Symmetry, Long "oo" Zebras, Bossy R, Zoo Animals, AHH!!

Oh boy! We're getting SO close to the end of the year...I can taste it :) I love my kiddos but we're all starting to get summer fever... So we have been doing all kinds of activities to keep us motivated and excited to work hard!

We have been working on fractions and symmetry lately, and some of my kiddos were really struggling with the "mirror image" concept of symmetry. They could identify figures that were or were not symmetrical, but could not produce a symmetrical image on their own. So we did the cutest little activity that I got from my roommate last year.

Symmetry Art!
You need:
-4 pieces of black construction paper (1 8.5 by 11 paper cut in 4 pieces)
-Various bright paint colors (orange, yellow, white, etc.)
-Squirt bottles/ketchup bottles

1. Students get 4 pieces of black construction paper and fold them in half.
2. Open the paper back up and students draw a design (with minimal paint) on one side of the fold. (For my kids, my aide and I actually "drew" the designs, with the direction of the kids since squirt bottles are difficult to control, but they could easily do it themselves)
3. Fold the paper back in half again paint side in. Have students smooth it out on the table. (Depending on where the paint is, it may ooze out the sides a little....its no big deal)
4. Open back up and viola! A perfect symmetrical match.
5. Repeat with other three pieces of paper!

You would have thought that I gave them a big bowl of candy. This was the most fun I've seen them have in the longest time!

Our story this week is called A Friend for Little Bear by Harry Horse, and it was one of those cutesy stories that they girls love and the boys don't. So we had to make it fun!

The kiddos got to make their own "wooden horse." We LOVE crafts, so I cut out all the pieces and the kiddos put them together. Then, because our sound for the week was long u "oo," the kids had to cut out the wooden horse's red spots and write a word that had the "oo" sound in it. We had just made a list on our shamp"oo" bottle earlier that day, so we had tons of ideas. They were only required to make 10 spots, but some of my little overachievers did more like 20 or 30 :)They turned out so cute!

We have also been learning about Bossy R. I started out with the "ar" and "or" sounds, which I think are easier. We talked about how the a and the o do not make the short vowel sound or the long vowel sound, because the r wants them to say his name.

We thought of little sayings:
"Ar" is a pirate, and he says: "Arrrrrrrghhhhhhhhhh!" "Or" is what a seal says: "Or, or, or!" (And you slap your outstretched arms together like a seal!)

When I introduce sounds for the first time, I like for my students to practice reading words with these sounds as much as possible, to make them familiar with it. So I created these little sound cards. They worked SO well with my ELL students, because in addition to the ar/or word, there is also a picture to assist them! You can have them for FREE :)

To teach all of the Bossy R sounds, especially er, ir, and ur, I used Babbling Abby's R-controlled Vowel pack. It was fantastic. I already had all of her long vowel packs and this one did not dissapoint me! Her word work activities really helped me kids not only learn the sounds, but learn to differentiate between the r-controlled vowels and other short/long vowel sounds.

Lastly, we have been learning about zoo animals this week! Our field trip to the zoo was on Thursday, so we did all kinds of zoo activities this week! We started by talking about giraffes, elephants, and lions, which were three animals I knew we would see at the zoo! I split my class into groups, and each group received an info sheet on their animal. They made a web including three of the facts they learned from their info sheet. You can have them for free here!

We read Bringing Down The Rain on Kapiti Plain by Verna Aardema. It was such a good introduction to the savanna/grassland habitat, which is where you can find giraffes, elephants, and lions.

I read the story once to the students, and towards the end, they were all reading it with me! So I divided the kids into little groups, and we choral read the story, each group reading a different part. They loved the repetition!

We also were being introduced to the concept of probability. And of course, I had to make it animal themed! We started by making a big circle of students, and putting a bunch of animal cards mixed up in the middle. You can get the animal cards here. I assigned 6 students to be "keepers." The lion keeper gathered all the lions, the giraffe keeper gathered all the giraffes, etc.

Before I introduced the concept of most likely and least likely, I wanted them to have a tangible experience of seeing a set within the large group. We counted how many we had of each animal, and then filled in that part of the response sheet.

Then, we mixed up the animals and put them in an opaque bag. Five students came up and chose one of those animals out of the bag. Luckily for me, they ended up choosing monkeys (which I made the most of) 3 out of the 5 times. When we were finished choosing our 5 animals, we looked at our information and decided what animals we were the most likely to choose and least likely to choose and gave a reason why.

