Monday, October 14, 2013

Nocturnal Animal Fun!

For the past 2 weeks we did a study of nocturnal animals! Here are some of our pics:


 When the kids got to school on Monday this was the door they approached. Not only did they have a simple, but fun door, but the lights were out and the kids were only allowed to use flashlights to learn!

We started the unit out with a cute and quick, "Do you think bats are cute or creepy" graph. As you can see, my class said CREEPY!
After reading aloud a book about bats for a mini lesson, the kids were able to add index cards to our bat tree map during their independent reading workshop time. While the kids were reading and adding to the chart, I was pulling guided reading groups.
Throughout the week, we kept "bat words" on this chart. These were interesting bat vocabulary that we thought we needed to know. Examples are: echolocation, colony, mammal...
We created these cute bats and hung them around our graph. Each wing has a bat fact in a complete sentence.
We incorporated fiction and nonfiction into this unit as well by reading the book, "Stellaluna". The kids got in pairs and created a venn diagram comparing birds and bats. Then they created these cute bat puppets with beginning, middle and end cards on them.
In the second week of nocturnal animals, we shifted gears to owls! It was soooooo much fun! We created an owl tree map, an owl shaped vocabulary book (forgot to take picture), used ipads to research owls, made owl pic collages and owl nonfiction books. We had so much owl fun I completely forgot to take very many pictures! Boo!
This is a predator/prey word sort we worked on.
On Friday we invited parents into our room to help us dissect owl pellets. It was amazing!

Friday, October 4, 2013

October Currently and Mad Science Fun!

Loving: My favorite palomino Viv is back and ready to ride! It's been a long 5 months of rest, but I'm so happy she is sound!

Thinking: I have been so busy with life and work that I have ignored my blog... boo!
Wanting: My really fun team and I have plans for a prank... if you are at my school watch out!
Needing: a new computer! I love my macbook, but it might be time for a newer version.
Trick or Treat: Treat! Grab a Bats vs Owls Venn diagram here!
Don't forget to link up with Farley to check out the others!


Mad Science Fun!
One of my favorite themes in the school year is mad science!  It's a great way to teach the states of matter in a fun way. 


We will learn the 3 states of matter with a mad science flair! The kiddos will take part in many different science experiments to study the different matter. We will make oobleck, ice cream and explode a coke! This is a fan favorite from my kids every year!