Working with Short a Word Families!

I am so excited about this series of short vowel units!  First up is the Short a Word Families giant, mondo, humongous 118 page unit of centers, activities, assessment sheets, games and practice.  It includes both color and black lines for easy printing.  It is on sale for $5 for the first 24 hours.

{Word Sort examples}

 Each activity includes:

• Center instructions
• Center board management cards (two versions-one with just the title and one with the title and a picture cue)
• Flash cards or game pieces
• Separate assessment sheets which can be used for center accountability, morning work, homework, reteach/RtI, or, you know...assessments.

{Phoneme Boxes examples - See them in action here}

 {Match It! and Memory Match examples}

{Word find example ~ each word family has its own page.}

{Roll Say Keep and Word Search - Download the preview to get these documents for FREE!}

Seriously, how cute is the clip art?  The wagging dog and the fat cat are my favorites.  It think it is because we have both.

I am finishing similar units for all the other short vowels.  Hopefully they will be finished by the weekend.  I am having a sale to celebrate.  Everything in my store will be 20% off.  Follow my TpT store to stay updated.

Five for Friday: End of the Year Recap!

Hooking up with fresh from the beach Kacey of Doodle Bugs Teaching for the end of the year recap edition!

 During the last week of school we had our grade level awards and our annual first grade picnic.  The chance of rain changed our plans.  We played outside all morning to beat the rain.  The kids had a blast!  All the teachers brought out recess equipment, chalk, bubbles and special games (plastic horseshoes is fun!)  All 160+ kids got along great.  Two of my colleagues tried to teach me to hula hoop again.  Tragic failure!  I used to be able to do it, but now I can't.  They said it was because I have no hips, butt or rhythm.  Talk about feeling the love! ;)  I took to chalk drawing instead.  Much better.

Only had 12 kids came on the last day of school.  No worries, we had fun.  We started the day with an all out Last Day Dance Party!  I put on Kidz Bop and we rocked out.  The kids were hilarious.  We popped and locked, we break danced (or is it broke dance), we twirled and we got funky.  The group shot is of all my "single ladies".  I was crying watching the boys dance like Beyonce.  I love these kids.

 After the dance party we played several Minute to Win It games.  I downloaded Reagan Tunstall's free resource and tweaked it to work for our class.  We did "Gone Fishing" , "Cookie Face" and "There She Blows".  I substituted in Pattern Block towers (they had to build three) and Spin It to Win It (they had to keep 3 unifix cube spinners spinning and on the table for 10 seconds).

 Our classroom awards came from Gladys of Teaching in High Heels.  These were seriously too cute.  I printed them on neon card stock (yellow for boys, pink for girls).  We rolled out the red carpet and worked the runway.  Then they ate lunch and went home at noon.  GREAT DAY!  Our faculty had our EOY party at Dave and Buster's.  Also, so fun!  We played games, won tickets and gave them to unsuspecting random children.

 Now I'm spending quality time with Sen and Jeffery T.  Sen is 8 months old now and still awesome.  I love taking pictures of her.  Jeffery T. is 9 years old and not as enamored with Sen.  Both those beds are Sen's.  she is happy to share.  Jeffery T. doesn't.  He stakes his claim first thing in the morning and only moves to eat.  Did I mention he weighs over 20 pounds.  Fatty, fatty, fatty. But I love 'em both!

Yea, Summer Break!

O-fish-ally Summer...almost

I just finished an end-of-the-year treat for my students.  I instantly loved Crazy for First's treat bags, but don't have treat bags on hand.  I modified the tag to fit on a snack size Ziploc bag.  It turned out pretty cute!  And it was cheap-$4 for the Swedish fish plus snack bags and card stock already in stock.

Today was our first grade picnic.  So fun!  Tomorrow is craft day with Mrs. 27 (my mom comes to school to craft with the kids).  Then Friday is the dance party/Minute to Win It/red carpet awards and dismissal at noon.  A day and a half to go!  Wahoo!

First graders are cool because... Writing Prompt Freebie

Everyone know first graders are the coolest, but other grades may think they are pretty cool, too.  To show off their coolness, and opinion writing skills I created this quick, freebie writing prompt printable.  Each page starts with "{Whichever} graders are cool because..."

 Kindergarten and first grade have two writing line styles.

   K-2 are two on a page.

  Third, fourth and fifth grades are full page.

I used these in conjunction with A Cupcake for the Teacher's Summer Kids craftivity (love her crafts).  Her download includes several writing pages, but none of them worked for the bulletin board I had in mind.  I want this to the suitable for both the end of this year and beginning of next year so I didn't want it to be summer specific.  It think the sunglasses make the kids look cool, and up coming students always think the next grade is the coolest, so I went with that.

