RAWR! Dinosaurs and update on Farm Unit

Oh, my gosh Y'all!  We have had so much fun learning about Dinosaurs! 

The week before our unit started my dog found (wink, wink) this egg in my backyard. 

We made inferences about what we thought was inside it based on it's appearance.

The kids noticed that, "it looked really old" and that it was "Huge". 

We charted their guesses on the chart below.  I told them that I had peeked inside the egg and that I already knew what was inside it.  I gave them one clue at a time and we made the chart below.

WHEW!  It's a good thing we haven't done our Oviparous Animals unit yet or I would be one sad teacher!

A horse?  In an egg?  Mercy!  :)

I was inspired by Abby's recording sheet that she used for her awesome Mystery Box Activity.  I created one to fit in with our egg activity and the kids had to chart their new inferences based on the clues they were given.  While they were at recess the dinosaur hatched out of the egg.  RAWR!  This activity got them Super excited about our upcoming unit on dinosaurs.

These are a few random pictures from our unit.

I LOVE teaching my kids new words and I get so tickled when they come back the next day and tell me their parents had to Google it!  :)  We learned about pangea.  Don't know what this is?  Ask one of my Kindergarten Sweeties they can tell you all about it.  They can also sing you the Seven Continents song and tell you the differences between Dino times and now.  They are just too smart!

                                This is our ongoing Schema/ New Learning chart.
                                I love Debbie Miller.  If you haven't read her book, Teaching With Intention
                                                                  it is a must read!

Our Dinosaur Glyph

Our T-Rex bones that we put back together.

We will be real Paleontologists on Wednesday when we do our Dinosaur Dig!

More pictures to come!  I'm working on my Dinosaur unit and all of the patterns and printables will be included.  It won't be ready for another week or so.

But... my Farm unit is ready.  Here's the link if you're interested. 

Click Here

P.S.  If you purchased the unit before 6:00 tonight you need to go back to TPT and get the 10 new pages that I added it to it tonight.  :)



Dr. Seuss

Hi Everyone,
I've been so busy working on my farm unit that I didn't get a chance to make a post this weekend. 
I will be making my weekly post tomorrow.  I just wanted to do a quick post to let you know that my friend Kathleen from Growing Kinders has a great Dr. Seuss unit that you might want to check out since his birthday is this week!
Here's the link:

DR. SEUSS

St. Patrick's Day Unit

I just uploaded my St. Patrick's Day unit to Teachers Pay Teachers.  It has a lot of fun math, literacy and science activities.  Here's a picture of the adorable leprechaun glyph that's included in this unit.

If you're interested in the unit you can view it HERE.

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 story we read this week.

Some of their ideas were really cute!

 This is what one of the finished pages looked like.  Don't you just love how

kindergarten sweeties draw?  It says,  Every alien loves a spaceship.



 I could not get rid of this annoying little X! sorry!



 Here's the Liberty Bell science experiment that I told you about last week.

First, we formed a hypothesis and then we did our experiment to find out if we were correct.

These are the bells I used.  You can see the crack in the one on the right.  My husband just used a little hack saw to make the crack for me.  In order for the experiment to be authentic the bells that you use need to be identical.  The kids were amazed at how much different the bells sounded.  We talked about how the crack causes the sound waves to vibrate differently which causes it to make a different sound.



I'd love to meet you!

I will be presenting at two conferences this Summer.  If you live in Texas or just want to take a road trip I'd love to meet you!  :)

Here are the two conferences I will be at:

Summer Crews, Houston Texas

Frog Street Splash, GRAPEVINE, Texas

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 picture.  I will revise this post tomorrow evening to include a few more pictures so check back!

I LOVE the new look of my blog!

Thanks to Cara from, The First Grade Parade my blog is ADORABLE!!  I love the new look!
 If you want a new look for your blog or need cute gift ideas check out her store.
Oh-So Spoiled

America Part One

We did a directed drawing of The Statue of Liberty.  The kids did an AMAZING job!

We wanted to find out the answer to the following question. It is really hard to explain to kids just how HUGE the Statue of Liberty really is!  So, we measured out bulletin board paper for her foot (even the length of her toes is correct) to get an idea of how  huge she is! 

All About The Statue of Liberty writing

Our bald eagles... they turned out so stinkin'cute!

This is from our Chit-Chat book.  This is a great way to review what was learned the day before.  As part of our morning message routine we read the message skeleton together EXACTLY as it is written and then the kids use their schema, text and phonics clues to fill in the chart.  This is also a great way to review spelling chunks and spelling rules.  :)  I always end the message with a question so that they have to turn to a partner and "chit-chat" about it.  This idea originated with the KCrew's Buzz Book.

Our American Symbols Tree Map

One of our story problems from our Math Journals.  I love how the student's use different strategies to solve the math problem. 

The activities above and LOTS more are included in my America unit. 

CLICK HERE TO VIEW

This is one of my palm trees.  A few people have emailed me and asked for directions so I'm attaching the directions below the picture.  :)  You will notice our friend, Stretch is hanging out in the tree.  He is there to remind us to S-s-s-stretch our words when we write.

Palm Tree Directions

Also, you might want to check out Donna Glynn's giveaway.  It is FABULOUS.  :)

http://kinderglynn.blogspot.com/