Plant Overload!

We are wrapping up our unit on plants this week and have had so much fun carrying our theme throughout all subject areas!

We wrote plant part cinquain poems to complete our "Poemas Es'plant'aculares" bulletin board for spring! 

I printed out several strips of paper each relaying one of the five main parts of a plant and placed them in a bin. Each student had to close his/her eyes and select one for their poem topic so we had a variety of all!

Here is one of their creations:

I got the cinquain writing paper from Cara Carroll here.

We also reviewed long e patterns this week through completing a hunt for "seed" words and "leaf" words. (I noticed after snapping this photo that my little one here left "seed" out of the dictation after the word "peach" which was a key link to the sort below!)

After writing the words it also led to a great discussion about how some do not follow the rules!

Grab yourself a copy of this activity with/without the dictation portion here.

We also continued our practice with finding area by creating and measuring plants! The students had to find the area of their flower, stem, and leaves!

Grab a copy of the measurement labeling sheet in English or Spanish here.

We continued by reading about those crazy "Meat Eating Plants" and then organized strips of sentences in order in groups to complete an organized retell/paragraph of this non-fiction text.

And...we also spent the week doing some fun exploration activities such as labeling the parts of flower...

Each group added the names to strips of paper and used push pins (post a safety discussion ;)) to place them where they belonged!

Finally we investigated how water moves through a stem. Day 1 we made our predictions as to what would occur, and Day 2 we followed up!

This stem investigation activity page among others we completed throughout our plant unit this month that are not pictured here are included in my "A Little Dirt Never Hurt" pack pictured below if you are looking for more activities!

It has been quite the "Plant"tastic past few weeks!

On a final note, my plant pack above, as well as all other items in my TpT store will be on sale tomorrow and Wednesday in honor of Teacher Appreciation week. If you have been waiting to purchase something- now is the time to do it folks ;)! Receive 28% total when you enter code: TAD13! 

Click on the link below or on my plant pack above to take you to my store! I'm looking forward to doing some serious shopping tomorrow too!

Arrays, Leaves, and a Special Card!

This popped up in my mailbox yesterday!

A thank you card from our dear friends in West Liberty, KY! My kids were serious jumpin' in their jeans. They were so excited to see that the books they had donated had found their new home and that we have some newfound friends! Such a wonderful surprise, and I am so happy we could be a part of this opportunity to extend a hand!

In other news, we are in review mode in math! And I am trying to make this reviewing thing as exciting as possible! I downloaded this great multiplication array activity from Amy Lemons awhile back, and thought this was just the perfect time to use it!

So while my students were at lunch, I taped these fun little arrays in different places all around our room.

Now I am going to preface this by saying don't judge my awful white out job- but it was a quick fix and I wanted the activity in Spanish for my kiddos. But here is the activity sheet the kiddos were presented with to record their responses. They had to share how many rows of squares there are, and then write the number model and solve to match. (Amy's original looks way better, I promise!)

After explaining the activity- they were off. Seriously- for a lovely sunny day right after lunch- they have never been so engaged! Such a hit!

I will say it took awhile since the cards go from A-R and they had to hunt for them- but it was totally worth it, and it was great repeated practice with arrays. To snag a copy of "I Spy Arrays" for yourself, click here. And thank Amy Lemons for the great idea!

During the afternoon we also did a little leaf investigation as we continue through our plant unit. I asked all of my students to bring a leaf from home. To start our lesson they did an "open" leaf sort. Classifying them as they saw fit. Then we took some time to learn about the two types of leaves "simple"(hoja sencilla) and "compound" (hoja compuesta). After this, the students reclassified their leaves into these two groups. 

Finally, they each had to select a leaf from each group to complete a rubbing as a resource for them to remember the two types of leaves! Here are some examples of our rubbings:

(This one decided to use the most humongous leaf on the planet on her little paper :))

Happy Hump Day!

"-ing" sort/Roots Investigation!

This week we are studying the present participle in English. We started our week with this anchor chart intro:

Then today, my students used our chart to help them complete a "Present Participle Sort".

Snag a copy of the sort by clicking on either of the images below!

This afternoon we continued on our journey through our plant unit and had a good ole' fashion "Root Tasting Party" as I like to call it!

Ran out at lunch today and grabbed some roots at the super market. Carrots, potatoes, onions, and turnips...yum yum!

Chopped some up and placed them in baggies ready to go for tasting (this was post activity so there were only a few left!)

Each of the kids completed a copy of this activity sheet while we explored! We went one by one- first naming the root, then the students drew a picture of it as I passed out a piece of it to each of them. Then we smelled it, touched it, and tasted it together! The students recorded their observations using their 5 senses. Some of their responses crack me up. They made some great observations that all of the roots were wet and slippery as well!

I love this. A potato- smells like tacos, feels wet, and has a "teeeeeeerrrrible" flavor. haha.

Carrots- smell like a leaf, feel wet, have a flavor like ugly (I think he meant dirty) water! (This was one of my native English speaking kiddos.)

As you can see we only completed 3. I promised them we could try the turnip (nabo) for snack tomorrow!