They turned out so cute!  It will be the perfect June through September bulletin board.  Two and a half days to go...not that we're counting.

Five for Friday: Mother's Day, Pumpkins, Frogs, Mad Science and Bubbles!

Wow!  May was busy in 27!  I'm linking up with Kacey from Doodle Bugs Teaching for a Five for Friday End of May Recap session.

1. I loved how our Mother's Day gifts turned out!  The kids did a really nice job and were very proud of their gifts.  I combined a few ideas from Pinterest.  First I created a little simile fill-in-the-blank.  We brainstormed ideas and the kids chose what worked best for their mom.  Next, I took pictures of all the kids.  Some just smiled and others made mom a heart.  Then I matted the pictures and simile sheets to construction paper.  Last each student got to choose a piece of scrapbook paper (12" x 12" books were on sale for $2.50 for 12 sheets...perfect!).  They glued the picture and paper onto the scrapbook paper and we were done!  We did the project in two short stints over two days (so I had time print pictures and mat).

{My mom is as pretty as a Barbie.  My mom is as smart as a scientist.  My mom is as sweet as a cupcake.  My mom is as cool as a rock star.  My mom is as kind as a Magic School Bus.}  

I didn't get the last one, but she was confident. ;)

2. Our pumpkin is still growing!  It put out about 6 beautiful flowers a few weeks ago and it is starting to take over the garden box.  The kids love checking on it when we go to the library or Music.  I don't live far from school so I will *try* to keep it watered this summer.  I would absolutely love for the kids to come back in August to see pumpkins growing on the vines.  We're keeping our fingers crossed!

3. During Teacher Appreciation Week I purchased Spring Direct Drawing Activities from Doodle Bugs Teaching.  I want more!  We drew the frogs one day last week and the kids were so engaged.  Everyone tried their best and we made it through the entire project with no tantrums or tears!  Yes, I teach 1st grade, but we can have some emotional issues when frustrated.  All the frogs are so different and have so much character!  I don't recall saying, "Step 7, draw teeth," but I must have because two frogs have prominent teeth.  Hilarious!  All the kids were really proud of their drawing, really took their time and proved they can listen and follow directions. Ha!

4. Last week our school had our annual Mad Science Day.  That day different classes within the grade level switch and teach each other a science project or experiment.  The idea is to get kids involved in science and scientific thinking.  I love Mad Science Day.  It is crazy and exhausting and fun!  A few days before we tested and learned our experiments.  I scoured Pinterest and my favorite blogs for new, fun science experiments and landed at 2nd Grade Shenanigans and the awesomeness that is Hope King.  I would have gladly bought a bird beak unit from her, but I couldn't find one.  I made up my own.

We used tweezers to pick out rice from dirt like a mockingbird, used a pasta scoop to catch Froot Loop fish like a pelican and used tongs to catch flying popcorn insects like a sparrow.  To even it up to 4 centers I added a computer station where the kids watch a YouTube video of a local type of bird using it's beak.  They watched mockingbirds, cardinals, robins, ospreys, pelicans and hummingbirds.  It was very fun and very easy (on me).  The kids did a phenomenal job explaining the centers and how the utensils represented different bird beaks.  I will definitely do this again!

5. Finally, our bubble bulletin board with the super cute bubble brains craft.  This craft is part of my Bubbles unit.  The kids still yell out every time they see bubbles.  I love it.  The students wrote their favorite bubble fact on the bigger gray bubbles.  I'll be sad to see this bulletin board taken down.  But not too sad, because we only have 4 1/2 more days of school!  Wahoo!

Bombastic Bubbles and a Giveaway!

May is crazy.  Every weekday (and most weekends) of my calendar is booked with something.  Week of the Arts, Field Day, statewide testing and a Scholastic warehouse book sale top this week's agenda. I've been wanting to add more information and pictures from my Bubbles unit but couldn't find the time last week.

Bubbles! is a super fun, amazingly engaging, inquiry based science unit centered around soap bubbles.  We focused on questioning, making observations and informational writing.

 

{Creating our KWL chart and our finished version}

We had a lot of background knowledge about bubbles, but creating questions was difficult.  Many students just restated things they knew.  We worked on creating questions throughout the unit.  They got much better at it.  Yea!

 

 {How to Blow Bubbles}

Our first experiment was to learn how to blow the best bubbles.  Although our state science standards do not require first graders to use the scientific method, I did introduce them to it because creating questions or "want to know" topics was difficult for most of my students.  For this first lesson, I gave each student a mini bottle of bubbles.  They were 6 for $1 in the wedding section of Dollar Tree.  They were perfect for learning to blow bubbles.  We also learned that if you shake the bubble solution, you can't blow bubbles with foam...because foam is little bubbles.  No one made that mistake again.