Then, we showed how out of all the animals put together in our zoo, you can write a fraction to show that number. That fraction is the probability that you would choose it. They completed this part of the activity independently. The next day, this was our math journal prompt!

We also made our own animals, and wrote nonfiction facts about them. Here are what they looked like when we were finished! I am working on trying to scan the templates so you all can use them too :)

I only have 15 days of school left. I can't believe it! Next week my kids have their spring concert, the talent show, and our school Olympics. We are busy busy busy!

Happy weekend!

Sarah

 

Long I, Fractions, and Lots of Eggs-citing Activities!!

Holy moly! For all of  you that had a spring break and are back in school, I can say haha because I FINALLY have a break! Granted, it still isn't anything like most of you, but tomorrow at 1:00 starts my week long break until next Thursday! Yes!!!

We have had so much fun the last couple of weeks. It was the only way I could keep my kiddos engaged (they need this break as bad as I do!).

As a class, we read the story Owl and the Moon by Arnold Lobel. It was the cutest little story about an owl who thinks the moon is following him home in the night sky. The spelling pattern that went with this stoy was long i: i, igh, and y. First, we made our own owls and moons! The moons were really fun to make because we got to take our paper outside and rub it on the blacktop to make the craters and colors! Then, they wrote all the long i words they could think of. They turned out so cute!

We also did a writing activity that really tested my first grader's critical thinking skills! The activity was called "What Am I?" asked Capital I! Each child picked a long i word, and they had to write 3 clues to describe it to their friends. Then, they got to create an actual Capital I friend with construction paper. I am so mad I didn't bring my camera this day! Here is the document we used for the writing part.

We started our work with FRACTIONS! Woo! We started learning about whole parts, and how they can be split into halves, thirds, and fourths. When I introduced equal parts, I gave my students a "grocery item." They had to show the class, and tell us what their food was, and if it was split into equal parts, or unequal parts.

I LOVE this packet from Second Grade Math Maniac. It's called Fun With Frogs and Fractions! I loved the quiz at the end becaue it was a true assessment of who got it and who didn't! We also used Amy Lemon's My Book of Fractions.This was SO fantastic because not only did it truly show my student that fractions, no matter how small are all part of a whole, but I could differentiate it for my more advanced learners! And what more perfect activity to go with our fractions then Cara Carroll's Owl Fraction Craftvity. They just thought it was so cool that they got to put the owls anywhere on their camp scene. Putting the owls under the tent was very popular!

Since it is getting close to Easter, we have been doing many Eggs-celent activities! My kids LOVE learning new sparkle words (big vocaulary words) and oviparous just took the cake! First, I explained that an oviparous animal is an animal that lays eggs. I showed them pictures of different animals, and we sorted them by whether or not we thought they were oviparous. You can have my animal cards for FREE!

Then, we watched a movie-reading of Chickens Aren't The Only Ones by Ruth Heller on Discovery Education. After watching this, we redid our animal sort and were very surprised by the results! And if anyone is lucky enough to have the Reading A-Z series, we then read Whose Eggs Are These? as a class. Such a good reinforcement! I loved all the activities that they provide with the story too.

We have just finished most of the long vowel patterns, and I wanted to do a mini-assessment to see who really remembered them! So I made this fun word sort: Find the Alligator Words. We had so much fun with this because...you need a magnifying glass to find the words hidden on the alligator (who we knew was an oviparous animal of course!).

 Then, we did a super fun writing activity. I wrote a little story called the Mysterious Egg. We are practicing visualizing, and making "movies" of the books we are reading in our heads as a reading strategy. This story was a perfect activity! You can get the story here.

 Then I told the kids to open their eyes and write down what oviparous animal they saw come out of their egg! We had snails, chicks, scorpions, chameleons, and more! You can get the mysterious egg writing page here :) After we finished our writing, the kiddos got to make their own construction paper creations of thei animals, and we made cute little opening eggs to put them in! Here are some of the finished products!

Next we did an egg-feeling activity. Miss Moellering did the best she could to come up with examples of how different egg would look and feel, and the first graders had to guess what kind of animal made that egg. We are also working on using adjectives in our sentences, so they had to think of three adjectives to describe each egg. Here is the response sheet we used to go with our activity.