I added this activity page and investigation explanation to my "A Little Dirt Never Hurt" unit. If you have already purchased it- head over and re-download the revised edition with this latest addition! If not, and you would like to check it out, click on the cover image below. It is on sale for only $2.40 this week!

Last thing...then I'm done I promise. Just wanted to remind you about about my "Super" Teacher Appreciation Sale as well as those of many other teachers taking place this week! Don't miss out!

"R" Controlled Vowel Flowers and Stems

I actually got this idea from another fabulous blogger - Lita Lita over at Learning in Spain.  She used it with her kiddos to practice verb endings in Spanish- which I am most def. going to have to do in the future as well! But since we were focusing on "R" controlled vowels with my intervention group this week- I just could not wait to try it out! I figured it would work equally as well for this activity- and it was a hit! Now the kids have a spring timey resource to use for helping to remember those tricky "r" patterns!

The kids wrote all of the patterns on the leaves and words on the petals in pencil first. Then they went back and traced each pattern with a different color marker and traced the words that contained that pattern with the corresponding color!

As if this wasn't enough plant fun for one day...we also started our investigations of stems today!

Enter celery, food coloring, and water.

I am sure some of you are already familiar with this one- and if not it is seriously such an easy way to show kids how water travels through the stem to other parts of the plant. Not to mention, my kids are always shocked when they find out that celery is actually a stem- and we eat it!

Here is the class chart we created to go along with the investigation. Today (as the real scientists do) we made predictions/hypotheses as to what we thought would happen to the celery after it had been in the red water for a few days. Each student wrote their prediction on a post-it. Now we just have to wait and see so that we can fill out the "what happened" side....the suspense is killing them!

Keep linkin up your great Cinco de Mayo ideas! It'll be here before ya know it!

Plants and the NBA!

Today we explored the inside of a seed! Each student received a lima bean that had been soaked in water to open up and examine! We created this super simple class anchor chart to share what we saw.

The kids were so surprised that a seed has many of the same characteristics and needs many of the same things as we do!

Third trimester is also our big trimester for non-fiction retells in our district. They can get to be a little monotonous at times with all of the practice so I always try my best to spice it up for them and select topics of interest! My boys are absolutely OBSESSED with basketball. One of them bought me this book that I shared with you a week or two ago at the book fair that shares short biographies on a variety of "NBA heroes".

I read about one of the players for my students and modeled an example of how to retell the section. The black words are the key words the students should use in their retells. The orange are the words I used related to my particular text.

After this, I put my students in groups of three and gave each group a photocopy of a photo of their player and the information in the text about them. The groups had to work together to read the text, then using my example as a guide, write their own retell of the section!

And here is our finished product to add to our retelling wall...

Seriously...my boys peed their pants they were so excited about this!

A little anchor chart action...

Just a few of our latest anchor charts to share with you guys today! Some are in English, some Spanish- but they could work for either or-- just a little translatin ;)!

On Friday, we went over the parts of a plant and created this quick anchor chart:

Then my students created these cute little flip books describing the purpose of each part:

Today, we discussed what a plant needs to survive and created this anchor chart:

You can grab the flip book as well as activity pages to go along with these anchor charts in English and Spanish as part of my "A Little Dirt Never Hurt" unit. Click on the image if you are feelin the urge to check it out!

To continue on our anchor chart journal...we finished up our review of long vowels today and created this anchor chart as a source of reference for our "sound" wall!

(Don't judge the "Hola!"- I realized I wrote it in Spanish after I snapped the photo. A little language confusion on my part! - Gotta change that tomorrow ;)- It's hard to keep it straight sometimes!)

Finally- I just recently ordered these genre posters from "Really Good Stuff" -which I love! They are super colorful- and the best part is they come in English...and are you ready for this....SPANISH too!

Aren't they pretty. There is the big yellow one that shares all of the genre names. Then there are little definition posters that go along with it, and a space to select one of the definition posters to put in the middle of the main one. It's great because you can place your focus genre there! I just love them because they are so colorful. Check out how they spice up our library area "reading" wall...

Are you lovin' that pop of color as much as I am?!

Money, money, money!

Our new math unit is all about equivalent coin combinations and making change- kind of a tricky one for little minds! We created these cute little resource books today that I got from Chrissy over @ Buzzing with Ms. B as an intro to our unit. They are a perfect review of coin combinations that make a dollar, as well as a great resource for the kiddos to refer to throughout the unit!

Here is a pic of the completed book.

Here is an example of what my students did on each page. 

They wrote the name of the coin, its value, and the fraction of a dollar that it represents.

If you would like a copy, click here to visit Ms. B's TpT store. It's free! (She even has a cute title to go with it in English- I just had my kids go ahead and write one!)

We embarked on our new science unit this afternoon- Plants (always a great one!). We shared our schema and questions about plants in this class KWL (or SQA as we call it in Spanish!)

I think I shared this before- but in case ya missed it- here is a copy of this KWL for your students. It's in English and Spanish! Happy growing! (I have never been great at the whole keeping plants alive thing- fingers crossed this year will be a success!)