Book Character Parade

As part of our end of year celebration, each student was invited come dressed as their favorite book character this past Tuesday. What fun we had trying to guess each other's book character. After we paraded around each classroom of the school, we came back to the Gathering Area of our room and shared why we selected to dress up as our book character. This is the first year I have ever had a book character parade, and I am officially making it a tradition in my classroom!

 

Special thanks to Amelia Bedelia who gave me the idea at the beginning of the year to have a book
character parade in the first place . Well, not really Amelia Bedelia, but the cutie who dressed up as her!

 

Clifford and Pinkalicious



Little Monster and Nicki (and American Girl)

Skippyjon Jones and Stink

Lesley from Bridge to Terabithia and The Little Mermaid Ariel

Grave Digger monster truck driver Dennis Anderson and Rapunzel

Pigeon and Nancy Drew



I had so much fun dressing up as Pinkalicious and just had to take a picture with my blonde-for-a-day son!
Any other Pinkalicious fans out there? If so, I highly recommend that you go and see Pinkalicious the Musical.
My family and I watched it in Chicago a few years ago and loved it. Even the boys!

Introducing our book characters to the Kindergarten class during our parade around the school.

 

 

Scientist of the Week #16

Scientist of the Week #15

Everyone wants to try out this science experiment!

Best comment in the video: "It looks like a monocule!" Though the student said the word incorrectly, she knew exactly what she was talking about since we had talked several times about molecules during science class this last quarter. A proud teacher, I am!

Cranium Club Hall of Fame Inductee!

Congratulations to the first inductee into our Cranium Club Hall of Fame! Cranium Club is an at-home enrichment program offered to students who would like to go the extra mile in their studies at home. Any student who memorizes one item on the Cranium Club list receives a punch on their Cranium Club punch card, and they are automatically entered in the club. However, a student must memorize 20 Cranium Club items in order to be inducted into the Hall of Fame!

Some examples of what this 2nd grader learned and then memorized in order to receive Cranium Club Hall of Fame status include the following:

• List 10 NBA teams
• List 10 NFL teams
• List 10 dinosaurs
• List 10 countries in Asia
• List 10 American symbols
• List 10 instruments in a symphony

Insects and Measurement Fun

I am playing catch up again . . .

Here are some of the drawings that the kids made for their insect reports. They did such a fabulous job with them!

 

For our measurement unit, the class had a great time walking about the room using their rulers (standard units) and objects (non-standard units) to measure various items. One of the activities was a type of scavenger hunt to find items that fit the given measurement. Can you believe that there was a line to measure my body parts? I love my school kids!

 For an excellent resource to supplement your measurement unit, I highly recommend Amy Lemon's "I Can Measure!" unit that has both inches and centimeters activities. To purchase CLICK HERE.

Yearbook Release!

Our yearbooks were passed out last week during Friday morning assembly. The kids were very excited. They eagerly turned pages to see how many times they could find their faces in the yearbook. Teachers gave the student time to sign each others' yearbooks. I'm glad I brought a bucket of pens with me to assembly! Many thanks to Ms. Lisa, our yearbook sponsor, and her staff for doing an excellent job of recording this year's memories.

Principal Herr had a line of admiring students waiting to ask for his autograph!

Family Fun Beach Day Field Trip

After a wonderful spring concert on Wednesday evening, students of EPAA spent Thursday with their families at the beach. Students in K-4 went to Sand Key Park Beach, and what a wonderful time we had! It was a gorgeous day. The sun was out and we got a wonderful breeze from the the Gulf to help keep things cool. It was nice to spend the day with all three of my kids who had the best time hanging out with their school friends. We went home with a bucket full of shells and something that my three kids and I have never gotten while living in the Midwest - sunburn! My shoulders hurt so much that I went to Lowes and bought aloe vera plants so that I could put the sap on my sunburn. Lesson learned.

Unfortunately, I didn't take too many pictures. This was all I took. I was too busy having fun! ;o)

My three kiddos and I ready for beach day!

