Earth Day Activities

This week the children are celebrating Earth Week! We have had many fun lessons around this theme. Here's a peek at what we've been up to!

The class viewed a PowerPoint presentation about the history of Earth Day. Ask your child to tell you about it! Do you know who Senator Gaylord Nelson is? We do!

We sang a catchy song about goin' green and keeping the Earth clean too! You can download these songs for your child on iTunes or Amazon. They are from Have Fun Teaching. I try to work music into our daily routine and into every lesson when possible!

We discussed the meaning of the words reduce, reuse and recycle! The children discussed ways that they can help the Earth. Tomorrow we work on an Earth Day sort of things that help and hurt the Earth.

Monday, the entire school participated in a school grounds clean-up challenge! Our class hit the garbage jackpot near the baseball diamond and fence. We worked on calculator skills as we totaled up how many pieces of garbage the class collected as a group. We counted over 700! 

We worked on this cute rebus story writing activity where pictures and words are used to tell a story. 

The kids enjoyed making this colorful project to display on the bulletin board!

  These sparkly raindrops and an adorable raincoat kid decorate our ceiling for our April Showers theme. Keeping the Earth's water clean and conserving natural resources is something we discussed as well.

We are also reading informational texts from Scholastic News Magazines that focus on Earth Week topics. During these reading lessons, we are reviewing nonfiction text features like bold print, captions and headings.

Our read alouds are from author and illustrator Schim Schimmel. This is one of my favorite books!

We are wrapping up the week with a fun Friday movie that ties in beautifully with our theme~ The Lorax!

 This week, the children have been challenged to think about ways to reduce, reuse and recycle both at home and at school. Let's all do our part to help make every day Earth Day!

Thank You CVEF!

I am writing to share some wonderful and exciting news with the Ojibwa Community! Recently, I wrote a grant proposal for some fluency materials to help Ojibwa students to become better readers. I was very surprised to have been selected to receive the funding from the Chippewa Valley Educational Foundation! 

Today I received all of the fluency items that I had requested! Thanks to their generosity, I was able to obtain over 800 dollars worth of supplemental materials for the Ojibwa shared library area! Look at what arrived today! The students got a sneak peek at them today and are so excited to try them out!

These are digital microphones so the students can record their own readings. There are five microphones in the set and a recharging hub.

The students will love practicing their fluency with these boxes of laminated card scripts for reader's theater! It's like putting on a mini-play. There are four genre sets~mystery, historical fiction, fantasy and adventure!

Reading rate is important when working toward fluency. There is a teacher timer and a set of 6 student timers. 

With this recorder, the teacher can tape student readings while they are at a center, in book clubs or at a fluency station and play it back later. Recordings may be saved and played for students so they can hear themselves read, be listened to by the teacher for assessment or be emailed to parents.

This box contains laminated cards with practice reading passages for both fiction and nonfiction! They are leveled for readers of various abilities.

 The children were happy to help out with this photo shoot! Here they are modeling our Fun with Fluency (the title of my grant proposal) items.

Grants like this one are awarded every year thanks to the generosity of the CVEF! Support the CVEF by donating or attending their biggest fundraiser, the Taste-fest! Click on the image below for more information!

Reading Month Fun

It's hard to believe that March is already here! This year is just flying by because we've been having so much fun! March 1st was our Reading Month Kick-off. We have many special activities planned for the children. Here are a few highlights from last week:

We made an adorable leprechaun project and wrote about what we would do if we found a pot of gold.

We also worked on our Very Hungry Caterpillar bulletin board display for Reading Month. Each child created one circle for the body of the caterpillar and made a mini-book about their favorite book.

 Our first guest reader was The Cat in the Hat (Ms. Batko, our Assistant Principal).

Snuggle up and read day was a big hit with the class! They love reading by flashlight and sharing books with their friends.

It's my tradition during reading month to mix up some Oobleck and to read Dr. Seuss' story, Bartholemew and the Oobleck. Oobleck is neat because it acts like both a solid and a liquid. Ms. Emily brought a bag of it around for the students to investigate. Ms. Emily was a student in my first grade class at Cheyenne. Now she is having fun with projects and concoctions again just like old times:) Lucky Emily got to dig in and mix the Oobleck!

  We will keep the Oobleck in the baggie and play with it during choice time.

There's lots more fun to be had this month so check back soon for more pictures of our classroom activities!