The Bees Celebrate Valentines Day!

What a crazy, fun, and fast week it was here in room 413! Shocker, we had two more snow days and so only had Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday to catch up from our PREVIOUS snow days and to celebrate Valentine's Day. All before FEBRUARY BREAK. Despite all the craziness, the kiddos had a blast at their new Valentines themed math and literacy workshop centers for the week!

On Valentine's Day, we celebrated by reading Little Mouse's Big Valentine and then answering a writing prompt about three things we love. The kiddos used the sentence model "I love my..." and filled in the sentence however they wanted! Most of the bees said their family <3

For art centers, we made HUGE Valentines for the kiddos' families and decorated them with words and sentences we knew, pink, red, and white doilies, pom poms, and a heart made of their sweet hands. I then took their pictures holding an I Love You Because... sign and printed them in black and white (yes, took them all in two days, printed them, and added them to their valentines). Finally, we added a sentence about why they loved their families; most of which were because they love me (too much!), feed me, take me places, and give me what I need. Such poets.... But they came out so cute!

so heart melting Jesus...

Our science experiment, the ever famous candy heart experiment, was such a success even in my sometimes tricky-to-control integrated classroom! We used this sheet from The Kindergarten Smorgasboard to guide our observations and predictions:

I drew my own version of the sheet on my easel so that the kiddos could follow along and successfully fill in the record sheet. I included a simple phrase or word to describe my predictions and observations for them to copy if they pleased. We started in the top left and made predictions about whether the candy hearts would sink or float and then moved to each box as we did the experiments.

I had the children participate as much as possible (using my name sticks for participants) and began by asking one of the kiddos to place five candy hearts in each bin. I wanted the kiddos to see the constant of an experiment so they could become comfortable with the scientific process. We then did each bin as it appeared on the record sheet. After adding the ingredient to the bin, I walked around the circle showing the children the results (to avoid messes and fights to get to an observation table). It worked well, although it took much time. Do this experiment in the morning so that you can check the results in a few hours again- this is when you see the most change.  Vinegar dissolves the hearts eventually and immediately dissolves the words, water turns the color of the hearts, and the baking soda (I added a lot) makes bubbles that eventually push up the hearts!

they're floating!

here's the vinegar

lastly our water bin

Here's a peek at our math centers!

Due to our shorter week, the kiddos only had two centers to complete (so that each child would have a turn with both of the centers). The first center was a measuring center which is a skill we don't get the opportunity to practice much. They had so much fun with this center and I found that the kids were very independent and self-directed here. All of my learners were able to complete the task and enjoyed it- no complaining here!

 The other math center revolved around practicing our addition sentences and matching them to their respective sums. This center was differentiated with a self-correcting tool (the pattern) for the children to place their pieces on. Also on the table were number lines and counting tools to aid the children in finding their sums. 

Here's the self-correcting pattern sheet

Here are the recording sheets I created to keep the bees on task! I added a heart icon at the end of every complete addition sentence so that they could "complete and color." They were challenged to see how many hearts they could color before center time was over!

Here's a peek at our Valentine literacy center!

I decided to try a scavenger hunt for valentines pictures this year and see how successful the kiddos were with following the rules (no running, screaming, cheating etc) and completing the task in a timely and beneficial manner.  I remembered to remind the students to use their indoor feet and voices, keep their findings to themselves, and sound out the words, BUT I didn't realize that they would take the hidden picture with them! When some of the bees found a hidden picture they picked it up and carried it with them! This made for a difficult time for the others... Next year I will teach what a scavenger hunt is more completely BEFORE we begin! 

Here they are trying to steal the hidden picture...

Found it!

Hard to tell by this picture but the sheets were differentiated to meet the bees' needs. Some of the sheets had all the sounds written in dashed font but the first or the last, some had dashed middle sounds to trace and some were made of empty boxes where the students had to fill in all of the sounds they heard. This worked well!

Check back soon to see what we have planned for our Patriotism and All About the United States Unit!

Snow Day Update

So here's to my fifth snow day this year... very bittersweet. Love the time to think through lessons and catch up on some good shows, but miss my kiddos and HATE getting behind schedule with our units. I'm planning for our introduction to subtraction and trying to imagine how in the world they will understand "_ fewer than..." My kiddos have just grasped addition and already have difficulty with vocabulary and complex sentences because they speak English as a second language. I'm planning on using tons of visuals and manipulatives, but I know they will need to know "how many fewer" and be able to answer that question. Thinking about phrasing it as how many more do we need to make the two groups equal (something they are familiar with).. then directly following that with but instead we have ___ fewer. Hope it clicks!

