Autism Awareness is in April

As some of you know I have a special place in my heart for Autism.  April is a month that the wonders and curiosity of Autsim is talked about more in the media.   Here a link to learn more or to donate for research.  http://www.autism-society.org/about-us/national-autism-awareness-month/

Butterflies and Chickens! Which came first, the egg?

This is the time of year when our classroom has an influx of wildlife.  Every year we watch the butterfly cycle from caterpillar to adult butterfly.  We've already read many stories about this so the children will be excited to see it come to life inside our butterfly cage.  I ordered the caterpillars online and they should be at school soon.

Chicks, chicks and more chicks.  We will also start our Egg to Chicken experiment.  A local mom and grandma donate eggs and the incubator for our kiddos to start the 21 day journey. 

These two activities are a great way to discuss our Earth and Conservation.  I love this time of year.

Butterflies were ordered from www.insectlore.com .

Who Took the Cookie From the Cookie Jar?

Alas we have come to the time of year when I bring out the popular story "Who Took The Cookie From The Cookie Jar". Spring is around the corner and animals are coming out of hibernation.  The story has many. This cute story has so many opportunities for Math and Science teachable moments as well as all the Language Arts aspects as well.


We will use the poem to discuss sentence conventions and structure.  The rhythmic pattern of the poem is perfect for emergent readers.  We know that memorization is a building block to fluent readers some day.  

I have a large cookie model I made from canvas. We will use this for our vocabulary words and math activities this week.  Educational researchers tell us that children's brains best remember and learn when we give them a visual way to compartmentalize the information.  Simply by displaying and interacting with manipulatives on the cookie will help them to make the needed connections of the concepts we teach.

Monday: I will start the lesson by placing pictures of all the characters from the story in front of the children; a raccoon, snake, beaver, frog and ants. Next I will show them the front cover of the book and read the title. Then each child will get to make a prediction using tally marks (math integration) of the animal they think took the cookies.  We will "picture walk" the story and then read the story.  This lesson will be  a spring board for the week's lessons of sequencing and comprehension as well as sight word and rhyme word reading.  I'm looking forward to it.  At the end of the week we will make some cookies...healthy..gluten free, whole wheat..of course! :) .

Dr. Seuss Week

Dr. Seuss' Week was a lot of fun.  We had  a week in honor of this author and illustrator.  I will share the week with you through pictures and daily descriptions.  I have also found great websites for parents and teachers.  I may even create a separate section on this blog devoted to Theodore Geisel.

Monday: We read Hop on Pop.  The kids used this book to discuss rhyming words.  Teachers and parents all know the importance of learning to rhyme.  It helps us to be better readers.  The students made a list of rhyme words they heard from the book.  Next we played a game with the rhyme words.

Tuesday:   We had a lot of fun today.  We watched Cat in the Hat short film and then read the book.  We compared an contrasted the two while I read the story.  The kids would put a thumbs up if the book and film matched and thumbs down if it didn't.  We practiced -at words and wrote a summary of the book.  I will post the pictures of this at the end of the week.

Wednesday We read "There's a Wocket in my Pocket".  We discussed how Dr. Seuss uses nonsense words and rhymes to write his stories.  We are writing our own story called 'There's a Wazoom in our Classroom.  Each child has a page that reads " There's a _______ running around the _______". each student chooses a object from the classroom.  We find a fun rhyme, non sense word to match it.  Next we filled in the blanks. Example:  There's a Lobe running on the globe.  Each child will illustrate their fictional character.  After P.E they will make a model of their character with some art supplies I need to use up.  It should be a lot of fun. Our booklet is hanging in our hall for everyone to read.  It's really cute.

Thursday: Today we read Yertle the Turtle.  We discussed what the "Main Idea" was.  We decided that Yertle was "greedy".  We participated in a cloze activity to practice our high fequency words.  It read, "We learned to not be greedy from Yertle the Turtle.  Being greedy means to only think of yourself.  In the end, all Yertle had left was mud.  Next we made paper plate turtles.  Once the glue dries we will stack them to see how many it takes for them to fall.  Today was fun.

Friday: To wrap -up our week we read Green Eggs and Ham.  We also had a field trip to the local library where they had a speical reading hour.  The libraroan read many of Dr. Seuss' books as well as gave us a little history about ed Giesel's life.  A very creative mom sent a Green Eggs and Ham snack for us to enjoy.  Two pretzel sticks (ham) with green modeling chocolate and a yellow M&M on top.  It was cute!

Sentence Starter Idea

Our classroom is ever-evolving and at many different rediness abilities.  Some students are still working on letter recognition and letter sounds.  Some students are ready for complex reading opportunities and writing skills development.  While at a local "dollar" store I found blank, connected party flags.  I bought them not knowing what I would do with them.  Then one night it occured to me to use them as simple sentence starters.  First I cut them in 3 flag sections.  On each flag I wrote one sight word.  For example: I like the, They saw a, and They like to.  The flags are hanging on a clothes line we have hanging from our ceiling.  As I model a sentence or help the children write their own we refer to the choices the student has.  It has worked great for our "Word and Letter" center.  At present time I am having trouble uploading pictures of this.  Our home internet speed isn't the greatest.  I hope to get the pictures of these sentence flags posted soon.

Eric Carle Week

This week we have spotlighted one of my favorite author/ illustrators, Eric Carle.  Usually I save this unit of fun and learning for March, but I was ready to dive into the wealth of learning possibilities all of his books has to offer.  In fact I may stretch it into next week's math lessons just to help our concepts of counting, measuring and graphing. 

Monday we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  We focused on the life cycle process and sequencing the story.  We made these cute caterpillar chains.  Each link of the chain has a picture and label of each phase of the cycle.  We also watched the animated version I have on DVD of the story. 

Tuesday we read "The Very Grouchy Ladybug".  If you're not familiar with the story, each page has a small clock and the story follows a time line.  We used this book to double-up on our math concepts through making "grouchy clocks".  First we colored both sides of a paper plate.  Next we glued a clock face page I found in my file of "what-nots" onto the paper plate.  Using brads and two paper arrows we fasend the minute and hour hands to the plate.  Children cut black circles from construction paper to decorate the back of the clock.  They were placed in a center for easy access.  We need student clocks in our classroom.  Since money is scarce we have made our own for the remainder of the year.

Wednesday (today) we read all three bear books; Brown Bear, Brown Bear, Polar Bear, Polar Bear and Panda Bear, Panda Bear.  Using compare and contrast skills we focused on Brown Bear and Panda Bear.  Next we listened to Polar Bear on Cd and youtube.com.  Lastly, each child wrote their own page of a story in the same style as these three books.  Example, Mrs. Nation, Mrs Nation What did you see?  I saw a Robin Bird looking at me.  The children then drew a detailed picture of the animal they chose.

Thursday and Friday I have similar projects planned through the books "The Greedy Python, The Foolish Tortoise and The Very Busy Spider"

Eric Carle's Website:www.eric-carle.com/home.html

Khol's stores are selling a few of Carle's books and plush toys for only $5.00 right now.  What a deal!

Happy Valentine's Day! This month our class along with many other K-2 classrooms participated in a Valentine's Exchange. We sent 10 classrooms "love bug valentines" to connect and network with other children across our nation. We met (through the exchange) seven classes who were not all that different from our class. It was a lot of fun.