Spring Things

Hold the phone... I'm blogging two days in a row. That NEVER happens! I guess I was just so pleased with the adorable 3D flowers we made today that I had to get on and share! I think I've had my kids do this activity and post it for open house as long as I've been in first grade, but usually we do it by assembling paper pieces. This year I wanted to do something a little more fun and after googling and pinteresting, I found a few ideas but nothing was quite perfect. So I made up my own using things I already had at home and in my craft tubs.

The final product:

To make this you will need:

green pipe cleaners (1 per student)

baking cups (1 per student)

3"-4" pieces of yarn (1 per student)

glue

scissors

construction paper

flower parts labels (click here for mine)

brown and yellow crayons

gold glitter (optional)

First, fold your baking cup in half, then in half again, and yes, one more time. Like so:

 Please excuse my dry cuticles...

Next, round of the top of your folded cup. Like this:

Now unfold it, et voila! A flower!

Next. you can have your students paint or color the center yellow for the pollen. I added a little gold glitter gel on top just to give them a little Open House sparkle.

To make the stem, I cut off the top quarter of the pipe cleaner, then cut that piece in half. The long piece is used for the stem and your students will create the leaves out of the two smaller pieces.

In order to make the roots, I used brown yarn, but you could also use twine or more pipe cleaners. I gave each student a piece that was between 3" and 4" and allowed them to cut that piece into smaller pieces to create roots themselves. 

Finally, put all of the pieces together, add the labels and draw in the soil. You have a 3D plant diagram and is cute, fun to create and educational - win, win, win!

(We're working on adverbs that tell when this week.... could you tell, HA?)

I need to add a permanent disclaimer that says "Warning! You are about to encounter photos of terrible quality!". Ugh. One of these days I WILL get a new digital camera.

But WAIT! There's more (said in my best infomercial voice)! Here's a mini math center I created to reinforce fact families. We are revisiting addition and subtraction going up to 20 right now and I needed some new materials to keep these review concepts fresh. Enjoy! Click on the cover to download from Google Docs.

Science Week - Favorite Videos or Websites

I'm catching up on this post from yesterday's Science Week topic - favorite science videos and websites. I have two resources for videos that I absolutely love for science and use on a regular basis. I feel bad sharing these, because they both require logins and so I can't really give you a good preview. My district provides these for us through the library SO maybe you can check with your librarian and see if you have access - I hope you do! Saying that I use these on a regular basis is a big deal because I don't like to use videos very often during science. Our science time is at the end of the day, it's never enough time for all I want to do and I like to do everything hands on and messy! Every now and then though we need a little more information or I need to introduce a new topic and that's when I use these.

1. Discovery Education and Discovery Education Science - in addition to the amazing video database, you can also find games, lessons and more. Seriously, I've never searched for something and NOT found it on here. It's an incredible resource to have access to! If you already use Discovery Education, make sure you've checked out the "Science Elementary" tab and explored there. It's broken down by Life Science, Earth Science and Physical Science, with a wealth of subtopics within each one of those. Again, all I can say is AMAZING!

2. Pebble Go - This is a really first grade friendly way to have your kids research science topics using the web. Like Discovery Education Science, the website is set up by units and within each, you'll find even more subtopics. The kids can read the information, but best of all, they can click to have it read to them! Of course, they also have great videos. We just used this site last week when we were talking about pets and it's great for other animal research projects.

What websites and videos do you use to get your kids engaged during science? Go link up!

Science Week - Favorite Book

It's Science Week over at Teaching Blog Addict and since I teach at a science magnet school, I thought I'd better participate! This is REALLY hard for me! I have SO many great science books and I love them all! The book that I'm sharing with you is my favorite from our Ladybug unit in the spring. I wanted to share it because it comes in several versions for different kinds of insects so you might be able to find one that suits your own needs in terms of an insect unit. It's called Are You a Ladybug? by Judy Allen and Tudor Humphries. It's a cute story that goes through the important characteristics of a ladybug and at the end, ties it in with how ladybugs are different from children. Cute, cute, cute and informational - love that! Click on the picture below to check it out on Amazon! What's your favorite science book?

Only 12 days left...

Yep, you read that right! 12 days of school left for me! I'm taking a personal day this Friday, so really I guess I just have 11 days left with my first grade sweeties! It amazes me how fast the year goes by. I feel like they go faster every year! My other exciting news... as of this evening, I have 100 followers! I am so excited and feeling very humbled. I just can't believe there are that many people who want to know what's going on in Room B103! I posted my giveaway yesterday, so make sure you check out my post to find out how you can enter to win a stamp from the ADORABLE Sweet Papery!

Here's a random weather share - I know most of you are finished with weather units, but my kids did this a few weeks ago and thought it was really fun. They wanted to know if we could have it as a science center again this week. After reading all of their weather reports, I totally get why they liked it. According to my class, we were going to have a very drastic weather week in North Texas, chock full of every natural disaster imaginable. It looks like I have a room full of future meteorologists and storm chasers!

Another Insect Idea!

Everyone has been sharing their insect ideas and activities, so here I am inspired to share as well. We haven't done a full insect unit, but we've been working on a ladybug unit during science for a couple of weeks. I have one of those thematic unit books on ladybugs by Teacher Created Resources and it really has some great activities in it, so a lot of my craftivities and cross-curricular connections are ideas I've taken and built on from that book. This activity though is something I came up with while we were studying ladybug spots and their symmetry. First of all, did you know that ladybugs can be green, yellow, orange and even black? The kids LOVE that little piece of information. Side note: I found a 30 pack of giant ladybug diecuts at a local teacher store for $5.99, and decided that was money well spent. I am perfectly happy to pay $5.99 to avoid tracing and cutting 22 ladybugs out! My little scientists chose a color for their ladybugs and drew as many dots as their little hearts desired - fine by me as long as they showed symmetry. They looked adorable, but I thought they were missing a little something. So, being the technology magnet and always looking for a way to tie in technology, the students typed what symmetry means and glued it on. They all typed it themselves, and I was very pleased with how many used our science word wall to spell symmetry correctly! They voted on a pair of "crazy" scissors and voila! An authentic product tying together math (symmetry), science AND technology! I did cut the typed text out for them since Miss Griffin's crazy scissors are a little dull these days.

And I had to throw in this picture of us at the bug ball this year! This is my fabulous team: Mrs. Claborn, Mrs. Fulbright, Ms. Hemmingsen and Me!

 Happy May, y'all! We only have 22 days of school left here!

Spring Themed Science Center

I got this idea back in January at a baby shower, believe it or not, but hadn't quite figured out how I would use it in my classroom. At the shower, we played a game where various baby items were placed in numbered lunch sacks and we passed them around and tried to guess what was inside. While standing in Dollar Tree with plastic eggs in hand, it finally came to me - I'll put items in the eggs and have students guess what's inside by the sound! I've created a recording sheet that I'm sharing this morning so you can all use it too!

All you need for the activity is 8 plastic eggs, each with a number 1 -8 on it, items to fill the eggs - rubber bands, jelly beans, toothpicks, erasers, cotton balls, rice, paperclips and pennies, and this recording sheet. Students choose an egg, shake it and record which item they think is in each egg based on the sound. Of course, you could use any items, you'd just have to change my word bank. For extra challenge, you could also remove the word bank. Another way to add more challenge is to have two of each egg and have students identify two eggs have the same item as well as identify what the item is. Click on the picture below to download the recording sheet.



Have a super week!