I asked this cutie if she was trying to dig to the mantle of the Earth.
She replied, "No, the inner core!" She had a lot of work ahead of her.

Taking a rest from making sandcastles.

This is my youngest, who will be in my classroom next year! He is clearly happy to be at the beach.

It's not that often that I am on the other side of the camera, but I wanted a picture of me and my son in our beach hats!

The end of our family fun beach day field trip. Best field trip ever (according to my kids)! Until next year . . .

Cinco de Mayo

The end of the school year is definitely the busiest time of year, so I am playing catch up with all these posts. I promised the kids that I'd put up pictures and videos of all our fun activities, and I intend to keep that promise even if I am behind!

Here's a look at our Cinco de Mayo celebration. We learned about the Mexican culture through books, music, videos, pictures, and food!

I dressed in the colors of the Mexican flag. Several students noticed right away! On the other hand, it took my husband forever to figure it out. I broke out my stash of sombreros and colorful paper flowers that the kids eagerly wore while we listened to Mariachi music and completed fun activities like drawing the Mexican flag. At the end of the day, the kids enjoyed eating chips and salsa while I read the book Chicks and Salsa.

Here are some great resources for celebrating Cinco de Mayo:

 Cinco de Mayo Fiesta Stations by Lory Evans - to purchase CLICK HERE.

 Mexico Mini Unit by Michelle Griffo - to purchase CLICK HERE.

Solar System Unit

There was a lot of material to cover for this unit - astronaut spacesuits, space shuttles, sun, moon, planets, layers of the Earth, and the stars. I didn't think we'd have enough time, but the kids were so excited about the content that we got through it all!

Four our solar system studies, the kids learned unique facts about each planet. For example, Mercury has many craters like the moon. Mars is the known as the Red Planet while Earth is known as the Blue planet. Saturn has nine distinctive rings. Uranus spins on its side.  In addition, we learned how each of the planets spin as well as orbits around the sun. To demonstrate this lesson eight children were assigned a planet, one was chose to be the sun, one the moon, and the rest asteroids. Here is a video of that lesson:



We took a closer look at the Earth in this unit, and studied the layers of the Earth. The best visual aid to help the kids learn the layers is THIS LESSON using Play-doh that I found on Pinterest awhile back and demonstrated to my students last year. This year's class loved it just as much!

 

Another popular activity involved Oreos to help the kids learn the phases of the Earth's moon. I mean, what's not to love about a lesson where you get to eat Oreos when it's all said and done!

In our last lesson we learned about stars. Most of our study centered on constellations. We took a look at some of the more well-known constellations. To end of lesson, the kids were given black construction paper and star stickers and were asked to create their own constellations. Idea from this lesson came from Pinterest. For a direct link to the lesson CLICK HERE.

Resources for the lesson I taught in our outer space unit include the following:

 "Adventures in Space" by out-of-this-world teacher/blogger Sarah Cooley. To purchase this her unit CLICK HERE.

 "Oreo Moon Madness" by Hilary Lewis - for this free lesson CLICK HERE.

Rock Unit

As part of our studies about the Earth, we learned about the three different kinds of rocks: sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous. I broke out my rock collection (one of my students is convinced that my collection is worth millions of dollars - hahaha, I wish!), and the students observed, sorted, and used their senses to describe various samples of rocks. We discovered that just like everything else that we have studied in science class (insects, animals, plants, water), rocks have a cycle.

 Here's a fun video that provides a creative explanation how the three types of rocks are formed:

If you are looking for a unit on rocks, CLICK HERE for a  wonderful resource created by one of my favorite rock star teachers, The Teacher Wife.

Plant Unit

For part of our plant unit we dissected green onions so that we could learn and analyze the parts of a plant. We also learned about the life cycle of a plant as well as the things plants need to grow: air, water, sunlight, and healthy soil.

At the end of the unit we planted tomato and sweet bell peppers that have recently sprouted into seedlings.

I used a wonderful resource for our plant unit created by the author of the teaching blog "1st Grade Hip Hip Hooray." To purchase the unit, CLICK HERE.