Worms!

I seriously cannot believe that I only have 4 1/2 weeks until summer vacation starts! The last month of school I really like to plan themed weekly activities to keep the students motivate and interested.  Let's be honest, I need a bit of excitement to keep me going too.

Here's what I have on the schedule:

April 20 - Standardized Testing

April 27 - Worms

May 4 - Field Trip to the GA Aquarium; Ice Cream 

May 11 - Camping

May 18 - Watermelons, Field Day, Crowd Control on the last day

Each week I'll share what I'm doing so if you need ideas, you can grab them as well!  I'll share my science experiments in a few days once I have some pictures.  So for now I'll jump ahead to worms.

I like worms in my garden. But I don't like worms anywhere else.  These are the things I do for my students!

I always have a variety of fiction and non fiction books on worms displayed in my classroom.  Students are free to grab these books and look through them when they are done with their work.

We'll go over facts about earthworms and I'll let them play with a worm.

I always give students the option not to play with a worm.  Some students won't want too and I don't want to force them.  In making a worm habitat, I screamed every time I touched one (I told you they are not up my alley).  I don't want to show this side of me to the kids (and have them screaming and flinging worms).  We discuss how to handle living things.  I also make the students grab the worms out of the cup so I don't have to touch them.

After they have played with the worms, we build a worm habitat.

The leftover worms go into our school garden.

Once we've throughly washed our hands, students write the steps on how to build a worm habitat.

During the unit, I have the students eat a sour gummy worm and a regular gummy worm.  

They also complete a Venn Diagram comparing gummy worms and earthworms.

At the complete of the unit, students write a non-fiction piece about earthworms.

 You can pick up everything you see here (and more) in my All About Worms packet.

5 for Friday: April 5th Edition

I'm especially excited for this week's Five for Friday! 

I had my post already to go yesterday, but once I got home I was tired. Like couldn't keep my eyes open and went to bed at 8pm tired.

Which is why I'm just now posting.

But it's SPRING BREAK!  Finally!

So I'm going to share what's been happening this week and then go lay on the couch for a week.

1. Introducing Connie Conjunction! She loves to join two sentences together using or, but, because, and so.

I just realized I misspelled conjunction. Eek! I'll be fixing that ASAP!

Wait. Did I just say but?

No, not that kind of but.

I'll let you get your giggles out.

Oh wait, my firsties giggled all week long every time "but" was said.

Thank goodness I have more girls than boys this year.  Last year's class would have had a field day.

Each student drew their own Connie Conjunction, labeled the poster, and wrote a sentence using a conjunction.

I found blank glue bottles in a packet on TPT (freebie alert).

Each student wrote a sentence using a conjunction and wrote the conjunction on the glue bottle.

2. It's first grade's month for the bulletin board out in the hallway.  We went with an Earth Day theme.

Each student wrote about a way they would help the Earth.

3. We wrapped up our weather unit.  Students chose a type of storm to research and write about. This one did an excellent job writing, but her picture was a tornado.  Oops!  We are still working on graphic features!

Let's compare anchor charts for a moment.

Here's the beautiful one about the different weather instruments.

I keep telling my parapro that she need to make her own font and sell it on TPT!

And here's mine that I made for our new plant unit.

Inspired from First Grade Parade

I made it during lunch while eating. :)

4. April family projects were due this week.  I don't usually have a family project due in May since it's such a crazy month.

You can tell the parents and students are ready for school to end. The beginning of the year the projects are elaborate and this time almost everyone just colored their flower.

5. I forgot to share these beautiful crosses we made for Easter!

I gave each student a card stock cross, messy glue, and tissue paper.  They folded the tissue paper over the end of the pencil (eraser end), held onto the tissue paper and dipped in glue.

Look the end result!

Now for a week I won't think about teaching or find any super cute ideas that I want to use, right?? Because it's Spring Break! Happy Saturday!