Teacher read alouds are just as important as giving students time to read independently. Read alouds take the student's focus away from having to decode the words and gives students a chance to really hone in and focus on the meaning of the story. I love it when I read a story to children, and they love it so much that they beg me to READ IT AGAIN! It's so important to reread books to children and give them time to: Hear you thinking ... continue reading...
Search Results for: label/science
Butterfly Lesson Plans | Digital & Printable Reading Response for K-2
Butterfly lesson plans. Students respond to literature using the story, The Very Impatient Caterpillar and also learn about the butterfly life cycle and migration using nonfiction text. Engaging Butterfly Lesson Plans Learning about butterflies is always a fun Spring lesson, or really at any time of the year! Students can easily get excited about these fun insects because they see them in everyday life. There are so many great pieces of children's literature that represent ... continue reading...
Cookie Detectives Engaging Learning Activities
Student engagement will be through the roof, with the Case of the Missing Cookies! September kindergarten and first week of school activities for first grade. Who Took the Cookies from the Cookie Jar? This is a fun rhyme to practice as a part of your first week of school activities. Students love hearing their name and hearing the names of their friends. This fun rhyme has been used for generations because it gets kids engaged! They love the repetitive chant as they ... continue reading...
18 Virtual Field Trip Ideas for Early Learners
A list of 18 virtual field trip ideas for kindergarten and first-grade students. This collection of ideas consists of videos and interactive virtual tours. Virtual Field Trip Ideas Here are a few ideas for you to send home to students or show your own kiddos at home! Have fun with these virtual field trip ideas for early learners. #1 San Diego Zoo Check out live videos of animals. There are games, coloring sheets, and craft ideas, too! #2 Polar Bear ... continue reading...
Case of the Missing Cookies: A Cookie Detective Unit
I am happy to report that I just started my second week of school with students and I have the cutest group of kids to love on each day. It's so great to be back in the classroom this year! I will share more about my new classroom later, but today I wanted to share the fun unit that I did with my students last week. As you probably know, student engagement is very important to me. In today's world, getting students excited about learning is the key to success and motivation in the classroom. ... continue reading...
Ideas for a Kindergarten Earth Day Lesson Plan
We know how much kindergarteners love holidays! We can almost feel the excitement in the room as the calendar inches closer to holidays like Halloween or Christmas. However, there are other holidays that our young kindergarten students likely haven’t heard of before. Earth Day is one of these important holidays! I’ve put together a list of ideas for a kindergarten Earth Day lesson plan to help you introduce this holiday to your class. What is Earth Day? Earth Day is celebrated every ... continue reading...
Oceans and Pirates and Fun, OH, MY!
Good News...... After next Wednesday I only have two more days of school left! Bad News....First, I have to survive until then. :) SERIOUSLY! What makes the last two weeks of school so tough. The kids start acting all kinds of crazy and us teachers are just plain TIRED!!! I think that this is God's way of helping us send those little ones off without it crippling us with sadness. Think about it.... we've spent 180 days with these little people. They've hugged us 1,000 times, told us they ... continue reading...
Spider Unit Fun!
OOPS! Excuse the apostrophes above. Geesh! I wish I had noticed my mistake before I took the screenshot. :) My spider unit is available on TPT for only $5.00 I will be adding some things to it within the next few days. If you have already purchased it check back next weekend to get the new goodies! The Spider experiments and many more are available in my best selling, Simple Science Volume 1 unit. I will be working on Volume 3 just ... continue reading...
Insect planner
Hey Friends! I hope you are having a fabulous week. The good news is tomorrow is Friday! Can I get an amen? We are right in the middle of our insect unit. You can click on the mini-planner below to see how I plan it out. This mini insect planner includes the activities we do during our whole group reading/science instruction. For those of you who are waiting on the Common Core Essential Questions for First Grade, I promise I am almost finished. I am so sorry that it has taken me ... continue reading...
Zoo unit Day 1 Giraffes
I LOVE this time of year. My little sweeties are becoming independent thinkers and learners who have blossomed into readers and writers AND all of my Favorite units are in the Spring!! Zoo animals, Dinosaurs (my fave), and Insects (my fave), What???!! I can have more than one favorite! :) I spend two weeks on each of these units. There is just something about these topics that get kids super excited about learning! Today we learned all about Giraffes. ... continue reading...
Going Buggy! Butterfly and Mantis
Whoo-wee! This week was CRAZY! Our 3rd, 4th and 5th graders were taking the CRCT test this week which meant no planning time and very little recess. I don't drink but this week just about drove me to it! I don't know about you guys but I am ready for Summer vacation. We get out of school on May 25th so the countdown has begun. :) Even though it was a crazy week we still had lots of fun learning all about insects. We learned about butterflies and drew the life cycle of a ... continue reading...
CHIT-CHAT! This n that!
This is another poem that I use at the beginning of our Mental Images unit. I read the poem the first time for enjoyment and then I read it slowly a few times while the kids drew their Mental Image. Our dragonflies... these turned out beautiful. I forgot to take a picture of their writing. Our story elements chart. Going Buggy Glyph. I've had a lot of emails asking me about my schedule and how I ... continue reading...
Valentine’s Day Activities
We only had a three day week thanks to getting Thursday and Friday off for a mini Winter Break! :) And Oh, my Word the weather today was a BEAUTIFUL 76 degrees. I hope the cold weather doesn't come back! Since we only had three days we did lots of Valentine activities from my unit. First, we sorted and graphed our Valentine cards. Then, we analyzed our data. We played a fun probability game. We wrote a class book following the pattern in the ... continue reading...
America Part 2
We learned about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and created a Venn Diagram. A close up of our George and Abe directed drawings. We read, We the Kids and created a Class Promise. We wanted to find out why the Statue of Liberty is green so we conducted a penny experiment. The kids thought is was so neat to see the copper pennies turn green! We also did a Liberty Bell Science experiment. But I forgot to take a ... continue reading...
Tacky and the Winter Games Lesson Plans (Free File)
Winter Games Lesson Plans for kindergarten and first grade. These are perfect to use during the Winter Olympics. Tacky and the Winter Games Don't you just love Tacky the Penguin? My class has always enjoyed this character, so when I saw Helen Lester's book, Tacky and the Winter Games, I knew I had to add it to our Engaging Readers Series. The version of the Engaging Readers one comes with 5 days of close reading comprehension activities: Visualization Retelling Connections ... continue reading...