Bat Magic

Bat Magic Week

At my school it is so hard to teach something new that the students have not been exposed too.  That is why I like bat week.  Bats are a new topic for the children.  Most of the children could share personal experiences about bats however most of the students have not read the stories about bats. Our favorite bat stories were:  Stellaluna, Night Song and Daft Bat.

We made black bats to hang up in our classroom and a couple in the hallway.

Each student wrote a little report about bats.  I found the idea in the unit by Reagan Tunstall.  

We went to the zoo for the Bat Magic program.  It was so cute.  They set up a cave in the classroom.  They even bring a live bat into the classroom for the children to see. 

At the Bat Magic program the children make a cute brown bat.  This is a fun way to celebrate Halloween.   

Owl Babies

Owl Babies

I just love the book Owl Babies by Martin Waddell and so do my students.  Every year when I read this wonderful book my students beg for me to read it again and again.  I think the kids like it so much because they can relate to the characters, especially Bill. 

One of the elements my first graders and I discussed was the setting and how the illustrater added details to make the owls look fuzzy. 

I had my first graders create an art project to go along with the story. 

1.  They sketched the owls with pencil on white paper.

2.  Then they traced the owls with a black sharpie.

3.  Next, they water colored the owls.

We let the owls dry over night.

The next morning we took paper scraps and created a background for the owls.  We cut out our owls and arranged everything.   

Another great owl book I use in my classroom is, Little Owl Lost. by Chris Naughton.  The illustrations in this book are wonderful. 

This is another book that my students love as well.  .  I use this book to talk about the character and what it means to be helpful.  I wish I could read to my students all day.  There are so many wonderful owl stories.    

Apples

I don't know about you but my school year has been so busy.  I thought this year would be easier now that I had a year under my belt in first grade but that was not the case.  I still feel like I am working day to day.  

Last week I took my first grade class to the apple orchard.  In order to prepare for our trip we created some apple art.  It was hard to find art that our kindergarten program had not already done however I did find this idea from Deep Space Sparkle.  I didn't have my first graders trace apples I had them draw their own.  We looked at apples and talked about their imperfect shapes.  I didn't want to purchase burlap for the background so we used some scrapbook paper that I already had and sticky tape for the stems and leaves.  My first graders loved mixing the paint and painting their apples.  

For Social Studies we read from a pre-made book from 1st Grade Hip Hip Hooray.    I purchased this unit at the last minute and didn't have time to do all the wonderful ideas.  Next year I will be prepared and have more time.  I highly recommend this unit.  The first graders enjoyed the true and false questions after the story.  Who would have guessed??

There are lots of wonderful books to read about apples however this year the first grade favorites were:

Believe it or not most of the children said they had never heard these stories before.  It is really hard for me to find stories they are unfamiliar with.  

If you are interested in my kindergarten apple ideas Click Here.  

Friday Freebie -- The Water Cycle

Switching to First Grade this year challenged me in so many ways.  For the first time in a long time I was looking for new material each week in more than one subject.  One topic I taught for the first time was the Water Cycle.  This book about the Water Cycle was basic and had great photos.  It was easy for my first graders to understand.

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Of course Brain Pop Jr. came through for me and had something wonderful to show the children.  I can not believe how much my students LOVE Brain Pop Jr.

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Another great resource I found was from Kristen Smith and her blog A Day in First Grade.  She created this wonderful Weather Packet.  My students loved the activities.

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I found a great poem about the water cycle in my favorite poetry book by Helen Moore.  We added this to our poetry collection.

I created a follow up worksheet for it as well.

Get Your Free copy of the Poem and Worksheet Here

Teaching about weather turned out to be one of my favorite topics.

This Week in First Grade April 21

In first grade this week we will begin our new science unit about weather.  There are several lessons in the book that I will be doing however in addition to the text book I found a wonderful unit by Kristen Smith.  There are some amazing ideas in the unit that I can not wait to share with my class.

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I found a poem about a rainbow this week.

I have a homework page for the poem as well.    If you would like a copy of the poem and homework page Click Here.

The week before vacation, we made Adjective Rainbows.  It was an idea I saw on Pinterest.  It went perfect with our Religion lesson on The Golden Rule.  How should we treat others.......the same way we want others to treat us.  We brainstormed a list of positive adjectives....

Then the children thought of kind adjectives to describe their friends.   We picked names out of a basket to fill out the strips.  The group of children met together and discussed what were the best adjectives to put on the rainbow and surprise the special person on the cloud.   It was such a treat to find out what kind things the other children thought about each student.  It was the highlight of the day.  The first graders loved this activity.  This is something I will do again next year.

I found three great books to read about clouds to the students as well.

 

I am looking forward to a fun week back with my students.
Sue

The Life Cycle of a Frog

the red eyed tree frog

 

Last week in our science book the topic was the life cycle of a frog.   I made a literature connection with two books during guided reading:  The red eye tree frog and Frog and toad books.

My class just loved reading about frogs.  We made a web with frog facts and then they wrote some sentences. 

We created some cute frogs to attach to our reports as well.  this was an easy and fun way to integrate reading, science, art and writing all into one lesson.