Measurement Centres {with freebies} and an Announcement!

We are in the midst of a little measurement mini-unit in math right now. I put together 6 hands-on measurement centres for the kiddos to work on and they are having a blast with all the fun manipulatives! Here is what we are working on:

Centre #1: Measure a Friend {estimation & nonstandard length}

This is a fantastic freebie from Crazy for First Grade. I chose the nonstandard units (pencils and links) that the students needed to use to measure the length of their friend. First they had to estimation, then they could measure!

Centre #2: Measuring Penny {nonstandard length & width}

We read the adorable book Measuring Penny by Loreen Leedy and complete this adorable craft and measuring activity from Primary Junction's Second Grade Common Core Measurement Unit. We did the craft on a different day--I just had them do the measuring part as a centre. They had to use four nonstandard items (cubes, pencils, crayons, and paperclips) to measure the length and width of Penny the dog.

Centre #3: Farmer's Market {estimation & nonstandard length}

This is another centre from Primary Junction's Second Grade Common Core Measurement Unit. Students choose some fruits or vegetables from the market, make an estimation, and then measure the length with cubes. Primary Junction's activity has them measure with inches, but I just had my first graders use cubes to measure.

Centre #4: Rock Balance {estimation & nonstandard weight}

This cute freebie is from the awesome Reagan over at Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits. We had five rocks labelled A, B, C, D, and E. Students estimated how many bear counters would balance each rock. Then they measured! The students loved working with the balance scale. So much fun!

Centre #5: How Much Coffee? (or How Much Soda?) {estimation & nonstandard volume}

This was a freebie that I created. All you need is three different size cups... I went to my local Tim Hortons and asked for some cups. They were eager to share! I made two different versions... one to use with coffee cups or one to use with drink cups (ex. McDonalds). I wrote sizes on the bottom of the cup (S, M, and L). Students estimated how many cubes would fill up the cup. Then they filled it up and counted the number of cubes. Easy to set up and lots of fun! {Download recording sheets here.}

Centre #6: High Five! {nonstandard area}

This was another simple freebie I created. Students trace their hand on the recording sheet, then use different pattern blocks to fill in the area of their hand. {Download here.}

There you have it! A fun week of hands-on measurement activities!

Now onto my announcement.... if you've been following me for a while, you know that I have been moving from school to school so far, just covering terms and maternity leaves. I have been teaching for 6 years and I have been in 5 different schools, not including my year of subbing! Well finally it has come... I have been offered a permanent Grade 1 teaching position! I will be changing schools again, but then that will be it! I will finally have my own, permanent classroom that I get to stay in forever(ish)!! Yay! I am beyond excited! I can't wait to get in there and share some pictures with you! It's a bit smaller than my previous classrooms, but I don't care because it is mine! :)

Well enjoy your week everyone! We only have 27 days left.... yikes! Yes, that must seem a lot to you who are already done or are down to the one-digits... but we still have so much to cover! How will we get it all done?? Stay tuned!

Five for Friday {with a free app suggestion}

Oh what a week! I've been down, I've been up, I've been around the block and back! It's Friday though and I am ecstatic to be at home for two days. (Plus I got good news today... I will be teaching Grade 1 again next year... but it's not quite official yet, so I'm keeping it to myself for now!!) I am linking up with Doodle Bugs again for her fabulous linky to share some randoms from the week.

1. I saw this pin here for a Mother's Day card and I just loved the flower sticking out of it! I brought some of my girly scrapbook paper to school to create these cute cards. The kids wrote sweet messages and drew pictures for their mom on the inside. I took a picture of each student pretending to hold flowers, then we glue the picture to the front with a fake flower. So easy and cute! :)

2. Another pinterest-inspired Mother's Day craft was our gift (pinned from here). I picked up a variety of pot holders from the dollar store and some fabric paint. We painted the kids hands in the middle and attached a recipe for mother's love (freebie from Susan at TGIF). They turned out adorable!

3. I finally decided to let my kiddos to let my kiddos take home their grassheads. (Really I was just tired of having to water them every day... lol) So at the end of the day we opened our hair salon and cut our grass heads' hair! They loved it!

