SPIDERS!!!

Teaching is amazing when you can incorporate several subjects into one unit!! This week, I  was able to teach science, reading, and writing in one awesome unit! To start the week, I added webbing, paper spiders and spider facts to our classroom. As soon as the kiddos walked in on Monday, they were hooked!

All day long they were asking "When are we going to do science"?? When the time came, they were all ears! We started the unit discussing what we "think" we already know about spiders. Since we are starting informational texts, this was a great time to explore facts. I have a great group of kiddos this year that already have great background knowlege, so getting a list of things they think they already knew helped me guide my lessons!

Each day, we looked at a new passage, book, or Internet piece of information to learn even more about spiders. We touched on verbs and adjectives that relate to spiders.

Throughout the week, we collected facts about spiders that we thought were really cool and wrote them in our "Facts About Spiders" book. Since we are learning about informational writing, this was a great time to incorporate this. Even though the facts were very basic, they did a great job!

I could have stretched this unit out more than one week, but with all the neat things that I want to teach my kiddos in November, I kept the instruction to one week. Since we were ending the unit and Halloween is tomorrow, I wanted to incorporate fun activities to the end of the unit.

Our school is promoting "healthy snacks/foods, so I wanted to make sure I was adding that into my curriculum anytime I can! Once again, I wanted to fit in as much teaching as I can along with fun learning, so my kiddos got to choose a snack they wanted to make!

 

Our healthy snack choices were a witch's hand, a monster mouth, or a spider web! Each kiddo had to choose which snack they wanted to make. They followed the picture steps and made their snack.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once their snack was made, I gave them a "How To Make" book. They had to write the steps they took to make their snack. I was sooo thrilled to see how easy it was for them to do!

 

 

As a concluding activity, those with great behavior all week wrapped me up like a mummy! YES, they used toilet paper! It was a blast!!!

 

 

 

Learning Projects!

Sadly, our plant unit came to an end. The class did an excellent job creating learning projects to show their creativity and new information they learned. In my class, I like for my students to present their learning to others as a final step. If they can turn around and teach others something they have learned, I feel they truly have a firm grasp on their learning! One of my favorite learning projects this unit was a "learning vest". This can be used with any topic! On the vest, the kiddos show what they have learned. In the picture below, one of my students chose to show everything he knew about roots. He labeled a plant to show where the roots are, and he searched on the Internet to find really cool root pictures. He had a volunteer wear his vest as he explained to a group of others. It was REALLY NEAT to watch!

I also had 3 of my students create a commercial for their "plant store". They had to survey their classmates and find out the type of plants they would like to buy at the store. They then created a store name and practiced making a commercial to invite others to come to their store and buy plants. This was neat to listen to but if they saw me watching them, they would giggle so much that they couldn't finish the commercial, so I pretended I didn't know what they were doing!!

 

 

Next,  our classroom is going to turn a "little spooky" just in time for Halloween! Check back later this week to see what we learned!!

 

Eating a whole plant

 We have learned all the plant parts and their function, so it was a prefect time to show the class the different plant parts we eat. First, each child was given their placemat. Then we talked about each type of food that was handed out. Once the food was discussed, the students had to sort the food into the correct square. As we reviewed the foods, the kiddos ate each piece.

The discussion that took place as the children were tasting the foods was very funny. Not a lot of broccoli or cauliflower was eaten, but at least they tried a very small piece. I even had one little girl take a piece of lettuce and crumbled tiny pieces of all the foods onto the lettuce and told me she made a salad!

Next, we are moving onto photosynthesis and project time!