We tried to incorporate eggs into everything that we did this day, so when we wanted to practice writing fractions, we did so with "rainbow eggs" aka Fruity Pebbles! We are working on collecting our own data to create graphs, so the students each got a dish of rainbow eggs, which they had to sort and then count using tally marks. Then, they graphed it creating a pictograph. Finally, they counted how many eggs they had all together, and wrote fractions for how many of each color they had. My kiddos are really hard workers, and really get satisfaction out of finishing an activity, so they worked straight through all three pages, but you could easily break it up! I also have differentiated answer sheets for your advanced ones. You can have them for free here!

What an eggs-ceptional day :)

The next day, we learned about nocturnal animals! We read a Time for Kids article: The Night Animals. We have been talking about facts and opinions, and that a fact is something you can prove is true. So we made a class list of all the facts we learned about nocturnal animals. Of course, our day would not be complete without a craft :) We could not BELIEVE that porcupines were nocturnal. I'm not kidding. I've never seen jaws drop before and that's how surprised they were. We ended up making a little porcupine craftivity! We have been working on our handwriting skills a lot lately, and for this craft, the students had to pick 2 facts from our chart, and write them on their writing paper in their very best handwriting. Then, they got to put their porcupine pieces together, and add real pricklies! They turned out adorable.

We also played a fun nocturnal animal game. One of the facts that we learned when reading our article was that nocturnal animals use their sense of hearing instead of their sense of sight. So we wanted to see what it was like to use you lose your sense of sight and use your sense of hearing to get around. Each student got a chance to be blindfolded, and they had to walk towards the bell in one part of the classroom. Their friends were all around them and I was right behind them the whole time so it was safe! They loved trying it and were surprised at how difficult it was.

Lastly, today we made a cute little bunny glyph! I will be putting the questions, answer sheet, and template for the bunny on TPT soon! Here are some pictures of the finished product :)

Phew! This is officially the longest post ever. I applaud you if you read the whole thing! I only have 15 more hours until I am on break and I am counting down every minute!

Have a wonderful Easter!

Sarah

Long E, Measurement, and More!

Hello all!

I hope everyone is getting excited for their spring breaks! Mine is a whopping Friday-Monday, but it is time off none the less :)

Last week, we had a good/bad week. Academically, we had an awesome week! They are really absorbing the information quickly and are still able to explain and apply it. So exciting! But on the bad side, my kiddos have been really struggling with bullying lately. I've had the"If you don't do _____, you can't be my friend," "I don't like you anymore," and just the general bossing other kids around. It's breaking my heart because its making some of my kiddos so sad! I had a big talk with them and we are doing a lot of anti-bullying activities this week, but I don't know what more I can do. Does anyone else have this problem? I can't believe first graders are acting like this! Any advice?

We have been learning about long vowel sounds! We have already gone over all of the bossy e patterns (a_e, i_e, 0_e, and u_e). If you need any fun games to review these spelling patterns, check out my Long Vowel Read the Roomy Fluency passages. My kids loved them! Instead of just searching for the word, the students have to read the sentence, and find  the word within it.

Another resource I have found super helpful, is the BBC Long Vowel Sound website. I have used/plan to use all of the poems in the poem pack! They are so interactive and great for my students that have trouble regonizing our word patterns right away.

This week, I started introducing measurement. We have been DYING to use our rulers, so I decided I wouldn't torture them any longer! I created a rocket measuring activity that is FREE for you to use! The best way I could think of to introduce this was to model measurement, work in pairs, and then complete an independent activity. First, I introdued the ruler and the terms "ruler" and "inch." We talked about how we use the ruler to measure length, width and height.

I modeled how to measure the first rocket and had each child show me where I would place the ruler to measure it. (All the measurements are from the tip of the rocket to the bottom of the fire.)

After we discussed this for a little bit, we played "Around the World." The rest of the rockets were placed on their desks and they rotated around with their answer sheet and measured each one. This made it SUPER easy to see who got it and who didn't.

By the time they finished the activity and stared the indepedent worksheet portion, they were pros!

We used the measurement activities from Crazy for First Grade and they are awesome! We used the Measure It activity twice, with nonstandard measurement and with the ruler. It was really cute for the kids to see the difference! And they LOVED the Measure A Friend activity. How could they not like using their friends to learn math?

On Friday, since we alwals have Fun Fridays, we did this cute FREE gummy worm activity I found on TPT. We practiced measuring in both inches and centimeters, so this was a great way to end the week!

I really want to do a class play this year that stems from a read-aloud. I have 15 students and I want them all to be involved somehow. Does anyone hav any plans? I thought of maybe doing The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka, but I can't decide. Ideas or suggestions would be great!

Have a great week! It's a four day week for me!
Sarah