See You Later Alligator

We just finished learning about reptiles and have started our discussion about birds. Only having one hour a week to teach science to my kiddos, I try to read a story, do an activity or experiment, and finish off with a short craft, game, song, or writing activity in our science journals. Just a quick peek of a few things we have done with our animal unit in first grade this last week.

We made quick little gators after reading Gail Gibbons story Alligators and Crocodiles and doing our 5 little monkeys song. The kids love doing songs or chants.

Five little monkeys swinging in the tree
teasing Mr. Alligator can’t catch me….can’t catch me
along came Mr. Alligator quiet as can be
and snapped that monkey out that tree

Four little monkeys swinging in the tree
teasing Mr. Alligator can’t catch me….can’t catch me
along came Mr. Alligator quiet as can be
and snapped that monkey out that tree

Three little monkeys swinging in the tree
teasing Mr. Alligator can’t catch me….can’t catch me
along came Mr. Alligator quiet as can be
and snapped that monkey out that tree

Two little monkeys swinging in the tree
teasing Mr. Alligator can’t catch me….can’t catch me
along came Mr. Alligator quiet as can be
and snapped that monkey out that tree

One little monkeys swinging in the tree
teasing Mr. Alligator can’t catch me….can’t catch me
along came Mr. Alligator quiet as can be
and snapped that monkey out that tree

No more monkeys swinging in the tree!

We started our day with asking what they knew so far about birds. We made a huge list because their teachers have been front loading! Yea! We also made a list of birds that they knew. We know a lot of different birds. We drew our favorite in our science notebook and listed 3 things that made it a bird. Here is our class chart.

We worked with bird songs in the background! I love the loon calls, it reminds me of summer at the lake! Oh, I miss warm weather! We finished our time with a story and review today.

Leaf It To Me

It is sooo cold here in Wisconsin. I had recess duty and yikes was I coooold. I watched the leaves fall from the trees and got kind of sad. So, tonight I thought I would make something my olders in after school class could do to capture what's left of fall.

Leaf Chromatography

I should read this one... I will check to see how sad it is considering my son just pointed out the one leaf hanging from our maple. I think I will use this with my olders... (so I am added my comments after I read the books, oh my what a beautifully illustrated book! Love it. I used this book for both groups. Too beautiful not to!)

and this with my youngers!

Two good choices from our school library. 

Happy Fall Y'all!

5 Senses "Rap" Up

Our cute little kindergarten kiddos are on their final week of learning about their five senses. We sang our song about our five senses sung to bingo, we make a cute chart to go along with learning to write words as a class, and we practiced writing on our own. We finished with our 5 senses book by Aliki.

                                           

We finished with  a little rap...

I see with my eyes and hear with my ears,
I've been using my senses all of my years.
I use my tongue to taste good stuff
My hands can feel things that are soft and rough,
I use my nose to sniff those smells,
I use my five senses as you can tell.

Yo, 5 senses... hear, see, smell, taste and touch,
it's now your turn to use the whole bunch.
Yo, 5 senses.

Okay, friends...remember the song I was telling you about... It goes to the tune of Bingo.

I have five senses yes I do, I use them everyday.

Ears, Eyes, Nose, Mouth, Hands,

Ears, Eyes, Nose, Mouth, Hands

Ears, Eyes, Nose, Mouth, Hands

I use them every day!

Harvest Is Over and The Garden is Bare:(

So, we dug out all of the plants in our school garden this week. It makes me sad to see it so bare. Now, I have to get creative. How can we keep the garden spirit alive. Well, for one, I get to go buy a greenhouse! Yea! Grants are great things. Then we can try to grow in the winter. (At least we can try) I am thinking lettuce, beets, carrots. I came up with another activity though to do in the winter as we start having to buy our produce from warmer places.

                                                                  Veggie Mapping

Twirly Bird Company

I needed to assess today in fifth grade so I set up a Twirly Bird Company. Our variable unit is 2/3 of the way finished so this was a great way to assess direction reading and teach a bit of a real life skill. I set it up that I hired each to work in my factory. They were set in  their own cubicle (folders up) with directions for the twirly bird. They were pretty simple, so I thought. Cut on the black lines, fold on the dotted line. Place a paper clip on the end of the twirly bird. Out of my first production line of finished twirly birds, I had 10 made correctly. Those were my employees that got promoted. I put the others on probation, at risk of being fired. 8 more were able to be successful, but I still had 6 students unable to make a twirly bird.

We wrapped up by me modeling the directions and discussing how important it is to really pay attention to the directions and details, and how important it is to have good training. Teachers everyday, try to model and show in many ways how to help our students become successful. Sometimes it takes our kiddos a little longer or another way to show them how to complete a task. Whether one day they are the boss, and need to make sure they have a
great training program, or someone who works in a factory, this lets them get an idea of real life.

Here are the twirly bird directions and sheets:)

http://www.lhsfoss.org/fossweb/worksheets/protected/5-6/VariablesAssessMstrsENG.pdf

Check The Weather and The Forecast

We are going on a "trip" today, but before we figure out where we are going we have to figure out what weather everyone likes. It is a great way to use adjectives in our science lesson. We made a book to help us know where to send everyone in case we all like different types of weather. After we filled out the sheet, we found out that we needed to send our class to 4 different locations: a sunny place, (Key West, FL) a warm place, (Myrtle Beach, SC), and a cold place, (Nome, AK). The other corner liked it rainy, so we looked up each vacation destination and determined that today it was 82 in FL, 72 in SC, and 36 in AK. My rainy friends could join their classmates in South Carolina and Alaska this next week because they seem to be getting rain. We looked at the forecast of each city and realized that we were using our meteorology skills. We used a real thermometer to test hot and cold weather and learned how to chart the temperature on a paper thermometer. Wouldn't it be nice to send some of the sun our way in Wisconsin, Saturday looks like a chance of SNOW! Yikes. This is one of those times I hope our meteorologist is wrong.


                                                      Weather or Not?

This is a great song that we used to follow up on our learning about thermometers and temperature.

Weather or Not

We are working on an  air and weather unit in 2nd grade  this quarter. This is a great song to go along with our meteorology tools that we are making. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBfaAN_tWW4

Here is the sheet we will be working on as we build our vocabulary.

weather words