Explore Tubs for Living Things {with freebies}

Sorry for those of you waiting on my last post about Explore Tubs! This pregnant-teacher-momma has a hard time staying up past 7pm most nights!! lol. But I am back today to share my plans for my last science unit--Characteristics and Needs of Living Things. After Spring Break I will be doing a short Objects & Materials unit, then diving into Living Things! Here are some things I've been collecting...

Explore Tub 1: Living and Non-living Things

*Tub of random toys from dollar store, home, classroom, nature, etc.
*Living Things and Non-living Things Cards {free here}--Students sort the random objects into the two categories.
*Living Things Sorting Game {by me on TpT}--I used sticky velcro dots to make my sorting game. Students sort the picture cards by what it is: people, animals, plants, and non-living.
*Books about living things: Are You Living?, What's Alive?, Living and Nonliving, I Am a Living Thing, Is It a Living Thing?

Explore Tub 2: Plant Centre

*Seed Matching Activity--Buy a bunch of packs of seeds and small clear containers. Put the seeds in the containers, laminate the seed pouches, and label the containers and pouches so that students can try to match up which seed is which!
*Parts of Plants and Needs of Plants {free here}--Add sticky velcro to make it a matching activity.
*Bean Life Cycle by Safari Ltd. {from Michaels or Amazon}
*Books about plants: Seeds, Roots, Leaves, Flowers, Fruits, Stems

Explore Tub 3: Insect Centre

*Insect Toob by Safari Ltd {from Michaels} or any toy bugs from dollar store, etc.
*Variety of bug viewers/tools from dollar store, Michaels, etc.
*Butterly Life Cycle by Safari Ltd. {from Michaels or Amazon}
*Cootie Bug Game {Walmart}
*Books about insects: Spiders, On Beyond Bugs, Fly Guy Presents: Insects, What Is an Insect?, Magic School Bus Presents Insects, From Caterpillar to Butterfly

Explore Tub 4: Habitat Centre

*Four different habitat sensory bins:

• Farm: yellow dyed rice, plastic farm animals (dollar store or Michaels)
• Forest: green dried split peas, blue stones (dollar store), rocks (dollar store), North American Wildlife Toob (Michaels), Tree Toob (Michaels)
• Ocean: blue dyed rice, blue glass gems (dollar store), Ocean Toob (Michaels)
• Arctic: cotton balls, clear glass gems (dollar store), blue stones (dollar store), Arctic Animals Toob (Michaels)

*Books about habitats: Where Do Animals Live?, Animal Habitats, An Ocean of Animals, The Arctic Habitat, A Forest Habitat, Farm Animals

Explore Tub 5: Animal Centre

*Animal Track Book {by me on TpT}--Students can practice matching the animal tracks to the animals.
*Animal Movement Cards {free here}--Use the cards as is or place in a make-your-own dice such as these. Students pick a card or roll the dice and make the movement like that animal.
*Books about animals: How Do Animals Move?, How and Why Do Animals Move?, Big Tracks, Little Tracks, Whose Tracks Are These?, Move!, Who Was Here?

Explore Tub 6: Human Centre

*Magnetic Skeleton {from Scholastic Spring Catalogue 2016 or free printable here}--Students can practice putting the skeleton together and labeling the bones.
*Melissa & Doug Magnetic Human Body Play Set {from Amazon}
*My Body Puzzle Set {from Amazon}
*Books about the body: My Amazing Body, Me and My Amazing Body, The Best Part of Me, The Magic School Bus Inside the Human Body, Your Skin Holds You In, Inside Your Outside

You can check out my other Explore Tub posts here:

Objects & Materials Explore Tubs

Five Senses Explore Tubs

Weather & Seasons Explore Tubs

What Are Explore Tubs?

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)!

Late or Early... Five (Plus One) for Friday {Freebies}

I can't decide if I'm really late for last weeks link up, or really early for this Friday. Either way I've got five (plus one) randoms for you. It's the Five for Friday link up over at Doodle Bugs Teaching. Click the picture to check out everyone else's five things as well!

1. Check out our spring bulletin boards. We wrote some five senses spring poems, then practiced our typing skills using Max's Toolbox (kid version of Microsoft Office... have you tried it before?? Love it!). On our spring math bulletin board we made some Easter subtraction craftd (inspired by Kinder by Kim's Jazzy Journals). We also completed Miss Kindergarten's Math Flowers. They turned out so cute!

Here is our rough copy of our spring senses poem. We wrote them in pencil first, then typed them and added clipart. I skimped on the colour printing though. Oh well! Click the pic to download your own copy.

2. We have been doing a mini plant unit last week and this week. We labelled parts of the plants, completed the life cycle, talked about needs, and graphed our favourite type of plant (a la The First Grade Parade). We also made our own grassheads! They were super fun and pretty easy to make! Just get your boyfriend to make a pit stop at the Dollar Store to pick you up 8 sets of beige panty hose and you are ready to go! :) We just stretched the panty hose over a plastic container, put a spoonful of grass seeds into it, and then filled it with potting soil. Tie a knot at the base of the head. Use a tiny elastic to make a nose (some chose not to). Hot glue wiggle eyes and a pipecleaner mouth and/or mustache. Decorate the styrofoam cup. Last, water them! We put water inside the cups and I also let them squirt the tops with spray bottles eveyr morning. I was a little worried these guys wouldn't grow because I have no green thumb or fingers at all, but we saw a few little sprouts here and there this morning. Success! :)

Every morning I have my students take out their observation journal, draw a picture of their grasshead, and write a sentence about how it is growing. You can download the journal by clicking the picture below.

