The Scoop on Soil

I LOVE science.

I also love math. And phonics. And reading and writing. Okay, okay, I love everything! It's all fun to teach!

I just finished working on a product that I have used in my own classroom for two years. Before we get into plants, we spend a week or two specifically studying soil and its properties and use. We learn how to identify types of soil and then describe them and compare them to other types of soil.

Here are several great books we read/use during the unit: 

We also use these two wonderful resources to learn more about soil:

And what better way to document our learning than with an itty bitty journal?!

If you are a Facebook follower and was on Facebook last night around 9:30 then you probably got to snag this product as a 15-minute Flash Freebie! If you don't already, follow my Facebook page so you don't miss out in the future! :)

Check out the journal pack in my store. It comes with the 9-page journal, rubric for grading, and explanation (for the teacher) of each page.

Have a marvelous Monday!

Plants, Plants, Plants!

This is a JAM-PACKED plant post--are you ready?!?

Plants unit, week 2 ended yesterday! We have had some GREAT fun so far and have learned so much about plants! The kids have just been so excited about it all--makes a teacher feel pretty good!! ;)

In this unit, we are covering not only plants and their parts, but also some ELA objectives, such as main idea, making inferences, compound words, expository text, parts of speech, research, letter writing, revising and editing, and media and its purpose/techniques.

*********************************************

LAST WEEK
2 weeks ago, I introduced our new unit (we had just finished penguins) to my students by doing this:

Before the unit introduction, I checked out some plant books from our school library and displayed them on one of the counters in our classroom. I also put the plants book box from our classroom library on the counter next to the library books. Here are just a few selections of the many great plant books that we will be using during our unit!

The kids noticed the books early in the day.

I also picked some pieces off of the bushes outside my classroom door and put them in a tote bag to use for our lesson. We passed the tote bag around and felt inside the bag without looking. 

The students quickly started making inferences about what we would be learning about next! The plant books around the room (which they know I do for every unit) and the familiar feel of the items in the tote bag led them to believe that we would be studying plants--and they were right!! :)

Below is a little freebie page for recording inferences that would work well with this lesson that I used in a previous inferencing lesson.

We made a schema chart that we add to/adjust daily.

We will also keep track of new words that will eventually move to our vocabulary wall.

After we made the schema chart, we grabbed some hand lenses and our journals and went outside to write/draw about the plants at our school.

We used a classic book, Chrysanthemum, to review main idea. Main idea is SO hard for most of my kids. We have been working at it for a few months now and are getting better and better! Here is an image of the flipchart I made to go along with the book based on a lesson plan I found online.


We did the flipchart together across 2 days and then spent the rest of the week reading/studying short fiction and nonfiction passages about various plants for main idea. Again, we are getting better and better at it.

We also briefly discussed living and nonliving. I used this fabulous PBS video to kickstart a discussion about what those words mean.

We then did this super-fun activity that I posted about on Instagram a few days ago!

We made little cards that said "living" and "nonliving", went outside, placed the cards on living and nonliving things, and took pictures using an iPad. This was great fun! The kids then shared their photos with a partner and the whole group.

I wanted to print some of these pictures so we could add it to our living and nonliving anchor chart, but we (currently) do NOT have an easy way to print photos on the school iPads. We also had to turn them in right after this activity. Oh well.

THIS WEEK

This week's plant fun was motly about main idea (still) and the parts of a plant. We read this WONDERFUL Eric Carle book to jumpstart a discussion about parts of a plant (seeds):

This book is also for teaching about the life cycle of plants.

We drew what we already knew about plant parts...

...and then studied the parts of a real plant! The kids really picked them apart--they wanted to see and know everything about them.

We concluded the lab with drawing another diagram of the parts of a plant, in case they learned anything new.

The next lesson was about comparing the parts of different plants. Does every plant have a stem? Does every plant have roots? Does every plant grow the same way? This is a great book to start with:

We headed back outside to compare the parts of flowers to other kinds of plants, like grass, trees, and bushes.

Friday's activity about parts of a plant that we eat was fantabulous--we had a Plant Tasting Party!!

