Monday, April 21, 2014

Farm Centers and Activities

This week we're finishing up our zoo centers and activities plus reptiles, but I wanted to show you our new farm centers and some of our activities we did a couple of weeks ago.
By the way, have you ever heard of the Mobile Dairy?  It comes to our school every year and it's such a great opportunity for our kids.  Click HERE to go check it out!  The kids love seeing how cows really are milked plus they share tons of important info. about cows and dairy farms!
Also, our school has this huge farm day, thanks to Mrs. Henderson, where our students rotate to tons of fun stations to learn all about plants, animals, and farms.  We plant a flower, make a "beanie baby" to wear around our neck, work on the farm fishing, painting the barn, building the fence, shearing the sheep, riding the horse, milking the cows, & gathering eggs. We got to see farm animals, learn about horses, hear Mrs. Wishy Washy tell her story and much more.  :)




I love reading the little fact books about animals to my kiddos.  They are always so interested in the cool facts they hear that they may not have heard otherwise.  So, we made these little charts to help us with our learning.

We made these little cutie patooties.  What I love about them SO much is that they are super FAST and so adorable hanging up!  This way, we spend more time working on writing our facts and really concentrating on spacing, sight words, sounding out words, and punctuation.
You can find these and more HERE in my Faces of the Farm pack with Jamie Mayas.
I just love watching them grow as writers!


Guess what?  I made NEW farm centers.  My older ones were a little outdated and not really hard enough for my little group this year.  :)  That's a good problem!
So, below is what I came up with!  You can find these FARM CENTERS HERE.



























That pretty much sums up our farm week.  :)




Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Plants!

I'm just a little behind on blogging...we studied plants a couple of weeks ago and I have been meaning to get these photos on here for, well, 2 weeks now.  Plants is one of my favorite units to teach...look at all the fun things we did!  If you're interested in my math and literacy centers for plants go HERE.   If you're interested in my Tops and Bottoms Ideas go HERE.

When I saw  Cara's little anchor chart I just had to make mine like hers...well, almost...mine isn't near as cute as hers, but it worked!  
 We label the parts of a flower every year and I always love the way these look hanging up!  
 See the confetti in the middle?  I found this at Wal-Mart a few years ago in the Easter section and I'm almost out!  I use it all the time!
Can't find it this time... :(  Anybody seen any?
 Look at these little Flower Friends!  I love the way these turned out too!  This came from Cara at The First Grade Parade as well.
You can find it HERE.

 I think I say this every year, but if you haven't read Tops and Bottoms by Janet Stevens you must.  
It is one of the cutest, best little books ever!  I love it so much that I have a packet with these ideas in it.  You can find it HERE.  
Here is Lazy Bear and Hard-working Hare.  How cute is that?  Bear's eyelids even flap!
We wrote about what makes us feel lazy and what we want to work hard at.
 We made fruit and veggie people after learning how plants are grown and why they are important.
 Um, how adorable...my kiddos went cuckoo over these little friends.
They loved the little parts like the hats, ties, and bows!  I loved the writing piece.  


Below are snapshots of each center and all of these can be found HERE in my Plants math and literacy centers packet.












 To "pluck the petal" students folded back the petals on the flower.  They love these "foldy" subtraction centers so much that I think I now have 4 sets.  :)

If you made it all the way to the bottom you are one faithful reader!
Thank YOU!
I hope you found something useful and fun in this post!