"To be learned and healthy!"

As I've said before, we do the same math activity for the week from the AMC math book.  This week we've been making unifix cube structures - super easy to differentiate for my kiddos.  Some are able to make the structures as they expect in the book - they build it next to the visual and are able to make it stand up.  They also count the number of cubes in each structure and make certain it is exactly like the one on the card.  

Some of my kiddos have to build the structure directly on top of the card and can't balance it next to the card.  

Others need color-coded visuals for the unifix cubes directly on the structure.

When one of my kiddos asked why we were doing the same thing that we did yesterday, I was thinking of how to exactly word my response when another kiddo said it better than I ever could have - "To be learned and healthy.  We have to keep doing this to be learned and healthy."  I couldn't have said it better myself!!

Fork Flower Garden

Thank goodness for Pinterest!  It makes it so easy to find craft projects, especially ones that are creative and different than what I've done in the past!
This is one of those projects that is everywhere on Pinterest lately... fork flowers.  We used plastic forks to make tulips and grass.  The kiddos loved painting using something other than paint brushes or fingers and I loved that they were working on fine motor skills using something other than their typical tools.
By keeping the amount of paint available to them less than the number of kiddos at each table, we got to work on language and social skills at the same time!

Jelly Bean Math

So I got this worksheet from Kindergarten Smorgasbord.  It was perfect to use with our AMC Math activity for adding numbers together.  I got a set of plastic eggs and labeled them all with letters - I used uppercase on the top and lowercase on the bottom (this way I can reuse the eggs as a fine motor task with letter matching... if I get really creative maybe I'll put items that begin with each letter in the eggs too!).

Each egg had two color jellybeans in it.  The kiddos had to color the jelly beans on the worksheets, write the numbers of each color jelly bean, and then add the jelly beans together.  

They did awesome and loved the math activity!   A total success!! :)

Happy Earth Day!

I love hearing what my kiddos think.  Even better than just that is seeing their final product as a craft!
We did multiple days preparing for Earth Day this year, starting with reading The Earth Book by Todd Parr.  We then brainstormed ideas on how we could help the earth.  I think my favorite might be "turning off computers and iPads"!

We also made tissue paper earths.  I cut out "circle outlines" (alright, so they should have been circles, but were definitely ovals) in black construction paper and then placed them on contact paper.  We then talked about what colors we needed for our own earths and why (blue for water and green for land/what we live on).  The kiddos made their own earths out of tissue paper.

Here's how it looked when they were put up on the wall together - I love them!

And, of course, we needed to have an Earth Day themed snack...a compost snack!  We talked about what compost is and what the parts are.  We used chocolate pudding for the mud and oreos for the dirt (I thought it was the combo of the two to make the dirt, but the kiddos had a different thought process than me...no surprise!), gummy worms, and pistachio pudding for the grass that it helps to grow on top. For whatever reason, our kiddos this year love pistachio pudding, and everyone loves gummy worms and oreos, so the snack was a total success!!

Happy Earth Day everyone!

Math Success!!

So I know I briefly talked before about how much I am loving using Developing Math Concepts with my kiddos.  Right before break I was doing some assessments for Progress Reports and Grades (not my favorite part of my job!).  I was so incredibly proud and impressed with one of my kiddos that I just have to share!

We have been working a TON (and I really mean every day and in multiple ways) with 5-frames, 10-frames, and numbers higher than 10 with multiple 10-frames... When I gave him a bunch of bears to count he told me that he had to make them all sit up... look what he did - he arranged them all in rows of 5, one after another!  

I was so incredibly impressed!  He was able to see (without counting!) that 4 rows of 5 bears and 4 more was 24!  Even better, he was so proud of himself for being able to do this!

Every time I gave him more bears, he just kept adding to his rows of 5.  He couldn't do all 44 bears (I emptied the bucket because he asked me to) but he was able to get up to 32!  I couldn't have been prouder of him!!

