Carrots

Carrots are so much fun to teach during my plant unit.  I love the story The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss.  The pictures are simple.  It is always a favorite of my kinders (and me).

The Scholastic Book Fair was at our school this week.  If your school is like mine, the Book Fair makes a lot of profit from the teachers in the building.  I think I visited the Book Fair daily.  I ended by buying Creepy Carrots by Aaron Reynolds.

So I went searching... of course on TpT.  I found a unit called Creepy Carrots Literacy Activities and Stations by Sherri Caballero.  I was so excited!!  Not only that the price was unbeatable, but also because she is an incredible woman and teacher who lives just a few miles down the road from me!!

Here are some pictures and activities from this week's lesson on carrots...

Of course we had to have a craftivity!!  I cut rectangles out of construction paper and directed students how to make cuts until they ended up with this creation!!

 
Debbie Clement always says that students should not have a cookie cutter design.  I think she would enjoy our creations that are in the hallway this week!

I was most impressed with student writing.  Students worked hard and were engaged in their writing.  We used the beginning, middle, and end retelling sheet to retell the story.

I also like how the standards are included on each page. 

Endless Possibilities,

Stephanie

Five for Friday (April 10)

I can't believe it's Friday again!  This week went by speedy quick!  We are linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday.

Here are five quick random things from this week in my kindergarten classroom.

 

1.) I am so excited about my new classroom rug!!  Thank you Donor's Choose.  I read where they are currently funding half for Professional Development through the Bill and Melinda Gates Fund. 

2.)  I sent home letter naming fluency sheets with each of my students.  They are free in my TpT store.

  3.)  We studied plants this week.  My kinder kids planted beans in a Ziploc baggie, labeled a plant, and read many books.

4.) However, their favorite part was learning about carrots.  I used Sherri Caballero's Creepy Carrot Unit.

5.) For Word Work, students used newspapers to highlight sight words.

Stephany has a Newspaper Unit in her TpT store that would be great to use with kindergarten students.

Endless Possibilities,
Stephanie

Dinosaur Eggs!

We have had fun for the past couple of weeks learning about dinosaurs.  I have a student who is totally obsessed with everything dinosaur so I promised we would do a dinosaur unit!  This will be one post out of two to cover all of our dinosaur adventures!

Always up for a huge, fun sloppy mess I decided to let the students paper mache their own eggs.  Before I blew up the balloons I placed a little dinosaur inside.  I got these at the Dollar Tree.  They are squishy and fit right in the balloon.  They come in three different dinosaurs (Triceratops, Stegosaurus, T-Rex).

We used the flour & water recipe to make the paste.  It didn't take too long for them to cover the balloons.  I suggest keeping them on the smaller side, the larger balloons weren't as sturdy once they dried, plus you want to make sure that there aren't any little holes in the eggs where the dinosaur can fall out.  After they were dried, I let them paint their egg.  

Once the eggs were dried, I popped the balloon.  The balloon will shrivel up inside of the paper mache which is actually great because it makes it harder for the dinosaur to fall out of any holes that may be in the eggs from the students not covering them all of the way.

We have been researching different kinds of dinosaurs.  We used these QR code cards in our listening center... they are connected to Safe Share YouTube videos that are fun and informative.  We also used the information sheets to learn about each dinosaur.

Students wrote three facts about the dinosaur in their egg, practiced reading their facts and then read them aloud while being recorded.  I took the videos and made QR codes, attached them to the eggs and made a listening center recording sheet.  Now students can scan an egg, listen to the recording and guess the dinosaur in their classmates' egg.   So many speaking and listening standards covered, as well as fluency practice. 

I plan on having a reveal to see how many students correctly guessed the dinosaurs in their classmates' eggs.  I'll let the kids take their eggs home and hatch them with their parents!

This was such a fun activity!  It's good to get a little messy every once in a while!  You can grab up the the QR codes, information sheets and much more in my All About Dinosaurs unit!

Stephany