Happy New Year! (Hot Chocolate & Symmetry)

Happy New Year!!!

...she says on the18th, about half way through January...

So yes I'm a little late, but you know what they say: better late than never! 

Our first week back was a jumble of melancholy, excitement, reviewing rules & procedures, and...HOT CHOCOLATE! 

Yes, it was once again our hot chocolate week. Each morning we read Snowman Soup:

This week, we also learned about ABC order. Pocket Chart centre and Word Work 1 had kiddies practicing their knowledge of ABC order:

(from my Hot Chocolate mini-unit)

(from Cara's Back to School pack)

At Word Work 2, the kids took all of the letters from "hot chocolate" and mixed them up to see how many words they could make:

(also from my Hot Chocolate mini-unit)

Of course, at the end of the week we enjoyed describing and drinking some delicious hot chocolate with marshmallows. For a few more hot chocolatey activities you can check out the pack in more detail by clicking the pic below:

*2016: THIS PRODUCT HAS SINCE BEEN UPDATED*

(pictures in this post do not reflect the updates)

Lastly, we have been cruising through our 2D Geometry math unit, and we had some fun creating our own symmetrical paintings:

(I was just quickly and "abstractly" throwing paint on the paper when creating my example with the kids, and they ended up totally convinced that I made an outstanding African statue! ...I totally see it, though. What a bunch of smarties!)

To make our symmetrical paintings, all we did was fold a big piece of paper in half to create a crease (we also talked lots about the concept of half throughout this unit), loaded lots of paint on to one half, and then folded and pressed both sides together to transfer the paint to the opposite side. *I say you have to load on lots of paint on since tempra paint dries quite quickly, and otherwise the paint will not transfer as effectively*

All of their symmetrical designs turned out so neat and are now hanging brightly on our hallway walls!

And that's all for now, folks! Stay tuned for our week of consonant blends, 5 Senses Frankie, and an engaging "northern style" descriptive writing activity.

Mmmm...Hot Chocolate!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

 and welcome back to the crazy!! Boy, was it hard getting back into the swing of things after a much-needed holiday, but this week's theme made it just a little easier; Oh, the power of hot chocolate! I figured this week would be a little chaotic for me AND the kids so I chose a laid back theme that could ease us into regular routine...

We started off our literacy block each day by reading this "Snowman Soup" poem I partly stole/partly made up. We read it a couple times first and then sang it to the tune of "Let it Snow."

This poem was also incorporated into my Investigation Station where the kids could put hot chocolaty words in ABC order on the pocket chart and/or they could feel baggies of marshmallows and hot chocolate mix while writing step-by-step instructions of how to make hot chocolate.

My Word Work centre for the week featured two hands-on activities. 

1) putting hot chocolaty word cards in ABC order then recording the words on a worksheet/matching them with a picture 

2) arranging and rearranging the letter in "hot chocolate" to make and record as many words as they could:

(The above activity is from my mini Hot Chocolate Literacy & Math pack)

*2016: THIS PACK HAS BEEN UPDATED!* (the images on this page do not reflect the updates)

Although not hot chocolate-themed, I will throw in the worksheet I made for my writing centre. Rather than spending a lot of class time having students verbally share all of their holiday stories with me, I gave them the opportunity to write about everything in this centre. In the spirit of New Years, I called it My Christmas Break Countdown...3, 2, 1, Happy New Year!!!

(Click either pic above to download your FREE copy!)

Our focus in writing is still descriptive writing so this week I introduced "5 Senses Frankie" (who was inspired by Cara over at The First Grade Parade) to my kiddies:

We talked all about how our 5 senses help to add details and interest to our writing. With my kiddies help, this is what Frankie now looks like all labelled-up and hanging in our room for reference:

Later in the week we also completed a fun little Mr. Potato Head creativity to reinforce the concept of 5 senses and, more importantly, using those 5 senses in our writing:

(I had to take a picture of my example because most of my kiddies still haven't completed poor Mr. Potato Head. I promise to take a picture to share when they are up on the wall next week!)

TIP OF THE DAY! For just about every craftivity I do with my kiddies, I make myself a template out of thin cardboard (from cereal boxes, etc.) and label them. I keep all of my cardboard templates in various labelled folders in a banker's box so I never have to reinvent a template/go on a wild goose chase to find them. Here's what my Mr. Potato Head templates looked like (I hadn't finished cutting out the smaller pieces yet):

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Anyways! To continue our hot chocolate theme into math (last week of our graphing unit!), we got to survey the class and graph the results on the SMARTboard. 

"Do you like marshmallows in your hot chocolate?"

(Click the pic or HERE to download my FREE SMARTboard graphing file. The file contains a total of 6 graphing activities to use throughout a graphing unit)

Then the kiddies transferred the data to their own worksheet for extra practice and answered questions about the graph...all while drinking delicious hot chocolate! Mmmm!

We did a couple other hot chocolate-themed activities throughout the week, all of which can be found in my Hot Chocolate Package on TpT!

In Science, we are learning about Energy. We now know all about Living Things so we began an experiment to see how plants would react if they did not get any sun, since the sun is the most important source of energy. We put one plant in a closet and one by the window. Both will be watered and we will monitor each plant's progress over three weeks in our Plant Books. But first we had to brainstorm what plants need in order to grow and stay healthy...

("Frlizer" = fertilizer! ...I have such smartypants in my class!)

We also did an experiment to figure out how we could made a ball move using just a paper fan. We followed the energy chain and, surprise surprise, as always the energy chain always comes back to our most important source of energy: the sun!

(Energy Chain: ball-->wind-->fan-->muscle-->person-->animals-->plants-->sun)

Well that's it for now! I'm off to stare out the window at the crazy weather we're having/sulk at the thought of having to shovel several feet of blowing snow banks...

Happy Weekend, everyone!!! :)