Plants, winners, and who's jealous?

Taking a break from spiders and bats to show you some of the plants we've been doing...

As most of you remember, I don't do the stories in our reading series...partially, because I don't really like them....but mostly because it gives me the freedom to be thematic, which I really like doing.

BUT, last week, our story was The Tiny Seed, and not only do I LOVE Eric Carle, BUT, our district has told us that we need to teach life cycle NOW (instead of during the spring time, but whatever)...so I actually did that story last week. But I didn't really follow the skills it told us to...it was supposed to be drawing conclusion - which A) that doesn't match up with our common core standards B) it's more of a sequencing story (IMO)...and sequencing is THIS week's skill...so I just swapped the two weeks for skills...works, right?!

Right.

moving on....

Sooo....my kids know the parts of a plant pretty well, actually, so I don't feel the need to dwell on that part too much...in 1st grade they do this cute little activity...

The stem is a straw! Get it?? because the stem "sucks up" the water from the roots??? 

Pretty clever, I thought....

So, I focus more on the life cycle of the plant throughout the seasons...

My kids did a foldable based on what the tint seed did throughout the seasons...

I made a printable for you - but it's for 8.5 x 14 paper. 

I just feel the space is too small for the kids to do a regular sized piece of paper....

Hope you can use it!

One more thing!

Winner of the giveaway...

Paula!!

You will be getting your email soon- and thank you, everyone, for playing along!! You can still snag these units in our stores

And last, but not least...

I have to show you...

I think this is my new favorite family picture!

The fire dept was doing a fundraiser for children's hunger...buy a bag of groceries, and you pick which firefighter climbs to the top of the ladder.

I love this fundraiser.

I have a few kids that each Friday get their backpacks filled with food for their family for the weekend - it's through a program we have a grant for. It really does bring tears...

Me and A...

AND...

I may be SUPER jealous that ya'll get to experience 

Fall colors, 

apple pickin', 

REAL pumpkin patches....

BUT,

I am SOOOO grateful that I still get to do THIS

My cute little B!!! Gosh I just love how she always makes me smile!

YES! It was a beautiful beach day this weekend!! and a much needed one!! I actually went paddleboarding in the ocean out there (with the waves) and A was sitting on the front of the board like a hood ornament - it was so fun!! MAN, sometimes I just love living here!

10

Apples Here and There!

So this week was Apple Week

In addition to reading and doing all kinds of things with Johnny Appleseed,

(check out my post from earlier this week on that!)

I also really like to read How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World.

I really do like this book...

Let me just tell you...

I hit on EVERY. SINGLE. "subject" (do we even call them subjects anymore? everything curriculum; cross-curriculum and such...lol)

We talked about:

sequencing - steps to make an apple pie (according to the book)

science - evaporation (she had to get salt from the salt water, so we talked about how if you hadocean water in a jar, the water would evaporate but the salt would stay...THEN, one of my girls asked, "well, then would the salt be wet? how could she use it then??" GOOD question - I guess I will have to go to the beach this weekend and grab some ocean water so we can test this out - oh shucks..the sacrifices I make for my job - ha!)

social studies - maps...country vs. state and compass directions

math - ordinal numbers

After we read and discussed the book, I had them do a "quazi-foldable" ha!

In each box, they wrote the ordinal numbers and then what she did to make the pie.

They turned out cute!

THEN, it was apple tasting time!

Last night  I SLAVED peeling and cutting apples (not really - it was only like 20 minutes)

(ooh ooh! movie quote!

"She could peel an apple in one long curly strip"

anyone?? It's one of my FAVORITE movies ever!)

They had their choice of:

Apple Cider

Apple Chips

HOMEMADE Apple Butter and biscuit

HOMEMADE applesauce 

(oh. my. gosh...this was SOOO good!! I even got a compliment of "wow - this is almost as good as my grandma's homemade applesauce from a fellow teacher" I was feeling pretty special at that point..ha!)

Then, of course, they graphed it...

yes...that is a CHALKBOARD.

Do any of you know what that is still?? lol We're a little behind times, although I DO have a doc cam - woo!

They have different colors because they also taste tested different color apples and they picked that color apple to write their name on, then we graphed with those apples on this graph - so it's a double-duty graph. 