We sorted several types of plants by what part of the plant they are and then got to eat them! They did an AMAZING job at this and were obviously elated to get to eat and learn at the same time! :D

We concluded thew party by watching this book on TumbleBooks and discussing why the bear kept feeling cheated. We will read it again next week.

Finally, we planted some grass seeds and are hoping that they turn out as great as these ones did last year!

NEXT UP

Next week we will start a big plants research project that will include some wormy fun! I made a little journal for us that I will share after I get it just how I want it...

Soooo, what fun things are you up to in your classroom?

Money, Money, MONEY! Part 3 of 3 {Jam-Packed Post!}

Welcome to the final installment of my Money, Money, MONEY! series. This installment is jam-packed with munee (as the kids like to spell it)!! In case you missed missed parts 1 and 2, click below to hop on over:

Part 1

Part 2

Math Centers Pack

Let's revisit the list of questions my students came up with at the beginning of our money unit:

We spent part of one lesson answering the question, "How much money does 100 quarters make?" Well, I brought in 100 quarters from home (which was amazing enough for them!) and we investigated!

I pulled out the bag of quarters and let the student who came up with the question take charge of the counting. Before we counted, we discussed the best way to count them. We talked about how making 10s in this case would not be a good idea because that will not make counting the dollars easier (kid language). We decided that since 4 quarters make $1.00 then we should make stacks of 4.

They were excited and surprised to find out that 100 quarters makes $25.00!

Money + Classroom Management = Success

My students desks are divided into 4 groups. Up until a few weeks ago, the groups were simply called Table 1, Table 2, Table 3, and Table 4. In the middle of the money unit, I changed the group names to coins in the hopes of helping with coin recognition (and to just switch things up a bit!). Here is a poor photo of the group labels (sorry, forgot to get a close-up!):

The groups earn tally marks for whatever I feel like following directions, working quietly, getting along, keeping things neat and tidy, etc. At the end of the week, the group with the most tally marks gets to eat lunch in the classroom on the following Monday! Here is where the group points are recorded (nothing fancy):

The daily points are on the left and the total number of points are kept on the right. Some days I forget about rewarding points. Oops.

We also have a class piggy bank they have started to earn money for. Now, I REALLY wanted to start this piggy bank on a particular day and I didn't bring home poster board to make the cute little piggy, so I had to improvise! I made the piggy and bank top out of construction paper and taped it to felt. (I wanted felt because velcro sticks very nicely to it and that is important since we will be exchanging coins frequently.) The main purpose of this bank is to practice counting money and exchanging equivalent amounts. We exchange pennies for nickels, nickels for dimes, and dimes and nickels for quarters!

We set a goal of 25 cents for our first reward. The reward they decided to work for was a class reading party. Well, they earned it Thursday and we had our party on Friday, our last day before spring break!! (Worked out perfectly!!) The students brought blankets, a pillow, and books from home and spread out around the room to read. We read books from home, books we have published, library books, and books on the iPads and iPods. First we started off by watching Duck! Rabbit! on Tumblebooks.

Here they are enjoying it!:

I also made them a snack to munch on out of our leftover 100th celebration snacks (goldfish, marshmallows, and pretzels). 

After reading for about 45 minutes, we concluded the party by watching Chicken BIG on Tumblebooks.

I leave you with Mr. Moneybags McGee! I never show my kids a sample when we create things because I am big on creative expression and individual interpretations of the project so I simply told them what the parts were and had them put them together how they saw fit. I am elated with how they came out!

Check out this guy! Haha! Love the freckles!

Whew! I am finished! I'm going to go start my spring break now!! Thanks for coming over!

Stay tuned for these upcoming posts!! Hoping to post all of these sometime in the next two weeks:

• 100th Day Festivities
• Seuss Week
• Calendar Math Mini-series
• Fun With Parts of Speech

And if you haven't heard about Amanda and Stacia's 300+ Followers Giveaway over at Collaboration Cuties, you MUST head over to check it out!! They are FABULOUS bloggers with super ideas (and some of my new blog buddies!) AND the giveaway prize includes a smorgasbord of products from them and some other great bloggers. The giveaway ends in a few days, so be sure to head right over and check it out!