Anyway, here's a look at our past week (which was all broken up with snow days... and so will continue into this week's end... yes, we had two more snow days this Monday and today...)

After testing the kiddos on their ability to write all of the upper and lowercase letters in the alphabet, I decided it would be a smart idea to make a fun center for practicing the shapes and lines in our beloved alphabet ! We used bendy sticks (reusable sticky colored sticks) to mold and learn the lines and curves in all of our letters and some numbers. The kiddos loved the new way to practice their letters and numbers!

 The recent tests also led me to discover that a few of my friends still need much practice with counting to 100. The biggest issue seems to be with going from a __ 9 to the next group of ten. Yet they can count to 100 by tens so I gave them a little practice with counting by ones in a fun, visual self-correcting way! 

Kiddos rolling and recording their two digit number using the square frames

We're nearing the end of our unit on matter and so I had the students complete a semi-independent sorting activity. I let the kiddos have some choice in this activity; whether they want to look though magazines for solids, liquids, and gasses or use some pre-printed pictures. This was an easy way to differentiate the project. Found these at https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Scooting-Through-Second and https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Sheila-Melton

At the writing table, this week the kiddos wrote about their favorite winter activity. They love free writes and it gave me a chance to work with them one-on-one and really see their abilities in action. There was a lot of Frozen and Elsa talk going on ....

One of my kiddos sounding out her "h" words!

At literacy center time, some of my advanced kiddos were working on putting sight words together to make sentences that make sense. I found this super cute activity on  Yara's blog at http://www.yarasseaofknowledge.blogspot.com.au. Using this activity, I was able to see my kiddos' abilities to fix word order, identify deleted or added words, and transfer these words onto paper to make a sentence. I will definitely put this activity out again, my kiddos LOVED coming up with their own sentences!

Pointing to each word while we read the sentence!

Discovering Motion!

We just finished up our science unit on force and motion in room 413. What a fun UBD unit this was to cover because of the endless opportunities to use hands-on activities and experiments to supplement my direct instruction. The children were also able to bring so much information to the table from the start as well because they LOVE to experiment with gravity (throwing and dropping things...sigh) and pushing and pulling everything (and sometimes everyONE).

We began our unit by making a sorting chart of things that move with a push and things that move with a pull. In order to be successful with this group activity, we first read Move It: motion, forces, and you, a FABULOUS informational text geared towards young elementary students. We did read this book over a few days, reading "chapters" that were essential for our lessons of the day. I then provided physical examples of many of the sorting items (toy cars, soccer ball etc.) so that we could ensure our categorizing was correct.

Here's our final chart! We did this as a whole group activity and each pair of children received one picture that they examined, discussed, and placed on the chart based on a agreed upon category. The object in the middle is a Yo-Yo... they discovered (with some help) that we need to push the yo-yo down and then pull it up quickly to make it move properly.

During activity time for our "have-to" station, the kiddos worked one-on-one with me to discover their misconceptions about the motions of push and pull and to sort common items into their appropriate category. I found this activity to be very helpful for finding the kiddos that still needed some scaffolding and hands-on experience to understand the difference between a push and pull.

At the end of our unit, we did two day "discovery centers" with force and motion exploratory activities. The students used a simple recording sheet with a box labeled with a picture matching the pictures on the large signs at each of the centers. Part of the pre-teaching for this activity included a posted (with magnetic word strips) word wall of words they may want to use while recording their results at each center. The students were told to record, with drawings and words, their findings at each of the discovery centers. This was by far their favorite activity of the whole unit! 

Discovery Centers!

We're so excited about the spinning station! This was also great fine motor practice, the spinning motion was difficult for them to create!

Measuring the distance traveled after rolling down a steep ramp. We tested flat rolling as well as different heights of the ramps and recorded our results!

Here's the gravity station; we used balls of different sizes and compositions and recorded how fast they fell and noticed the speeds.

By far the favorite of the stations: friction! The kids went crazy here ! (quite literally.....) They tested whether it was easier to push a friend on the smooth tiling or the bumpy rough rug and with one friends force or two. 

