How Much CAN You Fit in 5 Days???

Good question.

So much, I thought I'd link up with Doodle Bug's 5 for Friday (even though it's Sunday!)



It was a busy week.  Between Famous American projects, Dr. Seuss activities, finishing our Polar/Animal Unit, and Place Value - yeah, we crammed a lot in! ;)

And now they're calling for some sort of wintry storm this week?  Really?  *Sigh*  What happened to the groundhog promising us an early Spring?  Our next teacher workday is March 18, and I am holding desperately to it!  That, and I'm ready for SPRING!  My two kids and myself are looking forward to Busch Gardens opening on March 16 - oh yeah,we are there! ;)  Even Dave Ramsey couldn't get me to let go of our season passes!!!

Hah hah.  I digress.  Back to part you're interested in, right?

It was the annual Famous Americans project.  LOVE this project!  It always turns out so cute!  My kiddos were so proud of their projects! We had 9 (yeah, 9!) Jackie Robinsons, 4 Helen Kellers, 1 George Washington, and 1 Abraham Lincoln.  Those were the famous Americans we studied back in December.  The students were allowed to choose anyone, so add to that Albert Einstein, Billie Holiday, Harriet Tubman, Garrett Morgan (inventor of the traffic sign), and Thomas Edison.  Didn't they turn out cute?

Had to put all the Jackie Robinsons together, like in their own club - neat how they all turned out different!  Have to show you this stylin' Helen Keller one of my kiddos did.  A sequin belt - I love it!

We also celebrated Dr. Seuss all week long with activities.  I incorporated literacy centers I had downloaded/purchased last year (that are now gone, thanks to the copyright battle there!) in my reading groups, but used new ones for writing/read aloud time.  All these are linked on my Dr. Seuss Pinterest page.  Aren't my kids cute who dressed up for the day?

We created a wocket and wrote a sentence about it.

Created a hat from a reading glyph I got years ago from Mailbox.

Drew ourselves as a "Who" and wrote about what we'd say to Horton.  Most of my students said "thanks" and told Horton about living in Whoville.  One of my kiddos, though, asked Horton to send him a 4-Wheeler!  Not quite sure how it would fit on the speck!

Wrote green eggs and ham poetry.

Then, we finished our Polar/Animal Unit by doing a "mind dump" and creating graffiti walls.  I love this idea and like so many others, I tend to forget them until I have an "aha!" moment (since I like to keep things fresh with the kids.....SCOOT is great, 4 Corners is great, but sometimes - especially when they've been wiggly like this week - new ideas are great!).  I think they could have spent the rest of the day on it!

On Thursday, we had fun building place value with marshmallows and ringed cereal from Babbling Abby's freebie.  

On Friday, we read The True Story of the Three Little Pigs and created place value houses.  This was a fantastic idea I got from The Lemonade Stand via Pinterest.   Love the castle this one created!

Sooo...this weekend, I've been getting ready for our Plant Unit - life cycles, erosion, plant parts, and uses.  That covers about 2 1/2 standards.  I've had this super cute detective clipart from mycutegraphics.com and I finally used it!  Click on the picture to check it out - it's a review game about plants and erosion (for you VA teachers, it covers 2.4 plant life cycles, 2.8 plant resources, 2.7 erosion) that can be played in any number of ways - you can make it a SCOOT game, a scavenger hunt, etc.