A First for Everything : science

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Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Halloween Projects, Crafts, Activities and More!

Halloween is right around the corner and I have some great ideas for you for crafts, projects, activities, freebies and more! Let's start with some cute crafts. I do a craft project every year on Halloween afternoon since most of the kiddos are beside themselves with excitement and are only listening to an eighth of what I say anyway... It’s like trying to js loop through object—you need to keep track of all the details, but it can be a bit chaotic when attention is scattered everywhere!

This is so cute and so easy! Go to https://www.craftymorning.com/paper-plate-witch-craft-kids/ for directions.

The kiddos can make these as gift, use them as bookmarks, or as puppets.

Check them out here at https://www.mommymoment.ca/2016/08/halloween-stick-puppets.html

You can use Q-Tips, straws, or spaghetti to make these adorable skeletons.

Visit https://www.education.com/activity/article/make-a-straw-skeleton/ to learn more.

Your first, second, and third grade students will love making this fun, engaging, and adorable Halloween themed witch writing craftivity! With six different writing prompts to choose from in both primary lined and single lined spaced options, these look adorable displayed in the hallway or on a bulletin board.

Incorporate writing and craft fun with this witch writing craftivity.

6 different writing prompts are included! You can find it here

Goodness knows they can't sit still on Halloween! Task cards are a perfect way to keep them learning and still keep them up and moving. You can use these task cards here.

Do you need a fun and engaging way to review addition and subtraction skills? Halloween themed addition and subtraction task cards offer your students a way to review basic skills in an interactive format. Hang them up and students can walk around the room with a clipboard or place them at student desks for students to walk around to read and answer each problem. You can even leave them in a bin for early finishers. (K, 1, 2)

Do you need another way to keep them learning? How about candy? Well...not really...but close!

Great for math centers, Halloween, early finishers and more, this patterning activity has students using orange, yellow, and white snap cubes (the colors of candy corn) to show various patterns (color combinations). How many ways can you use the 3 colors to show various combinations? (K, 1st, Halloween)

Students can use orange, yellow and white snap cubes - just like the colors of candy corn, to show many different colored patterned creations you can make using those 3 colors

You can get this for FREE here.

You really can't talk about Halloween without mentioning pumpkins. Why not make it fun by exploring pumpkins and recording your findings with an interactive lapbook?

Kindergarteners, first and second graders will love this fun, interactive, and engaging pumpkin investigation resource as they study and examine a pumpkin. This is an engaging way to "show what you know" using a re-folded file folder. (K, 1st , 2nd grade, science, Halloween)

All you need is a pumpkin, the lapbook and a file folder. You can find the Pumpkin Investigtion lapbook here.

Help your students learn the meaning of the holiday with this differentiated close read. With 3 different ability levels, you are able to meet the needs of all learners with this Close Reading Fall resource.

Are you so tired or writing morning messages? These October morning messages are projectable and editable. All you have to turn is turn on your computer and your SMARTboard (or interactive whiteboard) and the whole month's worth of morning messages have been done for you. Best of all....they are editable, so you can type and project your own message and still use the adorable graphics if you like.

You can find October Morning Messages here.

Do you need an engaging and fun resource for your early finishers? Do you need another option for homework? Would your students enjoy a quiet activity to help them unwind after recess?

My students LOVE KidsQuest! With Mazes, crossword puzzles, hidden pictures, directed drawings, coloring pages, dot to dot, and more this is a must-have in my classroom!

I hope you have found some great Halloween resources!

Happy Fall!

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Saturday, October 18, 2014

Lapbooks

Do you lapbook? I had never heard of them until about a week ago. I was searching TpT for Guided Math activities and saw a few lapbooks on the site. What are lapbooks, you say? Lapbooks are like interactive notebooks but instead of using a notebook, you use a file folder. It is a quicker and more simple version of an interactive note book.

Just about every month the first grade team does an "activity day" centered around a theme. Last month was apple day, this month is....you guessed it! Pumpkin Day! We tend to use the same activities each year. Some of the activities have become a bit dated. I attempted my first lapbook this weekend to use this week for Pumpkin Activity Day. This is the result:

I had so much fun making this and can't wait to have my students make their own this week. They will Estimate and measure the circumference of a pumpkin, measure the height of a pumpkin, make predictions- Will it sink? Will it float?. They will also use adjectives to describe a pumpkin, depict the life cycle of a pumpkin and describe a pumpkin (how many lines, size, shape, etc.). They will cut out, lift flaps, measure with string (circumference) and height (with unifix cubes) and experiment with a pumpkin in water. Would you like to try this Pumpkin Lapbook with you class? You can get it here.

Are you interested in trying a lapbook with your class? Here's how it works.

1. Open a file folder. A colored file folder will look the best.

2. Fold over one side to the middle fold.

3. That's it! Now you have a lapbook! All you need to do now is add what you want for content.

Lapbooks are fun, engaging and highly motivational. They are also a very effective way for the kiddos to "show what they know." They are also a great informal assessment tool!

I'd love to know if you use them with your class or perhaps you have been inspired to try them. Let me know how it goes! It's always so great to hear from you!

Friday, September 12, 2014

The First Full Week

I'm linking up with Doodlebugs Teaching for Five for Friday

We have launched writer's workshop and I love it!

We use the 6 Traits of Writing model in my district. We are beginning with the idea trait. We brainstormed some writing topics and posted our completed list in our writing center. We also wrote and drew pictures on a heart to show things we love and hence, topics to write about. This hearts have been added to our writing folders so we can refer back to them when we are in need of topics to write about. My students love using a private "writing office" when they write. This one is from Amy Labrasciano. My students love it! I love how it incorporates some important skills such as vowel teams, high frequency words, contractions, and more!

We also set goals for ourselves this week by talking about what our hopes and dreams are for first grade. We brainstormed a list and then we wrote about our goals. I will share these with parents during parent/teacher conferences as our first conference of the school year is always a goal setting conference.

We are learning about the characteristics of living and nonliving things. We have learned that living things need to eat and drink, breathe, grow and change, and reproduce in order to be living. We sorted pictures of living and nonliving things

and we took our learning to the playground too! We brought the clipboards with us to identify, illustrate, and label living and nonliving things we found.

We are also reviewing short vowels. We played a fun game of "Scoot" with my ELA task cards.

I love how this fun activity gets them up and moving (because let's face it folks-first graders are still very much like kindergarteners still at the beginning of the year. They have a very limited attention span.). I also like how this gives me an informal assessment of where each kiddo is at with their knowledge of letters and letter sounds. The answer sheet came in really handy!

We also played "Candy Chaos" from my Sweet on CVC Words-Short A product to review short a words. The game is played similar to "Bang." Students turn over a card and if they can read the word, they keep the card. If not, it is returned to the pile. When they turn over a card with a tooth that has a cavity, they must return all their cards to the pile. They loved this game and begged me to play it for the remainder of the week! I used it as bribery to continue our review of short vowels.

Lastly, we are learning about maps. After reading the wonderful book Me on the Map,

we worked really heard throughout the week to create these fabulous "Me on the Map" projects by Erin Palleschi! They are going to look so good displayed during open house this upcoming week!

It felt great to be back at work for a whole week though I'm dog tired. Like seriously.....teacher tired. Because we all know....there is no tired like teacher tired!

How was your week? I'd love to hear from you!