what we would be like when we're 100. It's so hard to get the kids to think about it sometimes, but they come up with some cute answers! Then, we made our 100th day people {thanks to Deanna Jump}. I always love how these turn out!

On the big day, I made a little banner for the kids to walk through and then {in a moment of craziness}, I threw confetti everywhere. To say the kids were excited would be a huge understatement! I also gave them a little 100th day bookmark.

To start our day, we made our hats. The kids colored a little "I am 100 days smarter" template then put 10 stickers on 10 strips so they had 100 stickers {I'm all about trying to ingrain that 10 groups of 10 is 100!}.

{view from the front}

{view from the top ;) }

Every year, I try to make my celebration a little bit better and more organized and this year I finally felt like I had it like I liked it!! After reading Cara's posts {you have to read them!!} about how she organized her 100th day, I knew I had to implement rotations. I don't know why I have never done it before!! I love teaching small group, so why have I spent the last 10 years stressing myself out doing all our 100th day activities whole group?? I decided to do 5 stations so that my tables could rotate together. Here are our rotations:

1. Roll to 100: The kids rolled a die, then colored that many spaces to see how many rolls it would take to get to 100.

 2. Gumball Machines: This idea came from Julie Lee originally {love her!}. I used the base from Cara's freebie pack, then because I know my kids needs a lot of counting support when counting to 100, I made a gumball with 10 ten frames to help. You can grab it in my 100th day freebies.

3. Make a 100 cube creation {this had us really working on our teamwork!]

4. Match 100 Hershey kisses to numbers on a hundreds chart

5. Glue 100 beads to a hundreds chart

Any time the kids finished their task before time was up, they worked on tracing to 100.

After our rotations, it was snack time! We worked to use 10 different pieces of 10 different snacks to create a 100 piece snack mix. Then, we dug into our 100th day cake {always a hit!}.

All throughout the day, I had kids telling me that this was the best day ever...I love days like that!  To grab the various hundreds charts I used, the hat pattern, and gumball ten frames, you can click here {they're free!}. 

We had such a fun day! I hope your 100th day was/is fabulous!

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Vickie