Peek at My Week

So now that there was a holiday and an in-service day my days are all mesSeD up. Today, is a day five and it is Tuesday. Yikes. That means that Wednesday is the first day of my week. I have to hunker down now that there has been a break in the organization of my week being Monday day 1...Friday day 5... Now, this is the way it will be until the end of the school year. BooHoo. While I am really not focused I have to tell you guys that this weekend we went to see our daughter in college. Very traumatic stay at our hotel. A fight broke out right in front of my hotel door at 11:40. I called the desk they told the men to disband. He left. More men joined and it got hairy and scary. Called again. They left. It became really quiet and we all slept. No noise until breakfast and no food. The hotel clerk was dealing with the men that returned from the hospital. The men left and 4 of them were shot. One died. They returned very upset and angry. We didn't worry about food. We went back to the room to pack up, but then the guys were outside our room talking about the shooting. OMG. Happy Easter. We got out alright, but it was SCARY! Called the hotel customer service to share the story. Figure that the only person working at the desk did alright considering, but I was pretty hungry.

I spent the day organizing and planning for the week ahead. I think I've got it.

Kinders- will listen tot he story It's Pumpkin Time.

We then will use the sequence cards to put our pumpkin plant in order from seed to pumpkin. I used the cards and sheets from Preschool Printables. We then will plant pumpkin seeds and put them in our grow lab. We will finish off our time with a sequence activity...putting pumpkin pictures in order for our kinder "garden".

Firsties- will be be learning about insects in station format (okay tried this with the first group...will rethink stations for them they didn't focus at all) I will start off with a review using pictures of bugs. What makes them insects. We will then sing the song Head, Thorax, Abdomen losing a line each time and replacing it with buzzing. We will continue onto stations having students make a ladybug with sequence of the life cycle on the back. They will use bug info cards to research a bug and answer questions and then onto a game "what do you know about bugs?" I will show you when I bring my camera tomorrow. We will finish up with bug or not games. I show pictures and they must tell me insect or not.

Seconds- will be learning about the parts of the plant. I have different plants for them to observe. They will do some activities to draw and label and also some matching words to vocabulary from my  Plant Unit.


We will finish up with an art project tracing a hand and adding to the parts of a plant bulletin board. Green for stems, brown roots, yellow flower, green leaves...labels and all.

3rd- will be using the FOSS kit to understand about vibration. They will do a quick quiz first, then sound through air, liquid, and solids. We will use the projectable sound book from reading a-z. Then we will do the tuning fork activity, sound through air activity, and sound through water. We will finish with the understanding of how sound travels best through a solid.

4th- will be working on moon stations. We are using several lessons that I am working on from other sites. Station 1...making a model out of oreos. Station 2...reading comprehension from k12Reader. Station 3... We will finish with a flip book to make and take from Science Notebook Chick on TPT.

5th- Cardboard arcade is ready to go. I will play the games...check for 2 or more simple machines, then a quick quiz. We will finish with the FOSS lesson on intro to levers. I can't wait to post pictures of our arcade in use.

Happy Tuesday!

Sun, Moon, and Earth...Sound Good?

Just a quick post on a quiz that I am giving this week to my fourth graders. We have been creating models and using some great sheets that I got from the science penguin. So, with that let's see what they remember...formative assessment...Earth, Moon, and Sun Quiz

Sound good? Well, onto the third graders. They are using the FOSS sound kit and it is time to see if they remember their vocabulary and some key understandings. Here is this week's quiz for them...

Sound Quiz

Cardboard Arcade and Simple Machines

We are almost at our finish line with our cardboard arcade. Our students have been working hard to learn about simple machines and with that create an arcade game that incorporates two or more simple machines. Next week, on Thursday evening we are celebrating Hmong Heritage Night with song, dance, food, and games. The 5th grade cardboard arcade will be present with 12 cardboard arcade games to play. Each person attending that evening will get two tickets to play games. No prizes or candy are allowed. This is a competition! The top two winning arcade games with the most tickets will be games that will be in our school carnival next Saturday. The kids are so excited and are not holding back. Check out their games...they still need a few finishing touches.

Inclined plane and lever on the side...

Inclined plane again...and pulley

The Claw...gotta love it!

This is the group that struggled, but this is a car game, so wheel and axle, inclined plane for ramps and hill, and lever to start the race...cool beans!

four girls trying to work a pulley...quite funny, but they figured it out!

Only one simple machine so far, they got to add something or the game is out of order...

We will be sending our arcade pictures to http://cardboardchallenge.com/
I challenge you to join the imagination foundation and inspire kids to think outside the "box"!

Here is the link to my TPT product I am using for this unit...Simple Machines Cardboard Arcade.

Mr. McGregor's Garden Continued....

