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.
