Dinosaurs, Pet Rocks and Caterpillars - Oh My!

Ok - you all know we are in the BUSIEST time of the year - right?!?!?!?  We have a ton of different things going on in our classroom right now.  Here are just a few:

Dinosaur Excavations:

We read "Mister Bones - Dinosaur Hunter" in our Reading series this week.

This was such an awesome idea from one of my coworkers to go along with this story.  My firsties absolutely LOVED this activity.  They worked so hard and took their time trying to excavate the bones (chocolate chips) from the rock and dirt (cookie).

Pet Rocks:

Since we were talking about dinosaurs, excavating and dirt, we decided to adopt a pet rock!

Oh my goodness!  It was so fun to watch them paint their rocks.  They could not wait to take them home!  The Pet Rock Adoption idea came from First Class Teacher Resources.

Caterpillars:

Our caterpillars finally came in!  We cannot wait to watch them change and turn into butterflies!

We will be learning all about butterflies next week and "journaling" all the changes we see!

Centers this Week - So Much Fun!

We did this cute take on "squiggle writing" last week.  (I can't remember where I saw this idea so I can credit them.)  Aren't these adorable!?!?!?!?  My student teacher glued 2 sets of googly eyes on a white sheet of paper.  We handed them out to my firsties and they had to make 2 characters out of them.  Next they had to draw a setting behind them.  Then they had to write a story about them with a beginning, middle and end.  Their stories were great!

Here's a look at our centers this week:

Guided Reading:

We are working on ai/ay this week and here we are using the "Read It! Draw It!" page from my unit.

    

Pocket Chart Sort:

These firsties are sorting ai and ay cards from my unit above.

 Math Center:

We are working on Making 10s this week.  My firsties have to draw a number card and put that many chips on their tens frame.  Then they have to count to see what the missing addend would be.  Then they have to write the addition sentence on the white board.

The number cards are from Jeannine from Creative Lessons Cafe.

This math center is using brace maps to figure out how many different shapes fit in to each other.

This little freebie was from Reagan Tunstall from Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits.

We were also finishing up some presidents day lesson and activities that we missed on our snow days.

 Guided Reading:

 These passages are from Katie Knight.  They are from her 13 American Heroes Unit.  I absolutely LOVE this unit.  We use pages from it all the time!

Writing Center:

I always take all the books and activities we learn in one week and put them in a center for the week.  This gives them the opportunity to research and discover facts on their own.  Then they have to write about some things they learned and we turn them into a class book.

 Reading Center:

Our story last week was a reader's theater play.  They are using little puppets of the characters to read the story with each other.

We have also been doing lots of different activities for Read Across America Day/Week.  More pics and ideas to come.  

I hope you guys are staying warm!  We just got a call for another snow/ice day tomorrow - UGH!  This is really messing up our fun activities!