Showing posts with label st. patrick's day. Show all posts
Showing posts with label st. patrick's day. Show all posts
Could you hear my kids squealing with excitement this afternoon? We love each other dearly, but we are all over the moon excited about spring break! The weather here is perfect and I can't wait to spend a week playing with my sweet girl!
For the past month or so, I have been reading The Wizard of Oz with my class. We finished it up a week ago and to say that they were obsessed with the book would be an understatement! They loved it, and they especially loved finding differences between the book and the movie most of them had seen. It was actually my first time reading it and I enjoyed it too! To celebrate finishing the book, we had a week of Oz and rainbow fun!
We started with some literacy workshops, which the kids were so engaged with {it's amazing what cute clipart can get a kid to do!}. We worked on word families, long and short vowel sounds, sight words, and good/wicked words {I didn't snap a picture of the last one, but they loved it!}. These are part of my Wizard of Oz mini pack, along with lots of graphic organizers and writing pages.




We also used my amazingly talented friend, Kristen's, Weather and Making Predictions packs to have some rainbow fun. My kids love any time I say that we're doing a science experiment and these were a hit!
First, we learned the colors of the rainbow with her cute Roy G Biv craft.

We started our experiments by seeing what would happen if we sprayed rainbow colored vinegar on baking soda...they loved that their predictions were close or right!



We also did a rainbow cloud experiment where we put shaving cream as our cloud on top of water and dropped colored water into it. The pictures turned out no so great because we were on the rug, but the kids loved this one also!

By far, the most favorite was probably the "Walking Water" experiment. We took two cups of colored water and put them on a bucket then put two cups underneath, with a paper towel between them. The kids loved going to check how far the water had walked and when they came in the next morning and the bottom cups were full of the water, they flipped. Total joy!!


Of course, we tied in St. Patrick's Day and talked about what we would do if we got to the end of a rainbow and found gold. Then, we made these cute torn paper rainbows that I love doing each year!


We also made these cute fruit loop rainbows and wrote a poem together to attach with it. This came from my sweet friend Alisha and it's free! Check it out here.


We couldn't do a Wizard of Oz unit and not watch the movie! It really is crazy how much different this movie is than the book {I know most are, but there are LOTS of differences and my kids made sure to point them out!}. One of my sweet moms got us this super cute cake and the kids were in heaven!!

Now, I'm off to enjoy this weather and get packed...we're going to Nashville tomorrow just as soon as I watch my sweet teacher neighbor {and mentee - is that a word??} get married tomorrow! :)
Happy Spring Break!!

We were so busy last week! We finished reading The Wizard of Oz and celebrated Friday {which I hope to blog about this week} and we also started some St. Patrick's Day fun! Every year word gets around that a leprechaun usually finds his way to Mrs. Plant's classroom and this year's sweet class has already asked me a million times if I think he'll come this year! So sweet!
We've been reading lots of St. Patrick's Day books and the kids love them! One of the favorites is always That's What Leprechauns Do...the kids think the leprechauns are so funny!
http://www.amazon.com/Thats-What-Leprechauns-Eve-Bunting/dp/0547076738/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395020501&sr=8-1-fkmr1&keywords=that%27s+what+leprechauns+do
After we read the story, we made a little leprechaun tree map and the kids made these cute leprechauns I've been making for a few years now {thanks to Cara over at The First Grade Parade} to hold their personal tree maps.

To follow up with our leprechaun story, we graphed whether we believed in leprechauns or not {this can be found in my St. Pat's pack}. All but one believes in leprechauns!

Another favorite story was There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Clover {these stories are always a hit} and of course, we sequenced the story! This activity came from my spring sequence pack.

I think the favorite activity of the week was using "gold" during math everyday. We used it along with these pots to practice base ten, addition, subtraction, and story problems. It was definitely a hit!

And, just for kicks, I wanted to share this picture. I love the way he's so focused on his workshop...makes my heart happy!
Now I'm off to bed...hoping I don't walk into a leprechaun mess tomorrow morning ;).


Sorry for the lack of posting this week! When I left Monday, I didn't feel very well and when I woke up Tuesday, I was running a dang fever of 101! I never get sick and was so mad/sad/aggravated...and the crud kept me out of school for 3 days. Ugh. Luckily, my BFF at school Deeanna helped my sweet sub out and the kids got to do lots of fun St. Patrick's Day things.
When I came back today, the kids walked in to find our room had been trashed! They went crazy and immediately said it must have been a leprechaun!

We managed to clean things up and found a note from the leprechaun. We decided to make a little trap then go around school looking for him. When we got back, we didn't find a leprechaun, but we were able to find his treasure!
Anxiously waiting to see if we caught him

Our "gold"
Before we went looking for the leprechaun, we read a story called Looking for Leprechauns and wrote about what we would do when we found the gold. We attached our writing to our rainbow pots of gold.


We used our gold we got in the leprechaun's treasure to practice making teen numbers with a group of ten and a number more.
Happy St. Patrick's Day from us to you!

What did you do to celebrate in your classroom?
 Every week, my kiddos get super excited for new literacy workshops and math centers. It is so much fun to see them so excited because I don't even think they realize how much learning they're doing when they're at the centers!
Here's what we're doing this week:
Working on real and nonsense words with word families

Beginning blends...these are giving us a fit this year!

Stretching words to spell them

Determining missing medial vowel sounds
Reading words to see if they are real or "leprechaun" words

Finding missing numbers

Working on matching numbers to 20 with the correct ten frame


Relating 3D shapes to real world objects...this is a freebie from Deeanna that you can get here

Counting objects and representing the number on a ten frame

I love this center and it will be out for a while! The kids work to match a variety of cards with the number they are equal to...this is from my friend Deeanna and you can get it here
We also started our St. Patrick's Day fun today by reading That's What Leprechauns Do. It's really a cute story that's a good introduction to learning about the legend of leprechauns. We created a tree map together then made these cute leprechauns to attach to our individual leprechauns.

These leprechauns came from Cara at The First Grade Parade

We also graphed wheteher we believed in leprechauns or not then did a little data page as a class.

You can get all the St. Pat's centers, tree map, and graph activity in my St. Pat's pack here.
I'm off to paint some "gold" for us to use in math tomorrow...hope your Monday was as good as a Monday can be :).
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