Plant Adaptations

Finally finishing up our plant adaptations unit! We had a great time sorting seeds, sprouting them and planting them.  Our garden box is growing like crazy and we have harvested radishes, lettuce and cilantro. Yellow squash blossoms are blooming and green peppers are about the size of ping pong balls. I love that the kids get so excited about growing and trying new things, although the radishes were not a big hit!

Our science standards (TEKS in Texas) deal with how plants and animals adapt to survive in their environment. We looked at different habitats and how plants adapt to meet their basic needs. I made several pages for our interactive science notebooks, like the one below. You can find them on my TPT store, but here are a few freebies for you.

Aren't these cups the kiddos made adorable! They had so much fun!  Several of them even put faces on both sides of their cups. One side happy, one side mad, one side young, one side old,.......like the old movie Victor/Victoria!

Books, Books, and More Books!

Don't you just hate when you have insomnia and can't shut your mind off?  Here's how it usually goes: It's two o'clock in the morning and I'm churning out hundreds of really great ideas for school and around the house, confident that I'll remember them all, because I'm too lazy to get up and write them down or voice message myself. But the next morning I can't seem to remember them all or even half of them!

Any ways, that was me last night. I do remember thinking about read-alouds for math and science, and trying to remember what titles I have. Now when you have been teaching as long as I have, and you have a major book addiction......well, let's just say I own a lot of books. Don't tell my husband, but I've been known to see a book and to buy it, only to realize some time later that I already owned another copy of it! So I was intrigued to hear about an app for cataloging your collection of books. It's called BooksApp and there's a free version and a version for under $10. It is so cool! You scan the bar code or input the ISBN and then it finds and loads a summary of the book, tags it to subject areas, and even puts a picture of the cover with it!! That's what I'm talking about -- ORGANIZATION, woohoo! Now I'll be able to look under the subject and find the titles I want to go with the standards I'm teaching. Don't you just love technology!!

Speaking of books.....my kids love for me to read to them. When they go to the library, they search for books about the topics we are studying, in the hopes that I will read their books to the class. One of the main reasons is that we always end with a Minds are Blooming Question. Okay, so truthfully it isn't the question that they look forward to, but the skittle from the Blooming Candy Dispenser.

The cup next to the gorilla is the much coveted Blooming Dispenser. If you look closely you may be able to see that the flower on its side has a hole in it. When you twist the top of the dispenser, the hole opens up and a skittle falls out. The kiddos love the mystery and suspense of not knowing what color skittle they will get and what their question will be.The cards hanging on the wall behind the cup are color-coded  and have questions based on the revised levels of Bloom's Taxonomy. Here's a better picture of the dispenser.

  Best of all, the dispenser is made from two Styrofoam drink cups, so it's super easy and super cheap! Plus the kids really love it! You can find the directions for making the dispenser, the question cards and the Blooms Flower Pot poster in my TPT store.

Texas, Our Texas

Wow! I can't believe that the end of March is almost here!! We have been working hard to finish all of our Texas themed units. If you are not from Texas, March is when we celebrate all things Texas, like Texas Independence Day and Texas Public Schools Week. We dressed up like cowboys, talked with a Texas twang, and generally had a rootin' -tootin' good time.

We started out learning about Tall Tales. When I taught 4th grade, I bought a great E-book from Evan-Moor called Literature Pockets: Tall Tales Grades 4-6.  With a little modifying, it worked just fine with 2nd graders.

Then we two-stepped on over to Fractured Fairy Tales. We read lots of wonderful Texas Fractured Fairy Tales and compared them to the classics.  My teaching pal, Colleen, over at Totally Terrific in Texas, developed a super cute packet for our kids to use. Here are just a few of the titles we perused.

Every time the kids left to go to the library, they came back with another western themed book to add to those we read in class. Who knew there were so many??

Since I had Texas on the brain, I developed a lap-book for our Social Studies standards on Texas symbols. Here are some pictures of the kids work. I think the kids did a great job, and they turned out really cute! It was my first attempt at creating digital clip art. I had a lot of help from my daughter, Sarah, who is very artistic as well as very handy on a tablet. I think I'm addicted!

 

Interactive Notebooks

I have been using interactive notebooks in reading, math and science for more than a decade let's just say several years. I can't tell you how much I love them, but for a chronically unorganized teacher like me, they are a godsend. I first started using them as portfolios when I taught 4th grade. Students loved making each page colorful and packed with their take on the content and skills they were learning.

Then I moved to 2nd grade. Yeah!

My students still love coloring and filling them with their artwork, but they have a hard time writing the content information. As hyper as I am, it was equally painful for me to wait forever for them to copy 2 sentences! So I decided to make interactive pages that could be cut out and and glued into their spiral notebooks. These are a few examples.

Usually the pages that go on the right side of the notebook have the content we are learning, while on the left side the kids interact with the content.The kiddos use their spirals as references and they are especially useful for RTI accommodations. If you haven't tried Interactive Notebooks yet, here are a few freebies.      

 Interactive Notebook Printables

Rocking Rock Lab

Yesterday I was looking through the gazillions of pictures on my phone ..... and came across the ones I took of my students making edible rocks. Now my class loves science, but any time we combine food and science, my kids and I are ecstatic! So I decided to have them make edible rocks. I made a few lab sheets for the kiddos to use while making their rock models and off to the science lab we went. They had so much fun!! I mean, come on, who doesn't loooove chocolate?

The 3 Types of Rocks Ready to Eat

On the tables are their Interactive Science Spirals with their lab pages already glued in. This makes life much easier for me and the kids, as it's all together and in order. Here is one lab sheets from my unit on rocks. Click on the link below to to get a free copy.

Earth Rocks

If you would like to see the whole unit, visit my TPT store here.

An App for the Teacher

I love apps for my kids, and they love them, too. It seems that they all have smart phones or tablets, so why not take advantage of it? If your students haven't tried Splash Math, it's time to try it!  It is arranged by skill and level, which makes it fantastic for RTIs and for enrichment for your GT students. Simply assign a content skill and the level you want them to master.