Download old version here.

Download new version here.

3. Last week Thursday was our Open House. It's pretty low-key. Usually we just display artwork created by the students when our "Artist in the School" visits, but ours had to cancel due to a family emergency, so we had to change things up this year. Our principal wanted us to demonstrate how we use technology in our classroom, so I had my Mimio and document camera set up. Students could show their parents how we use the document camera and then they could show our calendar routine (complete with fancy calendar video menu). Parents were pretty amazed at some of the high tech things we now have! We also put out our autobiographies that we finally finished! They turned out really good and I am pretty impressed with some of their writing.

4. I got some sweet comments on my Weekly Plans from last week. I have to confess, my plans don't look like that all the time. I just tried it out so I could link up with Deedee! This is what my actual day planner looks like. I like having the whole week spread over two pages. This works pretty well for me.

5. Here are my students enjoying some fun Daily 5 time! I had to snap that sweet shot of my two boys listening to the same book. They were really engaged in the story. I have about 60 different "Listen to Reading" books right now. I just picked up a few more from SuperStore this week. They were Disney stories--Wreck It Ralph, Phineas & Ferb, Tinkerbell, and Tangled. They were only 5 bucks each and the kids love them! The other picture is a student completing a newly added word work centre. This is a Beginning Sound MP3 Match from K is for Kinderiffic. They loved it!

 

So I did it today. I counted how many days left. 46! Eek! The snow is finally starting to melt a bit, so the kids are feeling a bit wrangly. I don't blame them. I just want to go sit outside in the sun too! Today I felt that the blurting out was becoming a big problem again so I decided to bring out the Whole Brain Teaching scoreboard idea again. I used to do Students vs. Teacher so that everytime a student blurted I would get a tally and everytime someone raised their hand or waited their turn, the students would get a tally. This worked fine except I would get the students that just raised their hand to get more tallies! "My tooth is loose." "My fish died yesterday." "I think blue is my favourite colour." Ugh! I don't care! Anyways, I decided to change things up a bit and change it to Boys vs. Girls! They ate it up! If a boy blurts, the girls get a tally. If a girl blurts, the boys get a tally. Sweet! The reward? Whoever has the most tally marks by last recess gets TWO EXTRA MINUTES OF RECESS!! Hahah. Really I just let them get dressed first and go outside a tiny bit earlier. Easy peasy! It worked like a charm! The girls won today. We'll see if the boys can make it tomorrow! :) Click the picture to download your own Boys vs. Girls Scoreboard and give it a try!

Enjoy your week peeps!

Green Thumb?

Here's a little peak into our short plant unit...

I have to admit--I do not have a green thumb. I don't even have a green thumbnail. Not even a freckle. I kill any living green thing that comes into my house. So I was very hesitant to do any actual planting with my kiddos, but I decided to give it a try anyways!

First we read the book "Once Upon a Seed" and talked about how seeds grow. We labelled this bubble map with all the things it needs: air, water, light, heat, and soil. You can download the map by clicking on the picture below.

*Border from Ginger Snaps Art*

Then we made our little ziplock green houses. I got these cute ones from Kelly's Spring Fever unit, over at Beg Borrow Steal. She has some awesome activities in her unit!

That cute poster is from Reagan over at Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits! 

You can download it for free from here. 

Now, I thought the ziplock bag greenhouse was a GREAT idea! And I read the directions very carefully... but we just could not get those suckers to sprout! :(

So I let them take their greenhouses home. Some said they tried to plant them in the garden. Maybe they'll have better luck there!

I still didn't want to give up on the planting idea, so I decided to try the ol' cup and soil method. I bought some new seeds--peas this time! And I bought some extra-enriched, super duper potting soil. That's gotta help, right? Well we planted our little seeds in the soil, watered them, placed them by our sunny windows, and started the wait.

After a few days of waiting patiently.... TA DA! Green spouts!

Almost all of them have sprouted up so far. That is super exciting! Everyday after recess, the kids water their plants and make notes/draw pictures in their seed journals {from Reagan's Seed to Plant unit}.

We also read the book "Oh say can you seed?" and talked about different types of plants. We made a large map of all the plants we could think of.

We also made these cute flowers and labeleld the parts of the flower, as well as it's needs. This came from the lovely ladies at Made for 1st Grade in their Plants Literature & Art Unit.

Then we ended the unit talking about living and nonliving things. First we read the book "What's Alive?" Then we filled in this chart to see if things were living or nonliving. We went through the questions at the top and put either a check or an x in the box.

Then we did a picture sort together in the pocket chart. You can download the cards here.

We keep watching and writing about our plants to see how they grow and change each day!