Frogs

Our research project this week was on Frogs.  We did our research from non-fiction books, the internet, and magazines.  (I forgot to get a picture of our KWL-know, want to know and learned-chart.)  The first two pictures show our research paper and the graphic organizer we used to organize our writing.  We extended our frogs unit to math and did addition and subtraction using the song, Five Green and Speckled Frogs.  Our fiction book for this study was Jump, Frog, Jump.  The last two pictures show our main characters chart and the chart we used for main idea.  Coming up-Butterflies!

April Fool's Day

Is Mrs. Carter tricky or what?  I told students that a finger paint company had contacted me to test their finger paint.  The only color they had left was brown.  I told them I did not have any finger paint paper, so paper plates would work just as good.  When I started giving each student their spoonful of "finger paint", they commented that it smelled good and that it looked like chocolate pudding.  I told them I would tell the finger paint company those things.  It wasn't long before one student snuck a lick, and the other students screamed out that he had tasted finger paint.  I said, "What!!!!!  Put finger paint in your mouth........April Fools."  Then I handed out spoons and more chocolate pudding to eat!  The rest of the day, students were trying to play tricks on me!

Who Took The Cookies From the Cookie Jar

HANDS ON Subtraction!!!  We acted out Who Took the Cookies from the Cookie Jar with real Cookies (cereal).  Then each student wrote down the story problem on their individual white boards.  What a fun way to learn subtraction.

Spring

What authors and illustrators these students are becoming.  After making a circle map of some of the signs of spring, they put their favorite four signs on an accordion book.

Duck on a Bike

What a fun way to start spring out--by reading the story about Duck on a Bike.  There were so many great comprehension skills that went well with this book.  The students loved acting it out making the onomatopoeia sounds as well as what they said to duck.  Each animal had its own point of view (another comprehension skill) about a duck riding a bike.  We discussed the main idea of the book by doing the who, what, where, when, why, and how chart.  The students did not realize that they were using adjectives when we created the bubble map.  What great writing they did when we did a text to self connection writing of when they first rode a bike.

Wind

What a fun-filled week our Wind unit was.  We used the well known children's book, The Wind Blew, by Pat Hutchins, to spring board our activities.  It is a perfect book to sequence and retell the story because the wind steals things from people in a certain order.  It is also a rhyming book and provided a great opportunity to learn that some rhyming words look the same and some do not.  We wrote about flying a kite.  To end the unit on Friday,  we flew a kite!  Then we had outside centers that we rotated.  They were bubbles, wind socks, pinwheels, and wind tubes.  Why didn't I take a picture of that? 

St. Patrick's Mischief

I have to report that we had some mischief happen in our classroom before Spring Break.  After reading a story about St. Patrick's Day, we decided to set a trap for a Leprechaun and use bits of gold jewelry to lure him into our trap.  The next morning, we discovered the Leprechaun had come into our classroom and messed everything up, stole our snacks, and took our gold.  Not only that, he left his footprints behind.  We immediately wrote a note to the principal to let him know what happened in our classroom.  Later in the day, we thought that maybe we should not have tried to trick him and wrote him a note.  Magically, after specials, our snacks were returned and the Leprechaun left special snacks.  Luckily, I checked over spring break and the Leprechaun brought back all of our gold.

Them Bones

In science, we are learning about healthy practices.  Excercise is a healthy practice that requires healthy bones.  Take a look at our macaroni sketelons.  What a wonderful vocabulary builder it was to talk about all of the bones. 

Blends

Here is our chart of blends that we created after reading the big book, Splash in the Ocean.  We discovered that we only have one student with a blend in his name, Braylon.

Texas

We studied some of the emblems of Texas this past week.  You can see Texas' small mammal, the armadillo.  We researched facts about these interesting animals and did an interactive writing  about what we learned.  Note our drawing and watercolor of the Texas bird, the mockingbird.  What artists I have!  Not shown are the Texas flags we made and the Texas flower, the bluebonnet.  Come to open house the week after spring break to see those displayed.