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Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Rainbow Colored Alphabet Pasta for Word Work

So I wanted to share this simple and cute word work activity for your kiddos. 


So I went to the store to buy pasta for a craft we were doing in science, and I came across this alphabet pasta. When I saw it my brain just clicked with an idea. I thought these would be great for word work activities with a magnifying glass.

 So I took the pasta and dyed them different colors.
 You add the pasta in a different bowl and add a cap full of alcohol and 3-4 drops of food coloring. Then stir gently to coat all the pasta with the coloring solution. Once it is coated then spread out on a napkin to dry.

This is the result of coloring your pasta.



So once they dried I mixed all the colors for an array of rainbow colored pasta. :D Yay!!! So I filled small containers with pasta. I got these from McDonalds, they are used for ketchup.  I gave each student their own container, an index car, and a magnify glass.

I had them sit there and make as many words as they could. These kids were just exstatic. They helped me color the pasta, so this made them even more excited.

So this is a view through the magnifying glass. 

Well, there you have it! I hope you try this idea in your class, I'm sure your kids will absolutely love it. 
You could even use this as a work station or in your science lessons involving a hand lens. They could even glue them to their index card. The sky is the limit! 

Enjoy!!!

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Earth Day Hand Print Craftivity

Hey guys, I just wanted to do a quick post and share this Earth Day Craftivity. I created this quick little craft for my kiddos to do for Earth Day. They loved it! 


I just had them color and cut out their Earth template, then they put their hand print in green ink in the center.
 https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6t8X90FPn_MRVN6YUliOVFLcGM/view?usp=sharing
While that dried they worked on writing their Earth Day Promise. Then, we glued everything to either blue or green construction paper.
 This is just a quick little craft to display on your bulletin boards, and makes a great memory for parents!

Grab your free copy today, just click the pic above or click here.


Monday, April 13, 2015

All Things Dr. Seuss!!

*UPDATE: I had to remove my Dr. Seuss Author Study from TPT. So I am giving it away as a free download. 
There were some errors on my previous document, so I uploaded a revised document. Please re download if you haven't done so already.


Wow, it has been a while since my last post! I have been so busy with work and my familia! It was hard to bounce back with all the rain and cold weather! I just find myself wanting to come home, get in my pj's, and just lounge. 

Although I 've been in "lazy mode" at home, I've been working hard and kicking butt at school! I have semi good news. It turns out that I was runner up for  Teacher of the Year! Well, congrats to Ms.  Cole! As for me, maybe next year. ;D

So, I have been working on some goodies while I was away. 

So for Dr. Seuss's B-day, my school went all out and had a Dr. Seuss literacy night/ birthday celebration. 

This is our front office. Students from the National Art Society came from our high school to decorate the front office windows! It came out pretty awesome!

To keep up with the occasion, I created a Dr. Seuss Author Study Lap Book and Interactive Activities! 
Here is the title page of our lapbook! I used a file folder to create my lapbook. I included flaps to go on the file folder and then the flap book in the middle. My students got their biographical information about Dr. Seuss from pebblego.com to complete their project. We did a lot of it together as a whole group.
Each page in the flap book has activities to go with that particular Dr. Seuss book.
For One Fish Two Fish they had to write rhyming words from the book, why they liked this story, and draw a picture.
For Green Eggs and Ham they had to write a list of nouns from the book, why they liked the story, and draw a picture.
For The Cat in the Hat they had to write adjectives that describe the Cat and complete the writing prompt.
For the Lorax they had to complete the writing prompt and then complete the cut and paste recycling sort.
These are pockets where they sorted pictures of books by Dr. Seuss and other authors.
I also included a Cat in the Hat template. I printed them on cardstock paper so they wouldn't be flimsy. I had my students color it and glue it to a sentence strip. They loved these hats, and they were so simple to make.
Well, there you have it!! An awesome week celebrating Dr. Seuss's Birthday and Read Across America!! If you like these activities you can grab your set here at my TPT Store.

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Easter Egg Hunt Learning Games

So I was set on doing an Easter egg hunt for my firsties, but everything has to be to the TEKS. So I had to come up with an idea for making an Easter egg hunt educational, then boom, it hit me!!


I created three egg hunt style games. The first one is with compound words. I made exactly enough eggs for each student to get one. Each egg had part of a compound word. 


I had them find their egg, open it, and read the compound word part. Then, they had to find the person who had the other part of the compound word. My kiddos loved this.

The next activity was a phonetic one. Were were working on aw/au sounds. So I put aw/au words in eggs. Once the kids found their egg and read the word, they had to go and stand under the correct sign. So they basically had to sort themselves.
 

The next activity was for math.


We were working on related facts, so I filled each egg with one fact which is part of a fact family. I created 2 addition and 2 subtraction for each family. I filled enough eggs for each kid to grab one per round.


 
 
I hung the fact family signs along the wall.  Then my students each picked one egg, opened it, and read it. After reading their fact they had to go and stand under their fact's family! There ended up being 4 students under each fact.


My kiddos had a blast! Instead of filling the eggs up with goodies, I turned them into games. At the end I gave each student a goody bag filled with pencils, erasers, bubbles, and of course candy!!

I hope you guys enjoyed this fun Easter idea. This could even be used in workstations as well! 

You can grab your game templates at my TPT Store!!