We learned about Weather {Freebies too, of course!}

The past few weeks our class has spent studying weather!  I have been really into inquiry based unit launches, so this was no exception.  I gathered the kids around the carpet with a pan, a hot plate, and 1 cup of water.  We went through the steps in the scientific process and I had them a very simple response sheet to keep their focus.  You can grab a FREE copy below!  I set the water to medium/high heat and just let nature takes its course.  Of course each kid got to feel the vapor and we discussed what we thought was happening as we continued with our graphic organizer.

The best part was at the end of the experiment when I showed them what had happened to the water! The answers were wrong.....but in that YES YOU ARE WRONG! Teacher kind of way!  I had answers like "the water went down into the stove."  "The water stuck to the pan!"  We then went into water, evaporation, and water vapor.

The next day we read out of our science text about the water cycle and connected it to the previous day's experiment.  I found these questions off of ReadWork.org, an amazing website that has tons of passages for free!

Our next step was practicing the water cycle!  I found this great cut and paste activity on, of course, TPT from Kennedy's Korner. I think if I could go back I would eliminate a few of the steps in the water cycle to simplify it. Click on the pictures below to head to her store and grab a FREE copy.

This is my ALL TIME FAVORITE water cycle video and the kids LOVE it!!!

This was probably my second most favorite thing we did (the evaporation experiment was too perfect).  I will warn you this was one of those, this sucks so bad for the teacher, but is sooo good for the kids kind of thing.  Just keeping it real.  I put the class with a partner and each group had a cold water w/ ice, cold water, warm tap water, and hot water that I heated on the hotplate.  Ok it sounds sooo much more simple now, but multiple cups of water, all varying temperatures, and 19 kids with thermometers....you can see how it was a test of my patience.  

 The kids played experimented with the thermometers and the water.  They could has sat for an hour watching the alcohol go way up and way down.  I also used pretty fancy thermometers so they shot up quick and shot down quick.  It was fun for the kids and fun for me to see them so exciting about learning!

We then discussed the temperatures we observed and added some characteristics of that type of weather.

Click on the picture above or below to grab a FREE copy!

After our tiring fun thermometer experiment we discussed all the weather tools using my weather tools interactive book.  This is for sale for just $1.00 in my TPT store!

To wrap up our study I wanted the kids to review some of the topics they studied in depth from kindergarten.  We read about each season in our science text and completed this chart over the course of a week.  It was the perfect accumulation to our study. 

 I snagged this gem from An Adventure in Literacy.  It is FREE in her TPT store!

Well there you have it!  Weather study - - - check!  If you have any good weather ideas or comments please leave them below!

Saturday Stray: Across the Curriculum and a FREEBIE!

The year is coming to a close and this time of the year is busy, busy, busy!  Here are some stray things that we have done this past week or so.  This post has a little bit of seasonal ideas, grammar, reading, and writing all mixed into one.  

I am hoping for at least one more week of sanity and then we are on the home stretch!  I have AMAZING parents currently sending in supplies to make our last 10 days SUPER fun, so check back to see what we have planned!

Mother's Day this year has seriously crept up on me.  Not only for my school kids, but also for my own family.  I saw this picture on pinterest a while back and because I teach at a religious school, I thought it was perfect!  Although I couldn't afford to buy frames for all the kids, I did cut them to a standard size so they could be framed if the parents wanted to.

 This page is adorable and super easy for first graders to do by themselves but there was no credit on the pdf I have so I don't know who it belongs to.  If you know, please let me know.

Many of our comprehension skills we have taught, reviewed, assessed and so on.  However, context clues was a first this past week.  Unlike the other comprehension skills, I think the creators of our basal series purposely put this skill towards the end so the kids would be more capable of understanding its complexity.

First, I introduced the skill with this file that I made to display whole class.  You can grab it as a FREEBIE by clicking the picture below!

Later in the week we read some Amelia Bedelia books!  I forgot how completely adorable these books are and how much I miss reading TO my kids.  It seems as the year goes on I find less and less opportunities to read to them.  It is sad that our day is sooo jam-packed that there is not much time for read alouds.  I need to work harder at that!  We just read the books and jotted down some thoughts about Amelia and her confusion because she didn't consider her context clues.