4. We are working on measurement in math right now. This fun activity was from Primary Junction's Second Grade Common Core Measurement Unit. We traced our hand and foot and measured them with unifix cubes. Very hands-on!

5. Here's a new free app for you to try... for iPads or iPhones/iPod Touches. It's called A+ Spelling Tests. You can input your own spelling/sight word lists and there is a record button so you can record your voice saying each word. It's super easy to use! There is a scramble game where students hear the word and have to unscramble the letters or there is a spelling test where students hear the word then they have to spell it. Try it out if you haven't heard of it before!

Enjoy your weekend! :)

Five for Friday Linky

It's Friday! Time for a link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching. Here's what has been going on this week...

1. Our grass heads are growing! Everyone who stops by our room has to come check these guys out. They are just too cute! The kids keep asking when we are going to cut them, but I think we should wait until they get a bit longer! :)

2. In theme we have been studying Dental Health. The kids are loving Deedee's poem "A Loose Tooth" from her February Poetry Pack. We say it each day, using each student's name. So fun! We also did some writing about how to keep our teeth healthy. We used lots of ideas form Mr. Harry's Kindergarten fun song "If You're a Kid... [Dental Health Remix]". We used this tooth writing page. Then I took pictures of my students, cropped their photos to just get their beautiful, hole-y smiles, and made a fun guessing game bulletin board. They love looking at the pictures!

3. We are doing a little measurment mini-unit in math. I armed each student with ten unifix cubes and a stack of mini post-it notes. They had to go around the classroom to find something that was less than 10 cubes, exactly 10 cubes, and more than 10 cubes. They had a blast! Those cute measurement posters are freebies from Angelia Grimes-Graeme from Extra Special Teaching.

4. We finished up our Eric Carle author study with some artwork. We used a white pastel and blue paint to do the background. Then we painted grass with two different kinds of green. After those dried, I let the kids have free rein of the pastels and construction paper! I told them they had to make a bug and we brainstormed what kinds we could make. I think they turned out beautiful! It's my class' turn to decorate the display case by the office, so this makes a nice welcome to our school.

5. I'm away from school for three days. I've never been away for so long before. Usually only a day at a time. This was my desk before I left yesterday... I placed every day in a different file folder with different coloured sticky notes for each day. I hope all is going well! :) Next year I am definitely going to put together a sub binder. I had planned to this year, but never got around to it. One day!

Have a great weekend! Enjoy the weather (if it's nice where you are)!

St. Patrick's Day and the Five Senses {freebies included}

Report cards are sent home and I can finally breathe a sigh of relief! One more week and it's SPRING BREAK!! I am so excited I can hardly stand it!

So for our St. Patty's activities we did a little Lucky Charms graphing. The sorting mat and graph were ones I got from Teacher's Clubhouse a few years back.

Then we did another little measurement activity I created. The kiddies had so much fun measuring with unifix cubes, so I created some shamrock rulers for them to use to measure. First they measured random classroom objects (estimate first, measure second) using the rulers to see how many shamrocks long these objects were. Then I made four leprechaun footprints (just using green construction paper) and hung them around the classroom.

I know it's a little late, but if you want to save this activity for next year, just click the pictures to download. The rulers are on 8x14" paper. I printed them on large manilla tag/card stock and let the kids colour them.

Then I wanted to create some cute leprechauns inspired by The First Grade Parade and Primary Perspective. Instead of making faces, I used photographs of my kiddies, just printed in black and white. They turned out so cute! We included the writing prompt "I feel lucky when..." I got some pretty sweet responses.

There's my silly example! :)

In Science we have been studying our five senses. We started off with this little anchor chart. I told the kids he was my friend named Bob. Now they talk about Bob all the time. "Does Bob like pickles? Does Bob know how to swim?" lol. It's pretty amusing!

Each day this week we talked about a different sense. I would start by reading one of these books. They are really cute and give good scientific info too. By the fifth day/book, my kids KNOW that nerves send messages to our brain. It was cute to hear them talking about it.

