Ocean Activities Five for Friday!

Hey there!  I'm finally able to sit down and write a blog post since I'm officially on summer break.  {Woo hoo} The last month or so, I've kind of neglected my little ole blog.  Things were super busy and unfortunately my blog got pushed to the bottom of the pile.  So, I'm gonna backtrack into May and play catch up….

We ended the year with an ocean unit.  There are so many fun things to do with this theme.  

This was one of my favorite craftivities of the year. After studying ocean life, each little learner drew a picture of things they could see under the water.  Then, to display our work we made either mermaids, mermen, or scuba divers.  {They got to decide which one they wanted to make}

 How adorable are these?

I love these mermaids, too!

They made such a cute display!

 Using a magnetic fishing pole, the little learners caught a shaped fish, identified the shape by describing the characteristics and then placed it in an 'aquarium'.

 Then, they completed a student page of shapes.  Some shapes were small so using a magnifying glass to look at them was a super fun bonus!

 

 Using different color fish cards, the little ones sorted by color first and then practiced patterning.

The good stuff was brought out next!

 What's an ocean unit without Goldfish crackers?

To work on our alphabet recognition and phonemic awareness skills, I put magnetic letters in a fish bowl.  Each student took turns fishing out a letter.  If they identified it and/or knew the letter sound they got to keep it.  If not, it went back into the fish bowl.  

My class loves these kinds of games.  When we are finished they can trade in their fish for special treasures.

We also made sandcastles using different shapes of sandpaper.  

The bottom of the picture was first brushed with watered down glue and then sand was sprinkled on top.  I love the creativity each sweetie used when making their sandcastle.

These were just a few of our ocean activities.

I just finished my Ocean Pack and it's available on TPT.  You can check it out HERE.

Be sure to check out Doodle Bugs Teaching Five for Friday linky party!

Thanks for reading!  Have a great day!!!  :)

End of the Year!

The end of the year is always busy, but this year it has flown by…. I haven't been able to find the time to blog about our activities.  I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching to recap this past week, but I will post more about our May activities soon.

This week we had our 'Celebration of Success' {AKA Graduation Ceremony} Everyone did SO great!

We performed a few songs for our guests.  My all time favorite song to perform is 'One Small Voice' by Jack Hartmann.  It is the sweetest song.  The CD has two versions; one with words and one that is just the instrumental version.  I've never been able to just use the instrumental version before but this class insisted they wanted to be the main singers and they ROCKED it!  You can find the song on YouTube with Jack teaching the motions below.

I am going to miss this class tremendously.  The parents are wonderful and I have seen such amazing growth in my little ones.

The link to the diploma and creativity can be found HERE.

We also had a school wide track and field day this week.  It was SO much fun.

There were water activities,

 parachute games,

relays,

team building activities,

and just plain old fun playing in the park.  Since we are part of an elementary school now, we were super lucky to have fifth graders who volunteered to help us that day.  They were awesome with the little ones!!!

My own baby had a birthday this week, too!

I am such a proud mama of this boy.  Happy birthday, Sam!

Other activities at school we have been busy with include our ocean/beach theme.

After brushing on glue and sprinkling it with sand to create a beach, we used different shapes cut out of sand paper to make our own sandcastles.
Look for my Ocean/Beach pack in the next week or so.  I'm just finishing it up and will highlight it on one of my next posts.

My last day of school is Tuesday.  I'm so close…...

Pretty much says it all!!!

Thanks for reading!  Have a great day :)

Little Campers!

It's time to link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching Five for Friday linky to showcase my week.  We began our camping unit and we are having a blast with our activities.  Camping just may be one of my favorite themes.  It reminds me of camping when I was little, plus it's priceless to see the excitement of my little learners as they explore and learn.

I hauled in a bunch of camping items from home, including this old Christmas tree stand, which worked out perfectly to make our 'campfire'.

 The emerging readers couldn't wait to get inside with flashlights and books!

Speaking of books, this little number is PERFECT for a camping unit.

I read it with the lights off and a flashlight.  The shadows showed up great on our team board {which was turned off}.

 Then, the brave little campers took turns getting inside the tent while I held up a black die cut and created a shadow with a flashlight.  They had to guess what the image was.  Guess what they played during free time???

We also played a shadow match memory game, which they loved.

We made cute little campers

 by cutting, gluing, and adding the number of stars to represent our age.

I love how they turned out!

Another activity designed to help increase memory skills was putting out various camping equipment, having a little learner hide in the tent, and then take one, two, or even three items away and have them tell what's missing.

What's so great about this activity is you can very easily differentiate it by the number of items put out and taken away.

What's camping without s'mores?

We made some by layering graham crackers, chocolate, and marshmallows of the same shape.

 We also counted marshmallows {white pony beads} on sticks {pipe cleaners}

and then 'roasted' them over the fire.

This math activity was super fun and I was able to really challenge their thinking by rolling the die/dice and having them figure how want more was needed to make 10.  We also worked on counting on, which can be tricky for my pre-k sweeties.

And, of course we did some good old fashioned dramatic play with all the camping stuff.  

This by far was the most popular center this week.  The play schemes they came up with were quite involved.  I was so proud and thrilled.

 I added lots of new activities to my camping pack on TPT.  It's 155 pages long and will be on sale through the weekend.   You can check out the updates HERE or by clicking on the picture below.

How was your week?  Link and let us know!

Thanks for reading.  Have a great day!  :)

Five for ????

What the what?  It's Sunday and I'm just now getting to my Five for Friday.  Where does the time go?  Anyway, we had so much fun with our bug unit this week.  I can't wait to showcase it for you.

After reading 'In the Tall, Tall, Grass' by Denise Fleming, we sequenced the bugs/animals in the story on a green sentence strip….

 and then we snipped the top of the strip to make in look like grass….

and voila, headbands!

Are they not the cutest little learners, ever?!?!

We used this little guy to help us label the parts of an ant.

They learned lots of new vocabulary, like thorax and abdomen!

 We 'caught' some bugs, looked at them under a 'magnifying glass', and then put them in the correct jar, according to shape.  This was a great way to review shapes and add in a few new ones, like crescent and pentagon.

For a review of our letters and letter sounds, we used fly swatters to help identify them.

For a fun little brain break movement activity, we drew a bug action card and then acted it out.

As you can see by these faces, they had SO much fun!

We also made dragonflies by cutting wax paper wings and then gluing them on a strip of paper along with circles and ovals.  

We then cut the paper to make antenna.  Pretty cute, if you ask me.

If you are looking for lots of buggy ideas, you can find the ones posted here and many more in my 'Buggy for Bugs' pack HERE. 

It's 50% off right now!

Be sure to tell us about your week at Doodle Bugs Teaching Five for Friday linky!