The past two weeks we have also introduced subjects and predicates.  I started off with something familiar that my kids LOVE.  Silly sentences is a great resource that I keep at work on words or even work on writing.  After making the sentences we went back and traced the subjects with red. 

The next day we worked on this skill I included the predicates and we sorted them.  I then had the kids write down one real sentence and one silly sentence.  Then we underlined the subject with red and the predicate with blue.  For a little more enrichment we even circled the verbs to point out the starting point to the predicate.

 I used this next activity as my informal assessment.  Once again there is no name to give credit to so if you know who this belongs to, please let me know.  The sheet had all the subjects and predicates mixed up. They first had to color the subjects red and predicates blue.  Then they had to match them to make REAL sentences.

Do you play battleship with your kids?  I stumbled upon this game during my student teaching and have used it for sight words and spelling words!  It is so much fun.  Basically the two kids have the same board.  They each get four markers to put on four words.  Then the kids just take turns guessing where their partners markers are.  If they guess correct they get to take their partners marker, or sink their ship!

Something a bit more personal:  We are sooo thankful spring weather is warming up and we are spending more and more time outside.  One of our favorite things to do is hitting up yard sales!  Here is a pic of little M heading out to check out some sales.

And just cause I couldn't resist.  This is a drawing she made of our family!

If you would like to share some stray things from your week please link up below!

Big Changes and I need your HELP!

It has been a VERY busy week so I am sorry I haven't been blogging very much.  I work at a private school so although there is a sense of job security, our grade levels fluctuate due to the enrollment.  Some years our numbers are up and some years our numbers are down.  I previously taught Kindergarten and am now teaching First.  Next year I will be moving to third grade!  Although I am nervous about the jump, I am excited to get a variety of teaching experience and know it will make me a better teacher in the long run.    This is where I need help from you all!  I have used Daily Five in my classroom every year and I LOVE IT and the KIDS LOVE IT and I want to use it in my coming third grade class.  I would love to find some other teacher bloggers that use Daily Five in the upper elementary so I can get a idea of what it could look like.  It seems the world of teacher bloggers is bountiful in the lower grades, but I am having trouble finding much for third. I have the CAFE book on the way and WORD NERDS so I can get inspiration for how I will run my literacy block too! If you have any good advice, well wishes, or links please leave me a comment!
TOTALLY UNRELATED:
My kids did this adorable holy trinity craft this week and had a blast!  Our religion curriculum can be a bit dry, so I am always looking for ways to increase engagement.

I found this great freebie here at Sunday School Kids.com.

Easter .... a tad tardy {FREEBIES}

Ok I know that Easter was almost two weeks ago, however I teach at a Catholic school and we celebrate the SEASON of Easter.  Therefore, for the next month or so this is still relevant...he he! Before Easter we emphasis Lent and discuss Jesus and what amazing things he did during his time on Earth. We use this Lent pack to help us learn about this special preparation time.

We also have high school students make resurrection egg stories and come down to present them with the children.

We also had fun with some graphing and tally mark practice using jelly beans! These printables came from Simply Kinder and I copied them two to one page.  Click on the picture to grab yourself a FREE copy from her TPT store.

The following activity we had already made 1-100 number cards for a previous activity so this was super easy!  I put a few cards in a bucket on each table pod and the kids simply picked three cards and ordered them from least to greatest.  This is a FREE pack from Sparkles, Smiles, and Successful Students.  Click on either picture to head to her TPT store and grab yourself a copy.

 When the kids came back from Easter/Spring break I wanted to be sure we still discussed the true meaning of Easter with this great read aloud and craftivity.  You can click on the picture below to grab a FREE copy of the words and the egg.  

We also read the Tale of Peter Rabbit and reviewed cause and effect!

We read The Best Easter Eggs Ever!  Which is an ADORABLE book.  We have been talking about adjectives for quite sometime so they decorated an egg and wrote adjectives to describe their egg on the back.

After we read The Tale of Peter Rabbit we read a book to compare and contrast called Muncha, Muncha, Muncha by Candace Fleming.  This book was SO FUN to read and there are two sequel books too!  I forgot to grab a copy of the compare and contrast chart that we made, but it was perfect.  The printable I used came from Kathi at Primary Possibilities.  You can see the pack in her TPT store by clicking below.