The first day we talked about sight. We played a game of "I Spy" and drew a labelled diagram of our eye in our Science journal. Then we graphed our eye colour. I got the little eye cards from some teacher resource book during my student teaching days... not even sure where it came from!

The next day we talked about hearing. We did this "What do you hear?" activity. I downloaded nine free sound effects from AudioMicro and played them through my school computer. (They are mp3 files so you could burn them to a CD and play them on your stereo as well.) They were sounds like wind, horse walking, water dripping, bacon frying, etc. Students made a guess and either drew a picture or wrote the word for what they thought made that sound. Then I would tell them the answer. If they were right, they put a check in the yes circle. If they were wrong, they put an x in the no circle. These are four mystery senses pages I created for our activities. Feel free to download them by clicking on the picture.

Then we talking about smell. I had 6 mystery cups with 6 stinky smells {lemon, orange, onion, perfume, coffee, and vinegar}. I placed cotton balls on top of the item and covered the cup with wax paper helf with an elastic. I poked a few holes on top to let the smell through. Same as the hearing activity, students drew/wrote their guesses. We also voted on who liked/disliked the smells.

Our touch day was a lot of fun. I combined it with our Dr. Seuss activities and read the book "Bartholomew and the Oobleck". We made our own oobleck and used our sense of touch to describe it. 

Then in Science we did a mystery bag activity. I had 12 paper bags with a mystery object inside. By using their sense of touch they had to figure out what the object was and draw/write their guess down. I had things like an apple, hockey puck, juice box, glue stick, q tip {that was a hard one!}, domino, etc.

Our taste day happened to fall on Friday, our St. Patrick's Day so I turned our taste test into a GREEN taste test! I made this huge tongue poster and we talked about our taste buds. {I did talk about bitter taste buds, where they were located and some foods that would be bitter, but we didn't try any of them.} Then we tasted one food at a time: a slice of green apple, a pickle, a green candy, a crinkle -cut veggie chip, a dill pickle Crisper, and a green marhsmallow. We wrote down the food, coloured in the taste buds, and circled if we liked or not.

It was a busy, but fun week! Next week is our dress-up Dr. Seuss week: Silly Hat Day, Favourite Colour Day, Wacky Hair Wednesday, Crazy Sock Day, and Sleepy Pajama Day! Have a great weekend, everyone!

In Like a Lion, Out Like a Lamb! {Hopefully!!!}

Sorry I have been neglecting everyone for the last week! I am swamped with assessments and report cards, and to top it all off, I have been blessed with a terrible cold! Gotta love winter! Fingers crossed for an early spring!

I did want to give a big thank you to everyone who supported my Leap Day sale at TpT! I truly appreciate all of your sweet comments, too!

I just have a couple quick things to share with you tonight! At the beginning of the month, we talked about the saying, "In like a lion, out like a lamb." We read this little poem by Lorie Hill, then brainstormed characteristics of a lion and lamb. Then we talked about what it meant if the weather was like a lion or lamb. We predicted whether or not we thought March was going to come in like a lion or lamb!

On March 1st we ended up having very lamb-like weather, but the 2nd was a big snow storm, so I'm hoping that was the lion and we are on our way to a beautiful spring now!

We made these cute and easy paper plate crafts. We painted one plate yellow with an orange border and the other we painted black (although a few students wanted to leave their lambs white). Then when they dried we added googley eyes, construction paper noses and ears, and cotton balls.

 

I just punched holes at the top and hung them back to back. Easy and super cute!

Also, here's a quick little measurement activity I whipped up this week. The students used unifix cubes to do some non-standard measuring activities. First they measured the length of lines. Then they measured the area of squares and rectangles. Finally they went around to measure the length of the "inch worms" I had hidden around the room. There are 6 different worms for them to find and measure. My kiddies had so much fun with this whole activity! I will definitely have to make some more of these! Yay for fun math! If you would like a copy of the activity, click the picture of the worksheet to download it for free!

Well that's it for tonight! I'm going to relax with the puppy tonight and watch some cheesey chick flicks on tv! Good night everybody!