Reading is Sweet

Our February window was a work in progress and then it was so fitting for our Dr. Seuss unit in March that we stretched it out until spring break.

We started out in February with the hearts indicating what students "love to read." My fourth grade students actually chose some of their higher level, more challenging chapter book texts! I was proud to move beyond the basics!
My students made hershey kisses and candy mints for the candy shop window - how cute! They loved making these crafts. Each one turned out unique and tasty looking.

The kisses were wrapped in aluminum foil and then we added a ribbon with "HERSHEY" written on it. We painted the paper plates with red stripes one day and then the next day they wrapped the plate in clear plastic wrap and tied the ends with ribbons. Okay, the tying part was challenging, so the adults did most of that! Yum!

More Lorax

I was determined to figure out this blog post thing and get our Lorax door picture posted before my colleague, Lis, had a chance to add even more posts, but I missed my chance! Who knew she would be doing posts while she was on her spring break trip!

We spent several days doing The Lorax in honor of Dr. Seuss's birthday! I love Dr. Seuss and so we do activities each March. The challenge for me this year is that I've had the same students for 2-3 years now and they are 4th graders so I had to step it up a notch!

First, our classroom door turned out top notch! I have a wonderful paraprofessional who is so crafty that I can just tell her my idea and she's got it done the next day. I had gathered several ideas from pinterest and other bloggers to put this together.

The paraprofessional created and cut out the Lorax. One of my students was adamant about doing the stump for him to stand on. My other students were lucky enough to stand on chairs and sponge paint the Truffula trees! It turned out awesome! 

Next, my older students did several writing activities to extend their thinking about the book. I forgot to grab pictures of the writing and I wish I had because I was quite proud. They did the standard "what would you do to help the earth?" For students with limited writing skills as far as thinking beyond the text, they had some good thoughts. I think my favorite writing responses were their ideas for what they would do with the last truffula seed. Of course we had some truffula seeds (Nerds jelly beans) and Brown Barbaloots (chocolate teddy grahams) while we did our writing which totally helped! Lis posted this snack in a previous post. 

The End of Dr. Seuss (a little late!)

We wrapped up Dr. Seuss month with Green Eggs and Ham, Dr. Seuss' ABCs, and a my favorite book activity.  Of course I am on Spring Break right now and forgot to take pictures of our ABC pages and favorite book craft before we left...if I remember I'll do it when I get back to school.
I have the Dr. Seuss book apps so we were able to read them on the SmartBoard hooked up to the iPad.  I love how engaged the kids get when the only differences is a big book on the SmartBoard (and no, projected with the document camera is NOT the same thing!) as compared to a book that I hold - the difference in attention and engagement is amazing!

We made green eggs out of construction paper one day... There was no pattern to this, they just had to cut out their egg whites and green yolks, then they wrote whether or not they would eat green eggs.  Apparently Sam-I-am is pretty convincing because most were going to eat green eggs!

Another day I made a sheet for them to write what they would not eat... I love how specific some of them get, and then of course, some just won't eat "green things!" :)

Of course, we had to make green eggs and bacon (not all got green eggs, some got other color eggs too!)... Frosting, pretzels, and skittles or M&Ms (depending on their preference) are always super yummy!

It was the perfect way to make the weeks in March go quickly to help us get to Spring Break!

Lorax Crafts

So we've finished up activities for The Lorax.  One more crafts and a snack mix later, we're getting ready to move onto Green Eggs & Ham.  Thankfully, we stuck with an easy craft as we combined the snack and craft into one time period.  
We made Truffala Trees and wrote the quote "I speak for the trees" (everyone's favorite line from the book!).  I love whenever I can sneak some writing into our crafts!  We used pipe cleaners and sparkly pom-poms for our trees.  You could totally jazz this up by adding a background of any sort, but we were simple the day we did these.  

When they were done with their trees, they got to enjoy The Lorax snack mix.  Barbaloot bears, humming fish, and truffala tree seeds were definitely a winning combination - everyone found something in the mix they liked!