So my little Junior Master Gardeners were gathered today to learn how to read and order seeds from a seed catalog. They were excited to see all of the different varieties of tomatoes, flowers, and even plants they never heard of. We discussed varieties of seeds and what is best to grow in Wisconsin. Let's just say that everyone of them wanted to plant watermelon and cantaloupe. Not the best growing season for them here. So onto other vegetables that were planted in Mr. McGregor's garden that Peter ate and saw on his adventure. We found beans, lettuce, radish, and parsley...all the items he ate. Then we researched cabbage and onions what he saw. We want to create Mr. McGregor's theme garden with a scarecrow made of a blue jacket and brown shoes. We even have a ceramic bunny that is Peter. The tough thing now is to teach them what they could plant in one five by five raised garden. So check out what I did...(the veggies are not perfect, but the size is pretty close. They each got to be an expert on one veggie and then discussed why they should plant it in a particular spot). This made perfect sense and it was all up to them...not me! Ownership is key to veggie eating buy in!

Plotting Mr. McGregor's garden with second and third graders

We even plotted bush beans and pole beans. Great way to add math into your garden as well! Perimeter, area, square footage and more...

Peter Rabbit In The Garden

Today, marked our second week of our Farm To School Class. With snow once again covering our garden, we worked on some great indoor garden activities. With our olders, we separated our groups into 6 garden teams. Each team is setting up a greenhouse to grow one vegetable. One team planted eggplant, tomatoes, pumpkins, basil, cucumbers, and peppers. They determined the price point at .50 cents a plant. They created a green house name and will be marketing their products. We will be doing research and making commercials to play on our school announcements. We will be created a slogan and a store for our plants for our May 19th plantapalooza event.



Our youngers, heard the Tale of Peter Rabbit. We reviewed what vegetables Peter ate and saw in Mr. McGregor's garden. We will be creating a garden for Peter Rabbit along with a blue coat and shoes as a scarecrow. I have 9 little girls that squealed with excitement.  We stopped off after our sheets were done to play with Peter Rabbit on his official site.. We will be planting lettuce, radish, beans, and parsley fore sure. Here are the sheets we used for this week in garden club.

Our bigs...

And the sheets for our littles...

If you would like a copy press on this Garden Green House and Peter Rabbit Sheets.

Farm To School Fun!

This week, we started our Thomas Jefferson School Garden Club. We have 18 students from 2nd- 5th grade signed up to be our ambassadors of the garden. We started with a tour of the garden. The snow is almost gone...okay I looked again...today's rain took care of it all! This week, we learned about rotation farming and we set goals for bigger and better this year. We cleaned out the garden beds and even planted our first seeds of the season! We learned the importance of what we can learn from a seed packet and even learned that we are a zone three. Looks like no planting outside until May... we might sneak some seeds in the ground the last week of April like our radishes, peas, kale, and spinach. We have 16 raised beds and garden plots. Our compost is getting dumped off on Monday. We will be adding more beds to make sure this next school year we have veggies for our lunchroom!

Our Garden without plants and snow...it snowed today:(

3rd grade Bonnie Cabbage Competition is under way!

How are seeds the same and different...kinders now know!

Our garden goals for this year are:
Kinders are growing our pumpkin patch, firsties... the sunflower garden for our insects and butterflies...2nds are heading up the tomatoes, peppers, and squash plants that we will be planting in the garden. Our 3rd-5th graders will be working in the after school garden class to plant veggies that we will sell at our Plantapalooza event in May as well as making sure the rest of the seeds are planted in the ground in May.

Mentor Texts

I am so lucky to be teaching science, but I do miss the regular classroom. I use to use mentor texts in reading to tie what I needed to teach in science and social studies. Ideas By Jivey this week uses sites that have created ideas to tie science into the classroom. That is what I get to do each week.

Now that I just teach science, I am lucky to use mentor text each week in Kindergarten through fifth grade...wherever it works. This week, I am using the following mentor texts to integrate reading and science into my classroom...stop by each week to see what picture books and non fiction text I am using...

Kinders... so cute to add...in our kinder"garden" after each page...until when we harvest...in first grade!

This insect book is a great way to introduce the unit...write what they know... and then when we are done...what they learned. Check out my post below for what we did!

2nd graders are using a beautiful book that we use to learn about seeds. 

I have seeds in containers for us to compare and contrast. We try to guess what they will grow into and review what the book taught us about seeds. They each get a seed packet to draw the seed and what they can learn from a sleepy seed once it is in the ground. We then plant a seed.



Third graders will be continuing to learn about sound and we are using this non-fiction book to review our vocabulary words: pitch and volume as well as vibration.

Our fourth graders are using The Moon Book by Gail Gibbons to introduce the phases of the moon. I love the rap that we also use to incorporate song whenever possible.

Mentor texts are then used to give to my classroom teachers to reread or use in the classroom or I even give my teachers other book options to use in reading and writing in the classroom.