Here's our UBD bulletin board to showcase all of our hard work over the entire unit!

Mid-Year Highlights!

This year has been so full of students moving in and out of district ( I have received 4 new students since October) and lost 3, testing and retesting for the kiddos, and snow days (we've had three already and are looking towards a possible fourth Monday!) that I just haven't been able to post about our Fall! But, I've gathered some snippets from our Fall and early Winter for you all to see what we've been up to in 413 :)


The writing curriculum we use with the kiddos was written for children in urban districts (specifically written from experience in the Boston area) and is called Talking, Drawing, and Writing. Coming from teaching with Lucy Calkins, who begins students writing as soon as possible, it was hard for me to fall in love with our program at first. However, after sitting down with the manual for a few hours, I began to really understand why it works for my population. The thought process is this: a good handful of the children we encounter in the city districts are from backgrounds where storytelling and verbal communication is of utmost importance. Sometimes this takes the precedence over story reading to young children. Instead of playing on this fact as a disadvantage, our program caters to the students' backgrounds and first builds intricate and detailed stories through oral storytelling, like so many are accustomed to doing. This eases their stresses about writing and focuses their attention on the actual story first.

A big part of this curriculum is teaching tools and techniques for drawing and sketching. This is also in the hopes that if we can build these skills, the students will learn to add detail to their pictures, and as a result, their stories. We work on sketching with many mediums, but this was definitely a crowd favorite: clay person sculpting and drawing....

Check out the detail one of my girls added to her clay person! Eyes (equipped with pupils), mouth, hair, arms, different torso parts.. she loved this station!

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Another unit we covered in the Fall was shadows and properties and characteristics of light. My kiddos loved this unit and were able to share so much previous experience and many beliefs about shadows throughout our project. One of my favorite videos to explain a scientific topic was during this unit and can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ty0C8mH4Jy8 . This is a short video from a Peep and the Big Wide World show and mixes just the right amount of silliness, inquiry, and child friendly language to explain what a shadow is and where it originates. So fun!

Here my friends are discovering how shadows move and change when they are different distances from the light source. The puppets were made using an Ellison machine and popsicle sticks and were all black to simulate shadow coloring. They loved being in control of the learning at this station.

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I love Thanksgiving because it folds in just right to my community-focused inclusion classroom. The children always love learning about the Pilgrims and Native Americans and always get a kick out of the fact that they were real! One of the first projects we did this year used the book The Littlest Pilgrim as a starting point. We discuss as a class the different jobs children of this age had to do and how it compares and contrasts with what they are responsible for today. Then I have a volunteer dress as a Pilgrim and one as our modern day kid and we sort pictures of toys/jobs using a large string venn diagram on the floor. This is a great physical and visual activities for all of your learners!

Following this activity I introduce some Thanksgiving house area props for them to discover and experiment with. Here are a few of the girls reenacting the first Thanksgiving :)

On the last day of school before Thanksgiving break, the kiddos and I make our very own Thanksgiving Feast together. This was a little difficult this year because we were not able to use an oven so we made a Thanksgiving trail mix. The students practiced reading recipes and fractions (my highest students), measuring and pouring using a whole and half cup (some new vocabulary words that they still remember today!), and taking turns and carefully mixing the creation. So much fun... and such a yummy treat!

My anxious kiddos awaiting the Thanksgiving Feast amongst the cornucopia....possibly wold's best vocabulary word to teach five year olds... the variations were numerous and simply adorable!

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On the last few days before our Christmas break, we compiled our thoughts, knowledge and excitement about gingerbread that we had gathered from our inquiry unit on gingerbread (men) and made our very own gingerbread! The first day we measured, poured, and mixed all of the ingredients for gingerbread (homemade and very messy with molasses) and then I brought home the mixture and made the gingerbread men. I was at first very sad the kiddos wouldn't be able to cut out their own cookie and place it in the oven but was surprised to find out they loved waiting over night for them. It was an excuse to be super excited for math two days in a row! One of the bananas even asked me to "Pleeeeease not open the oven so they don't escape!" Precious.

On the second day we decorated the gingerbread men but the only catch was that they had to follow a direction card. These cards were differentiated and dictated what had to be on each gingerbread man/boy/girl/baby. The cards helped the kiddos practice number ID, sequencing or simple addition. Functional and Fun!

Yes, they got to eat them too!!