For more art ideas check out Frog Spot's Tuesday Art Linky. I love anywhere that I can find multiple craft ideas at once!!

Developing Number Concepts - Wacky Math Style

The Kindergarten and 1st Grade teachers in my school have been using Developing Number Concepts by Kathy Richardson as part of their intervention for math.  

I typically am skeptical of using the curriculum and resources that the general ed teachers are using because of how it doesn't fit my kiddos needs and isn't hands-on or interactive.  However, I am loving Developing Number Concepts...and so are my kiddos.  The activities are easy to differentiate and adapt.  Book 1 focuses on beginning number concepts, specifically counting and comparing amounts.  I have found that it works perfectly for my kiddos to work on the same activity for a week.  I can easily scaffold the activities for each kiddo as well as change the difficulty level of it as the week progresses. 

Since it's March, of course the activities are Dr. Seuss-coordinated!

Last week, we worked on 1:1 correspondence... We used fishbowl mats with 10-frames (depending on the level of my student, they had either 10 or 20 spots on their mats), number cards (corresponding to the level of number on their mats), and goldfish crackers.  

One of my kiddos needs visual cues for the numbers, so his 10-frame fishbowl mat had pictures of fish already in the 10-frame.  

This week, we worked on the activity called "Cover the Dots".  We used wacky dot cards and Dr. Seuss stickers.  Once again, I was able to easily give students the cards that they needed to work on, depending on their current counting ability, both rote counting and counting with 1:1 correspondence. Bonus was that they were working on fine motor at the same time.

Dr. Seuss Month!

I LOVE incorporating Dr. Seuss throughout March.  The kiddos always seem to love the activities and the books.  It just makes us all happy :)
So far, we've done One Fish, Two Fish and Cat in the Hat.  

For One Fish, Two Fish, the kiddos traced their hands in different colors and wrote "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish".  I got the idea for this craft from Vanessa Dewey's blog.  Their fish didn't quite look like the model...but do you really want them to??  Here are a few of my favorites!

We've done a bit more with Cat in the Hat.  We used tissue paper to decorate our own hats.  Gotta love the ones where they did patterns on the hats as well as not even using the Cat in the Hat colors...I think the black and white one might just be my favorite!

We also made some simple shape cats out of circles and rectangles.

Who could resist this Cat in the Hat that looks nothing like the Cat in the Hat unless you had seen him make it... He was so proud!

We were actually able to start The Lorax at the end of this last week.  So far all we have is paper plate Loraxes. I got the idea here from Stacey at Glued to My Crafts. 

Stay tuned for truffala trees and a Lorax-style trail mix.

I can't wait to see what they make the rest of this month!!

Winter Inferences

So I am quite aware that winter should be over... but sadly it's not.  We're still so incredibly below our average temperatures, that here in MN we're still struggling through snow and winter.  So winter inferences and vocabulary to our rescue!
The other day we worked on winter words for winter activities and clothing.  For some of my kiddos, it was as simple as expressive and receptive vocabulary, including labeling of pictures.  For the higher ones, we did listening activities with winter inferences having the kiddos guess what the clues were talking about.  Some kiddos needed the visual support of having pictures for what the clues were talking about, others were able to do it without having any supports.  Regardless, it was a perfect way to work on language skills for all of them :)

The Book with a Hole

I love doing crafts that go along with books we are reading.  There are so many skills that you can work on while doing crafts including fine motor, follow directions, sequencing, language building skills, comprehension from what you've heard, and (most importantly) creativity.
One of my co-workers recently bought The Book with a Hole by Hervé Tullet.  My kiddos loved it!  They were enthralled by the idea that anyone's head could fit in the hole in the book!  They also liked coming up with ideas that made sense for the pictures we saw.  We spent two days doing crafts from this book... I had the hole pictures pre-made and cut out for them, then they drew what they wanted to put in the hole on index cards. Of course, some kiddos were watching Angry Birds, SpongBob, and dinosaurs!