Science & Writing FREEBIES!

Happy Saturday! 

I'm just popping in to share two fun FREEBIES with ya'll today. 

This first one has been highly requested so let's start off with a Science freebie!

We've been learning all about Daily & Seasonal Changes and had a bit of fun with this activity:

I hand-drew these adorable little creatures based on one of Pixar's animated short films, Day and Night. If you've never seen it, check it out...it's too cute!!

We watched this during our Daily & Seasonal Changes unit in Science. One of the curriculum expectations is to understand that "changes occur in daily and seasonal cycles" by "assess(ing) the impact of daily and seasonal changes on living things." This video sums up our learning PERFECTLY!

So anyways, the kiddies could either choose a scene from the film or create their own scene depicting the differences between day and night and the various activities that can take place during each. Let me tell you, they were *all about* this activity. 

Click the pic below to download your copy!

I use this last freebie during our descriptive writing unit and the kids LOVE it! I've never seen them more engaged in a writing activity:

After reading one Robert Munsch's (LOVE him!!) infamous books, 

we wrote down all the words we could think of to describe poor Thomas' snowsuit. Then, we dragged our own snowsuits into the classroom to get to work! The kiddies got to colour their snowsuit first, and then we wrote our descriptive writing pieces to match. 

(UPDATED 15/03/2016: this activity has since been updated and is now included in my Writing Focus #3: Descriptive Writing pack)

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And if you haven't yet noticed, we are already almost one full MONTH into 2014!! Which means love is in the air, and Valentine's day is right around the corner! If you're looking for some engaging and authentic literacy & literacy center activities for February, have a peek at my newest product:

(To get a better description of what's included, you can click the pic above or right HERE!)

I hope you enjoy the freebies! Have a great weekend, everyone!

Pumpkins, Seasons, & Dry Erase Practice Binders

Get ready for an all-over-the-place blog post!

First up: our adorable pigeon pumpkin!
Have I ever mentioned that I. LOVE. PIGEONS?! Seriously love them. Need to own one.

ANYWAYS, I'm sure you recognize that this particular pigeon is from one of our (my) very favourite children's books series by Mo Willems:

  

HA! Just looking at all the covers makes me laugh :)

P.S. Did you know about "The Pigeon Wants a Puppy!" and "The Pigeon Needs a Bath!"??? ...I'm going to need to get my hands on those ASAP! 

(We're telling the pigeon: "DON'T DRIVE THE BUS!" hehe)

Next up: a new science unit all about Daily and Seasonal Changes.

To kick off our new unit, we split into 4 groups--one group for each of the 4 seasons. The kids worked together to brainstorm every single little thing they could think of associated with that season. I am always blown away by all the things they come up with...more than I ever would have thought of! 

(we also found ourselves referencing books from our classroom library to help fuel our thinking...what a great opportunity to introduce basic research skills! The kids went nuts when they discovered that they were doing research: I overheard one little guy say, "Wait guys, we need to do some more research!" haha too stinkin' cute.)

After creating our brainstorms, we presented them to the class. Next week, we will take ideas from all 4 brainstorms and compile them into one big anchor chart.

In writing, we began our making connections focus with one of my favourite fall books, Spookley the Square Pumpkin:

We first wrote a diagnostic piece (I simply read the story and asked the kids what it might have reminded them of--no prompts, no sharing, cold-turkey writing!). 

(click the pic on the right to download your FREE copy!)

The next day we discussed our connections, made a making connections success criteria checklist, I modelled a level 4 connection, and we wrote our same {or new} connections once again.

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Last but not least, I'm dying to share our new dry erase binders with you!!!

I spent all last week working on it and launched it in my classroom with a few of my kiddies this week. 

My favourite thing about it?

Read.  Write.  Wipe.

I find erasing dry erase markers from page protectors is way cleaner than on a whiteboard!

*2016: THIS PRODUCT HAS SINCE BEEN UPDATED*

(the photos featured in this post do not reflect the updates)

I originally began creating these worksheets as alternative to center activities for a couple of my emergent level learners. But the unexpected surprise was that all of my kids fell in love with the activities! 

Seriously. What is the deal with first graders and dry erase markers?! 

I ended up printing out 3 extra copies of each worksheet and making a total of 5 binders so that there are 3 "community" binders for the whole class to use. I will make them available as a Fast-Finishers activity. SUPER for a little extra practice!

Here's a close up of what I included in my binders:

And the BEST thing about this is...NO LAMINATING OR CUTTING! woohoo! (If you're a teacher, I know you share my excitement!) All you do is print each page and place the pages you want to include in your binder in basic plastic page protectors. Stick everything in a binder, grab a whiteboard marker, and you're ready to go!

If you are interested in using this binder in your classroom or even at home with your own little learner, click the pic:

Have a fabulous weekend :)

November 11th, etc.!

TGIF!!! Actually, TGIMMF to be exact (Midnight Madness!). Which means after this post I will be heading out with my lovely sister to spend way too much money downtown. Anywho, here's a quick little update on some of the things my firsties have been up to this week (I apologize in advance for the mini post: I kind of slacked off in my picture-taking this week. I promise to get back on track next week!)

Of course we had Remembrance Day not too long ago so my kiddies did a little activity to honour the day:

We talked about Remembrance Day, read some stories, and I tried to help them understand what it means to THEM. November 11th is a tough day for young children to understand so I connected it with our "special" O Canada song that we sing only on Fridays, "God Bless You Canada" (you can listen to the song on YouTube HERE). Boy, oh, boy do my kiddies LOVE this song. They sing SO loud whenever I play it. 

Tangent: At the end of the song on Friday last week, one of my little darlings got down on both knees, arms spread wide, eyes closed, and head to the sky (it's a very dramatic ending), and I swear it took all of my might not to burst out in hysterics. BEYOND adorable, I'm laughing just thinking about it.

ANYWAYS, I had my kiddies write about why they were proud to live in Canada, and then we did a little poppy craftivity with crunched up tissue paper:

"I'm proud to be in Canada because the flag stands for freedom..." *precious*

Next up we did yet another activity to practice our understanding of Daily & Seasonal Changes. The kiddos had to  draw a picture of each season and include a picture of what they would wear. Then they had to put the seasons in the correct order and we made a little film strip and TV box to bring it all together. They turned out super cute:

Last but not least, I have one of our centre activities to share: During our "investigation station" (often my oral language centre), I had my firsties use old book orders to cut out and sort book covers into the category of fiction or non-fiction. They had to talk about each book and help each other judge which category the book fell into based on what we have talked about in the past. If they finished early, I gave them the added challenge of looking through our classroom library and writing the titles of books that could be sorted into either category:

That's all for now! Have a fantabulous weekend everyone :)

Let's be friends!

Get teaching tips, ideas, and FREEBIES every now and then.

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