Dinosaurs & Lady Liberty

This week our reading series story was

So we talked a little bit about dinosaurs and what it would be like if they came back. The book gives an idealized version with dinosaurs doing all kinds of fun things to help people. Here's my students thoughts, we tried to make our pictures look like the pictures in the books in which only the dinosaurs were in color.

And here are just a few of the dinosaur centers from my Dinosaur Roar! pack:

sorting nouns, verbs, adjectives

sounding out words

sound substitutions

alphabetical order

word family sort

putting together sight words

spin, graph and count

counting by 2s

time to the hour

fairshare

In Social Studies this week we learned all about the Statue of Liberty. We used adorable ideas from Deanna Jump's America unit. We guessed whether we would be longer, shorter or equal to the statues foot, then graphed our data. After comparing our line to her foot we recorded our findings. We also did a directed drawing and wrote about her in our American symbols book.

Then we did the penny experiment to find out why the statue originally made out of brown copper is now green. (It has to do with the salt water in New York Harbor)

We also finished up our Insects this week. Our Butterflies hatched and after observing them all week we let them go on Friday.

Here's the last page in our insect fact books, about grasshoppers, and our compound eye experiment:

As a wrap up/assessment, we built bugs out of candy. The kids had free reign to make them however they wanted with the stipulation that all parts must be represented - head, thorax, abdomen, 6 legs, 2 antennae, and wings if they want. They did pretty good!

And last but not least, we went to see Chimpanzee on Friday!! For those living under a rock, Chimpanzee is this years DisneyNature Earth Day movie. We go every year! It's my favorite field trip because we get to sit in the air conditioned theater and relax!! The kids loved the film, though I find it a little creepy how human-like the chimps are.

this was before it started, I have no idea why my little sweetie is covering his eyes!

28 Days till Summer!! I am LOVING my new sign from Hadar over at Miss Kindergarten!!

She made it in blue, green and yellow for me to match the colors in my classroom!!

Next week we will be learning all about the day and night sky in Science so it will be time to break out my Reach for the Stars Space Centers!

Books we Read:

Going Buggy Part 2

First of all, thank you to all of you who left sweet comments on my last post. I love when God provides us with exactly what we need.
Second of all, I love, love, love Saturday morning snuggles. How precious is my pooch?

Washes away the stress of a long week!

We continued insects this week learning about the butterfly life cycle, bees & ants.

We filled in our butterfly charts as we went throughout the week, and we've been keeping a close eye on our caterpillars which have spun their cocoons!

As I mentioned last week I bought Kacey's Very Hungry Caterpillar unit and as I suspected my kids loved it! I'll just post a few pics because I'm sure she'll be doing a post about it :)

On Friday we made butterflies with coffee filters. The kids drew on their designs and then we misted them with water. They NEVER get to use markers so they were super excited! Once they were dry we folded them up and used pipe cleaners for the bodies/antennae.

We also made our very Hungry Caterpillar handprints.

Here is our Bee anchor chart:

Bee labeling:

From Deanna's Unit

And our cute bees we made to hang in the hall:

Our Ant anchor chart:

Comparing the two:

From Deanna's Unit

Our Fiction study coming along....

From Deanna

Insect Book Progress:

"Caterpillars trun in too a coccons then they truns into a butterfly."

"When you git clos to a bee he will sting you it will lose his stinger and he will die."

Here are some more of the centers from my Going Buggy! pack:

sounding out words

using sight words in sentences

making real and nonsense words

ending sounds

ending blends

word families

difference between two groups

ordering numbers least to greatest

We ended the week with a special showing of "A Bug's Life" I just love me some Pixar, they are the cutest! It was adorable to hear the kids recognizing and commenting on the different bugs they have learned about.

Next week we'll be continuing insects, we still have dragonflies, grasshoppers, walkingsticks, mosquitos, and praying mantises to hit! We'll also be headed to the movies to see DisneyNature's "Chimpanzee." The kids (and teachers) are so excited for this field trip!

Our Reading series story next week is "If the Dinosaurs Came Back" So we'll be doing dinosaur centers during center time! This is one of my favorite packs I've made. Click the picture to check it out!

We're also in the middle of our last Social Studies chapter which is all about America and her symbols. Can you guess what next week's focus is?? (Thank you Deanna Jump for this crazy adorable idea!)

Books We Read: