singing styles

I wrote this post last summer. We sang this song everytime a new sight word was introduced. My kiddos loved it. I followed it up with Heidi Songs sing and spell the sight words. As the school year progressed I decided to make a cube with six different singing styles. My helper rolled the cube and told us what singing voice to use then the helper led us in the song using the special pointer.

Grab your own copy here

Grab a copy of the song here

More songs for calendar time here

In other news my blog was nominated!!

welcome to summer!

I am on summer vacation over here. The school year went by so fast and yet so slow. August feels like forever ago. I miss seeing my sweet kindergarten babies. I loved being their second mommy during the day. I'm so proud of all they accomplished.

Heck writing biographies about Olympic athletes! Here is the published book.

Here is another writing activity that we did with our Olympic unit. They brainstormed what it would be like to be an Olympic athlete.

We compared the summer games to the winter games

We had lots of books to help us with this activity.

We made Olympic torches out of toilet paper rolls.

We made class shirts with their names on the back.

You can find all the activities above in my Olympic Games unit. I'll be updating the unit soon to include the torch craft.

ocean

Here is a fun ocean song to the tune of take me out to the ball game. I also included a student copy for poetry journals. Click below to download.

We sequenced and retold the story there was an old lady who swallowed a shell using the retelling pieces.

We compared great white sharks to orca whales from Deanna Jump's ocean unit.The sea horses are also from her unit. I added the sentence fact.

summer olympics

This is the last weekend before school lets out. Only three day left!

We are working on my Olympic unit until school is out.

We made a bubble map of adjectives that describe Olympic athletes. Then we used the bubble map to make Olympian list poems.

Olympian list poems

We made a class book about Olympic athletes using the bubble map of Olympian adjectives. We've enjoyed reading this book.

I am so proud of the little artists my students have become!

"Olympic athletes are flexible."

"Olympic athletes are balanced."

 Then we started talking about biographies. We've been reading lots of biographies about famous Olympic athletes. We read a biography on Michael Phelps and Mia Hamm.

We started writing our own biographies about Michael Phelps.

We made swimmers, soccer players, and gymnasts.

We've been reading a ton on all the different Olympic sports.

Olympic math booklet

Building sentences in the pocket chart

We wrote biographies about Mia Hamm and made a soccer player.

We put Olympic words in ABC order

Practicing our sight words

Check out my whole Olympic unit on Teachers Pay Teachers here.

zoo mini unit

I just posted my zoo mini unit on TPT. It includes the craft below, word wall cards, and a few extras. To see more click here.

 

summer olympics unit and insects

I am so excited about this unit. I love watching the Olympics and I'm going to love teaching my kiddos about it. Come back to see more of this unit in my classroom.

Here is a little preview of some of the things included in this unit. Check it out here to see what all is included.

Now here is the rest of our insect study.

We graphed do you think bugs are creepy or cool? This adorable graph idea came from Julie Lee.

We made fireflies and charted our new learning on a circle map.

We made bug glyphs and wrote about what bugs us. These two activities cam from Deanna Jump's insect unit.

We wrote about the butterfly life cycle using interactive writing. This idea came from Deanna Jump.

Then I had them illustrate the butterfly life cycle in their science journals.

I loved this idea from chalk talk. I was so impressed with the big words my class was able to predict all before reading the book. We predicted what words we would find in the book, Waiting For Wings.

While reading the book we checked off each word that was read. Then we filled in the blanks using words we predicted.

We drew and painted butterflies using directed drawing then they measured their butterfly wingspan using inch cubes. This idea came from Julie Lee.

We illustrated the word metamorphosis in our science journals.

We learned that insects have compound eyes. Here is our anchor chart inspired from Deanna Jump.

They illustrated another big word in their science journal.

 We read The Very Hungry Caterpillar and retold the story with our retelling pieces.

And another goodie from Julie Lee. We learned how strong ants are. It would be like us holding a car!