I'm about to take you wayyyyy back... to March! When things were a little colder and a little less green. Well except for in room B4. On St. Patty's Day we were all very green and we even ate some green food! Take a look...
The students also completed their Irish Proverbs. These always come out so funny! They finish the Irish saying and then learn what the real saying means. It's one of those "kids say the darndest" type of things! I love how literal they all are!
This little leprechaun really enjoyed his first St. Patrick's Day as well!
In March we also studied the Solar System. The students learned about the moon, the stars, and the planets. After reading a great book called Postcards from Pluto, they created their own postcards. They were instructed to pretend as if they were visiting a different planet within our solar system. Then they had to write to their families from the planet they were visiting, using information that they learned about that planet. They also had to write their address on the address lines of the postcard and create a design on the picture side of the postcard. They came out great!
We also made these cute rocketship and moon crafts. We painted the moon with white paint and flour. That gave it great texture, like the moon. We used a water bottle cap to create the craters. Then we wrote facts that we've learned on the rocket ship.
We also celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday! We read lots of Dr. Seuss books and studied his style of writing. We found rhyming words in his books, looked for opposites from the foot book that were written all around the room, and played a Dr. Seuss addition game.
One of the Dr. Seuss books that we read was called Horton Hatches the Egg. It is about a lazy bird, who lays an egg. The bird does not feel like sitting on her nest, so she asks Horton, the elephant to sit on it for her. Horton does whatever he can to follow through with his agreement, and it is not easy! One day, while Horton is performing in the circus, the lazy bird flies by and decides to watch the show. When she gets there the egg hatches! To everyone's surprise, a bird does not hatch from the egg! Instead it is an elephant-bird! After reading this book, the students create their own silly animal mix-ups. They create them with an app called Superimpose and then use Google Docs to put the finishing touches on them! It's really quite the process, but is totally worth it. Kids from other classes love stopping by in the hallway to check out these funny animals! I created one too!
While we were studying Dr. Seuss's style of writing, we were also doing our Author's purpose unit. We learned that Dr. Suess wrote to entertain us, but also to persuade and inform us! During reading groups, some of the kiddos wrote about the author's purpose in their book on the white boards. It also makes me so happy to see the organization of the books, the white boards, and their tissue boxes (which is where we house the dry erase markers, erasers, and word cards that each student is working on). It's the little things...
We kicked off the month of April by creating our spring cinquains. After all, April is poetry month! The students wrote their own cinquains about a spring topic, and then typed them and printed them at computer class.
Then the students wrote about what they like to do when it rains. They decorated their umbrella and did their writing underneath! Take a look...
Someone else likes to put on his raincoat and watch out the window as the rain falls...
We are hoping that all of those showers bring some nice May flowers!
