Science Week Favorite Video/Website

And it's almost hump day! I don't know about anyone else, but it seems to take my kids until about the middle of the day on Tuesday for their classroom behavior to kick in. Mondays are always the worst! But today, they did a really good job getting their work done quietly and quickly!

So anywho, today for Science Week, we are posting our favorite science video/website! Mine is kind of a double-whammy. My school has a subscription to Discovery Education and I L-O-V-E it!

Any topic I could possibly choose (and not just science either) has some kind of video or multimedia to go with it! Matter, animals, bubbles, you name it! You can find anything and they are completely safe and educational! Awesome right?

Right! Have a nice night :)
Sarah

It's Science Week!

Hello all! I have not blogged in so long I just thought I would do a bunch in one day :) I am linking up with Teaching Blog Addict this week for Science Week!

Considering I have been a teacher for a whole 4 weeks now (haha), I would have to say my favorite science books to teach with are the Magic School Bus series. My students just always have so many questions and it creates such a wonderful discussion among the students

I especially love these two and plan on using them during my space and weather units later this year!

I will give updates when I actually use them with my students :)

Sarah

PS: I am new to blogging and am slightly confused on how a few things work. How do you grab buttons and put them on your page? How do I create an automatic signature? How do I add my favorite blogs and labels to the side bar? Help!

Our Five Senses

Hello everyone!

I was really nervous about teaching science and social studies when I started this year! So I decided the best unit to start my year with for science is to review the five senses. The kids have been having so much fun! We started our with reading The Magic School Bus: Explores the Senses by Joanna Cole. This just introduced us to the five senses and gave us a little more detail as to how each of our senses work within our body. It was a little over their heads, but they were very interested!

First, we studied our sense of sight, and what it is like not to have it anymore! I blindfolded each of the kids and gave them a classroom item that they had to identify using other senses. They flew through this so fast I had to scramble to find random items for them to try to identify!

Next, we explored our sense of touch. We made an anchor chart of all the "describing" words that we could think of. We came up with words like: fuzzy, hard, soft, flat, bumpy, ect. The next day, I made up a chart for the students to go on a scavenger hunt around the room. Their scavenger hunt was to find different items in the room that felt the same as their describing word. I think my favorite response was "round" for the doorknob. How creative!

Then, we did our sense of hearing. I went on Youtube and found a bunch of different random sounds...some easy and some hard. They were things like a baby crying, door slamming, a sneeze, the ocean, a helicopter, a motorcycle, ect. I played each sound a few times and the kids had too draw a picture and write what it is they saw. They LOVED this! They were so excited to hear the answers at the end. None of them got the door slamming though. However for that sound I got a rock falling, a car crash, a toilet lid slamming down, and a dog barking? What were they hearing?

All of these activities were awesome for my really academically diverse class, because it was so easy to differentiate. Some of my kids could absolutely do words and pictures, but the students that could only do pictures were still expected to provide a clear answer.

Next, we worked on our sense of smell. This one was probably the funniest one to watch. I made "smelling jars" aka cups with different foods and such in them covered with tissues (really high tech, I know) and gave each of the students a response sheet in which they had to match the given smell to the number on the cup. I did toothpaste, garlic powder, peanut butter, vanilla, etc. I was realy surprised how fast and how accurate they were! Way to go firsties!

Last, of course, is our sense of taste. I will update on this at the end of the week when we use our sense of taste when making our own applesauce :)

Yay for our five senses!

Sarah

Crazy for Apples!

This week we are doing all kinds of apple activities! And I don't know what I would have done if I did not have the wonderful ideas that I found out in blogworld.

First, I found some AWESOME activities for my math tubs at The First Grade Parade.

I printed out her 3-Way Apple Math and Odds and Evens Apple Trees on cadstock and laminated them. I put them in the math tubs with "I CAN" instructions and I cannot wait for the kids to see these when we do math tubs on Wednesday! How did you know this is exactly what my students are working on :)

In addition to these activities, I also found the cutest Counting by 5's apple activity, where the students order the numbers counting by 5's to 100. Thanks to Mrs. Kacey at Doodle Bugs Teaching for this one!

I also created an activity using apples as a nonstandard unit of measurement for length and width and a graphing activity in which the students use an apple spinner and graph their color results.

I have really fun Language Arts, Science and Social Studies activities we are doing later this week, so I will be sure to update!

Happy almost Tuesday :)
Sarah

Creating Our School Community with a School Map!

Hello everyone :)

So as a first year teacher, I barely have time to shower, much less blog about the wonderful things I am doing in my classroom! But today my little first graders and I worked on something so fun!

In my social studies curriculum, my students are supposed to learn about our school community and what their role is in making our school a great place to be. So I decided it would be fun to make a topigraphical map of our school. Sounds complicated....but I didn't exactly use correct measurements haha.

I drew a basic outline of our school on my Smartboard, and then the students told me where to fill in all of the rooms. I was so impressed that they knew where all of the middle school rooms were too! And after we completed our map, the students had to create "routes" based on my directions.

This part was SO fun for them. I would make up funny stories like: "Oh my goodness. Miss Moellering forgot to pick her students up from gym class. Cody decides he is in charge of getting our class from the gym back to our classroom." Then the students would use our pointer finger and go along our map and show us the correct way to go.

I also used this as a good review of left and right. The students had to tell me what direction they were turning if they came to a corner!

I will try to post more of what I am doing! It is just hard to find the time!
Happy Friday eve! I have a half day tomorrow!

Sarah