I also use Hadar's apple unit a lot this week

We did some prediction on whether or not apples would float, then I "cut" (yes, cut with scissors - I forgot to bring a knife, so I improvised) open the apple and they predicted what the seeds were going to do

(they look like footballs, don't they - ha!)

OK...

Now...for some FALL activities...

We were learning about seasons...since you know....us Floridians TOTALLY have fall and winter.

ha!

Do you KNOW how hard it is to teach about these seasons??? sigh....

Anywhosit...

We did a foldable science/fluency/reading com - visualzing activity.

The got their poem and we did or poetry fluency lessons...

I read it.

They read it (choral).

They partner read it with their partners (ABAB, then BABA so everyone reads everything)

Then we choral read it again...LOVE IT!

Then, we did a window foldable...

They labeled the seasons on the windows, glued the corresponding stanza of the poem, and then on the inside, they glue the tree that they colored to represent that stanza and drew the arrows to show that it was a cycle.

Click the pic below to get the poem and the tree...

I also wanted to show you how we used our "all in one" sheet this week...

We did it on Johnny Appleseed...

the "I Wonder" part is really hard for them still...

and so is the "It reminds me of" part...but the more we keep working on it, the better they'll get at it, right?? 

Anyway, for the word study part, I focused on words with suffixes.

We did plural nouns, but I just asked them what they "noticed" about all those words..and they are the ones that came up with it...same with the "ed" words - we will see what I want to work on next week...

If you want this page, go to THIS post to grab it.

Ok - If you made it through that whole post - woo!!

Sorry, it was heavy on pictures, but at least you got a few freebies out of it, right!?

anyway...here are some pictures to make you smile!

B lovin' her yogurt...

A and Me bein' silly girls - hehe!!

Happy Friday!

One last laugh...

this is so me...especially since hubs goes to auctions on Friday nights...

ha!! I LOVE my girls...

If you want to see more apple activities, check out my Apple pack HERE.

14

Letters, Spelling, 3 Little Pigs giveaway, and blogger meet-up!

We FINALLY finished our letters from my Goldilocks unit....whew!

They even addressed and stamped them!

ready to be mailed!

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This week we've also been doing Three Little Pigs, and all the different variations of it.

(notice I don't have that linked...STILL not finished with it. I got SICK SICK SICK last night and I was home alone with the girls - I almost made hubs come home from work-ugh!)

We did a window foldable on the story structure...

They wrote characters, setting, problem, and solution on the inside of the flaps, and then illustrated on the inside.

How cute are they?!

And they've been doing my centers...

Here's the adjectives one:

Here the math ones:

Counting bys:

Fact family matches

Literacy

-Realism Vs. Fantasy: sorting and illustrating

-Adjectives with the Three Little Pigs and Adjectives Poster

-Writing with the Three Little Pigs

-Who is the Wolf? Descriptive Writing

-Book suggestions

-Wanted Poster

Math

-Counting Pigs: counting by 2s, 3s, 5s, and 2s starting with 1 (so like 1, 3, 5, etc..)

-Piggie Family: Matching addition to subtraction fact families, but they DON'T have the answers

-This Little Piggie Regroups: This centers has a few options. You can use 2-digit addtion, 2-digit subtraction, 3-digit addition, or 3-digit subtraction. This lets you differentiate with your kids, or  you can use it different times of the year! :)

Ok, I am going to give this unit away! It's not uploaded to TpT yet, so this giveaway will MAKE me finish it! ha!!

How do you enter?? See THIS Post!

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Florida blogger meet-up update!!

I'm all excited because it's only 45 minutes away! lol..We've looked at everyone's place of origin and thought this was centrally located to everyone. We've changed the time to let more time to get there.

Head over to Mor's post about it to sign up and see more of the details!

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I wanted to show you one of my spelling centers that I use quite a bit...

I give them 10 words and they choice 5 of them to figure out how much it's worth. 

They have REALLY gotten good at counting money - gotta squeeze it in wherever I can! ha!

Click {HERE} to get the freebie!

And click below to see other fabulous freebies!!

16

Foldables Linky!

Laura Chandler is having a Foldable Linky!! You must go check it out!! I use TONS of foldables in my room, moreso than what I blog about..
Click {HERE} to see some of my posts that have foldables in them!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

(p.s...I'll be back later with another post - please don't call the blog police! haha)

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