 {Testing bubble solutions}

I used a lot of information from this blog post.  Talk about love!  We tested 5 different solutions: dish soap (experts say Joy and Dawn are best, plain soap, not additives and not antibacterial...and use distilled water), dish soap + corn syrup, + glycerin, + molasses, and + sugar.  I found a bucket of 27 bubble wands in the toy section of Wal*Mart.  Steve Spangler says plastic pipettes are simple, cheap bubble blowers.  I found this out too late, couldn't find them locally, but found 100 for about $6 on Amazon.  Maybe next year.  For this experiment I made sure all the wands had circles to blow through as to not taint upcoming experiments.

 I poured a little solution (one at a time) into plastic plates, one plate per group. (The center photo on the bottom row shows what each group had on their desks after all 5 solutions were tested.  Each plate has a different mixture.  Then we tested the solution and recorded our observations.  For our observations we looked for amount of bubbles (none, a few or a lot) and size of the bubbles.  I encouraged kids to also note other observations.  We learned that the solution of corn syrup or glycerin makes bubbles very strong.  So strong they bounce!  Also, the bubbles landed on dry objects and didn't pop.  What?!?

We agreed on a signal to stop testing, "Wands down, hands up!"  I set a timer and let kids share and experiment for 2 minutes.  It was enough time to get a good feel for the solution and try a couple ideas that popped into their heads, but not too long to get crazy.  After each test we talked about the bubbles each solution made, recorded our observations and made an opinion on the quality (happy face, straight face or sad face).

During this experiment some kids really let their inner scientist loose!  It happened all through the unit, but especially in this lesson.  Kids that don't like anything, like this.  Kids that never volunteered information were dying to share cool stuff they observed. My little heart grew three sizes that day.

We turned our observation notes into an opinion writing piece about the best bubbles solution.

 {Unpopable Bubbles!}

How do you follow up a bonanza of bubble solutions?  Why, with unpopable bubbles of course!  We used one of the best solutions distilled water, dish soap and glycerin, plastic plates and drinking straws.  This was a general bubble fun day.  Anything they could think of and try was fair game, as long as they shared interesting things with the group.  We learned that bubbles have flat sides where they touch, you can blow a really big bubble, or a bunch of little ones and if the straw is wet, you can reinsert it in the bubble and make it bigger.  They also learned that if they blew a bubble inside the bubble the new bubble would move outside the bubble.  

 {Bubbles inside bubbles and holding a bubble}

We watched a video of how to touch a bubble without popping it.  Then we tried it!  The kids also blew a bubble, caught it on the wand, then used the straw to blow a bubble inside that bubble.  They liked watching the inside bubble get absorbed by the wand bubble making it bigger.  

Once they blew bubbles and caught them in their (wet) wands, someone tried to catch 2 bubbles, but guess what.  They could make the bubbles bounce off each other and a new game was invented!

 Of course it wasn't all fun and games.  We had to do real scientist work...like writing papers about our experiment results.  The students ended up with a great informational book about bubbles which included a how to, the opinion piece and several information pieces about their bubble knowledge.

{Text Mapping}

For an amazing workshop I attended the presenters taught us about text mapping.  It is when a book is copied into scroll form so students can see all the pieces at a glance (or walk across the classroom).  We marked it all up with Common Core goodness-text features, vocabulary, questions and answers, etc.

{Bubble Brains: a craftivity for bulletin board display}

We finished up our unit with a craft.  Each student made him or herself into a bubble blower and wrote a fact on a construction paper bubble.  I wrapped the bubble in plastic food wrap to make it shiny, then hung all the bubbles and bubble brainiac on our bulletin board.  I didn't get a picture, but I'll try to add one soon.

Bubbles! was by far the BEST unit I've taught.  The kids were genuinely engaged in learning how to be a good, questioning, experimenting, communicating scientist!  They devoured the non-fiction and fiction books about bubbles.  Every day they asked if we were doing another experiment.  So many of them told me about conversations they had with friends, siblings and their parents about bubbles.  Are you kidding me?  These kids were loving science and I love it right back!

Bubbles! is a great end-of-the-year set of activities for kids.  They can show off their science, reading and writing skills while still learning, work together and have fun!

OK, if you've made it to the end of this crazy-long post leave a comment to be entered to win your own copy of the unit!  Get 3 entries by:

1. Leave a comment (easy-peasy)
2. Follow my TpT store or this blog (leave a comment to let me know you did it)
3. Post about the giveaway (blog, Facebook, Twitter, whatever...either copy to web address or just tell me you did it...I trust you.)

I'll randomly select a winner Friday afternoon!