Measurement Fun & Plants!

We were back to business in room 102 and we were all about measurement!

Non-standard measurement that is.

Here are a few of the fun activities we did this week:

Measure Me! The kids were giggling like crazy as they made estimates about each part of their body and then measured how long their body was in cubes! We measured our heads, our hands, our feet, our waist, and more!

Crooked paths! Each pair of students got a piece of construction paper with two lines on it. The top line (A) was a straight line and the bottom line (B) was crooked and ended before the end of A. We looked at our lines and had a whole discussion about which one we thought was longer. 20 of my 21 kids thought A was longer because "it is straight" "it looks way longer" and "the end of the line is closer to the edge of the paper than B." Great ideas! Then one of my littles raised his hand and quietly said...

"I think B is longer" the kids couldn't believe he was saying this! I asked him why and he responded... "I'm imagining it to be straight" and I swear my teacher heart skipped a beat! I just smiled a BIG ole smile and said... "Very interesting! Let's measure them now and see what happens! We then measured each line with paper clips and recorded how long they were. To their surprise B was a couple paper clips longer!

On the other side of the paper were two really crooked paths. The top one had a lot more "crooks" in it and basically looked like a zig-zag line all the way across, while the bottom one had less "crooks." By the end of the lesson, my students realized that the more zig-zaggy the line was, the longer the line generally was!

This is a lesson straight from Investigations called "animal jumps." When the students got back from lunch there were huge pieces of masking tape all over the classroom labeled with different letters. I told the kids that while they were gone all these animals came into our classroom and jumped all over the place! They did not believe me in the slightest, but I kept up with my silly lie anyway.

The students got an envelope filled with 3 different measuring tools:
popsicle sticks
baby feet
basketball player feet

They had to travel around to each animal's jump and make an estimate for each tool. They then practiced measuring each line and at the end we talked about why the same line would have different measurements based on the tool we measured with - aka why is the kangaroo's jump only 5 basketball player feet?! when it is 22 baby feet long?!

It was an exhausting week, but the kids loved it! Next week in math, we move onto data and graphing!

I also wanted to share that I finished my plant unit and it is uploaded on TPT! We are working on insects right now, but then we are moving onto plants!

Here is a little sneak peek:

 A fun science experiment growing lima beans complete with observing journals, science readers, fact sheets, and an art/poetry project at the end!

 Literacy activities such as non-fiction close reads, fact/opinion sorts and plenty of word work centers.

Math centers and ready-to-use math printable games and activities.

Here are a few of the centers I already have prepped:

Of course I snagged these adorable felt spring containers from the Target $1 spot to hold my centers!

 Buzzing for Digraphs! Students match up the flower with the correct bee header and record!

Vowel puzzles! Students match up the long and short vowel pictures and create the little puzzles correctly. There is a flower with 3 pictures for each of the 5 short vowels and the 5 long vowels (with a recording sheet).

Sentence Scrambles! My kids struggle with this, so I added 6 sentence scrambles with plant facts on them for the kids to practice! Each sentence is color coded and have a symbol to match to the recording sheet. That way I can check to see they completed each one correctly!

To see more, click on any of the images above or click HERE!

Not that this post isn't LONG enough already, but I am a little late to join the party. Some of my Spring items are on sale from now through tomorrow night (3/30)!

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Top of the Mornin' to Ye!

Yesterday was a FANTASTIC day!! For many reasons, but first and foremost... THIS:

Yes, yes, yes! The Parkster and I are having a wee little baby! We had our first ultrasound yesterday and the little peanut was moving around like crazy. We were immediately in LOVE with that tiny thing. I will likely be writing lots about pregnancy and baby in months to come on my personal blog, Late Nights and Lattes, if you want to catch me over there.

That appointment was in the afternoon so I was sure to fill my morning at school with lots of FUN St. Patty's Day activities!

We started out our morning with some Lucky Charms and green milk. I so wish I could share the kids faces because they were cheezin' big time with green milky smiles.

We played some fun math games with the help of Katie King's Busy Teacher pack. We have been working on making 10 and quickly noticing sets of numbers that make 10 in order to help us add larger numbers, so these 2 activities were just perfect!

 Making Rainbows:

If the two numbers equal ten, they can color in the rainbow. If the two numbers do not equal ten, they must cross it out.

Strike it Rich:

Students roll a die and figure out what number they need to add to it to make 10. They take turns coloring in the coins and see who is the "richest" at the end!

During our reading block, we read Jamie O'Rourke and the Pooka and completed Kelley's Story Element Shamrocks. We had completed these last year, so I knew they were a big hit! The kids got a kick out of making their own four leaf clovers!

And after lunch, I brought out some more of those Lucky Charms to graph some marshmallows! We used Jen's Marshmallow Math pack and the kids loved it.

I wasn't there for our writing block in the afternoon, but my kiddos wrote about how they would catch a leprechaun. It was a fun, exciting, and emotional (for me and hubs) day! It was perfect :)

Hope your class had a great St. Patrick's Day!

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Free Consonant Blends Game!

After a little phonics screening this past week, I realized a good chunk of my kiddos were STUCK on blends. They were having trouble reading both beginning and ending consonant blends. I created a fun little game which I introduced on Friday and my kids loved it!

Here it is in action:

The premise:

Each student receives a blends spinner. They take turns spinning and their job is to create a real word using their blend and a word ending from the game board. When they find one, they cover it with their color cube! Once all the boxes are covered (which takes quite a while), students count their cubes up and see who has the most! While they are trying to find a real word, they are practicing a bunch of nonsense blend words along the way!

I uploaded the file to googledocs so I thought I would share it for free!

Just click below to grab it:

I am also prepping a bunch of activities from my Tricky Sticky Blends pack to help my struggling readers this week!

Hoping everyone has a great weekend :) I am enjoying this 40 degree weather here in Boston, which believe it or not, feels really, really warm!

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