Eric Carle and Spring Centres

This month's centres have an author focus on Eric Carle, of course so many of his books fit perfectly with springtime and the units we study in Science.

Puppet Centre

Students were making caterpillars, which also fits with building things as students need to make this kind of a puppet (accordion style)

Listening Centre

Students sequenced the story "Mixed up Chameleon" after watching it on the Smartboard. They LOVE this story, such a good one.

Thematic Book

Students wrote their own version of the very hungry caterpillar story. 

Journal

Students did some writing about spring time. I always give them a picture to glue on otherwise they spend the entire centre drawing pictures and colouring instead of writing!

Guided Reading

After reading and discussing with the guided reading group, they did a response in their booklet.

Working with words

I found this ridiculously cute word family craft on Teachers Pay Teachers from Susan Moran- TGIF here. Makes for easy differentiation just change the word family or the number of words they need to write!

Writing

One of my amazing partner teachers gave me this cool activity to go with the mixed up chameleon. The kids pick which creature they would be if they were the chameleon and then glue on the body parts and write about it. So cute!!

Last centre is just sight word BINGO nothing too exciting there.

Also, we did a little craft to do some retelling with the mixed up chameleon. The kids made coloured the chameleon and cut out the centre of his body.. I will laminate and put on popsicle sticks. They created the background with all the different places the chameleon goes for the retelling.

Mrs. Dunn

Gingerbread man story- Better Late then never

Well, this happened a long long time ago. And I meant to post about it, but didn't. And now it is spring. I suppose better late than never right?

So we did a super fun story writing activity based on the book:

Basically, we rewrote the story, but what was unique about this was that we used mapping skills (with a map of the school) to see if we could find him, and so after writing each page, we would go in search of the gingerbread man in that location.

 Title page, sorry for the blurry, I laminated and bound the books so the shine didn't quite work out.

 Beginning of the story. this was VERY scripted.

Here is where we used our social studies map skills. I copied a school map into the story, and before we wrote each page we went to see if the gingerbread man was in that location. Then we would come back and write and colour that page. This is a great way to make things interactive and get a little DPA in there too!

WARNING: I may have built this part up... a little too much... like ooo I think I saw him run past, we need to be super quiet so he doesn't run away. We also found notes that he left us in each location. I built this up so much to the point where when we got to the library children thought they had found him, and someone said they say him run past the library window. Why is this a bad thing you may ask, keep reading to find out.

We then made missing posters just before going to the office to look for him. We brought our missing posters to the secretary to see if she had found him, which by chance she actually had.

Here is the reason for the warning. The children were expecting a real, live, running, talking, singing, dancing, magical gingerbread man. And we found... a paper laminated copy. Needless to say, there was some seriously disappointed faces. What a let down.

Anyway, all in all it was a fun story writing activity. Although I know the season is over, if you are interested for next year, here it is to purchase:

Teachers Pay Teachers 

Mrs Dunn

My Monster

I have already blogged about this art project, I believe, and the students just made these chromatography monsters in class the other day.. I wanted to make a writing activity to go with it, so here is what I came up with. Students write all about their monsters in this little mini book that is available here.

Mrs. Dunn

Happy Thanksgiving Eh!

So to all my Canadian friends, Happy Thanksgiving!

We had lots of fun this week doing different Thanksgiving inspired activities. We read I Know an Old lady who Swallowed a Pie. Much to the students delight, we made our very own old lady, inspired by Cara. I really love this idea.! I think I may use clip art for the pictures in the mouth next year as some children's pies looked like.. well.. I don't know ermm... you know... I'm not actually certain, just have a look and see. But they loved the activity.

I also enjoy how some of the googly eyes ended up in the hair. Such creativity!

For Science, students are supposed to be able to show colours that are darker and lighter so we did a thanksgiving themed activity.

Anyways, it was a fun week and I can't wait to have turkey and mashed potatoes this weekend, yummmo!

 Mrs. Dunn

Sight Word Practice

I find it difficult to practice sight words outside of center time in a way that is interesting. This is my new  trial and error version. At the beginning of the day, the students write their new sight word onto the card in the boxes. One of my students was very confused... you want us to box the word???? Anyways, once they have written the word in, they get a laminated name card and put their new sight word in. They get to keep the old one and take home to practice with.

Then throughout the day I sing this song 

To the tune of: Where is Thump kin?

(Teacher) Where is sight word, where is sight word?

(Students) Here I am, Here I am! (students hold up their card)

(Teacher) Word today is ____, Word today is ______

(Students) _____, _____, _____

              _____, _____, _____

You can find the poster on my Teachers pay Teachers site.

Mrs. Dunn

Printing Centers

Practicing printing can be torturous, so I like to make it a little more fun by incorporating centers with our printing practice. Today we tried, we made a mess and had some fun too!

Today's letters (c, o and a) were brought to you by the magic c, the letter that can magically turn into other letters! So we used:

SHAVING CREAM; sigh, I am very brave. This came with a long preemptive speech. Me- This is NOT whip cream, or cool whip or anything delicious grade ones. Please don't eat it!

Noodles; not so sure that making curved letters out of straight noodles works the best, I will probably need to use macaroni or maybe I will just give them cooked noodles, but then they may eat them, dipped in shaving cream I'm sure, so maybe not the best idea.

Wrote on the white board, and then found the matching magnets to go with the letters.

 Play doh, one of my personal favourites.

So those are my printing centers. Thankfully they had music right after, as there were some shaving cream monsters coming out to play while we were trying to clean up and I was concerned that the students may be going home with shaving cream all over them. Try explaining that to parents . . .

Rubric for Writing

I always find it difficult to assess student writing, and self assessment is even more difficult when students are just beginning to read and write. Here is a picture of how I assess story writing; the students fill most of it out on their own by the end of the year.

Mrs. Dunn