Word Families

We have been busy working on word family words.  My kids are loving it.

We start our routines by grabbing our white boards, dry erase markers and kleenex and have a seat by my easel.  I tell the kids what word family we will be working on.  I then have them come up the front and pull a letter to the left of the word chunk.  They have to say the sound the letter makes and the sound the chunk makes.  They then have to slide the letter and chunk together and say the word that they made.

As kids are making a word at the front of the room, the rest of the kids are writing their word on their boards that are in their laps.  Once we are all done, we read all the new words that we made.

We put our things away and then do our word family mini book.  My kids absolutely love these.  I have the words copied on yellow card stock to make them stand out a little bit more.  It also helps my kids that are struggling with cutting to have a better handle on the paper.

You can find them here.  You will not be disappointed with anything from The Moffatt Girls.

Sara

Book Study and 10 More, 10 Less, 1 More, 1 Less Puzzles

I don't know if you have heard about the book study that some of my favorite bloggers are hosting.
Head on over to Kickin It In Kindergarten  to find out all the details.

When I read about this book study, I called my local Barnes and Noble right away to see if they had the book and they DID!!!  I was so excited.  I have always firmly believed that kids learn by doing.  Many of the activities that I do in my room are hands on and have some musical component attached to it.  I have kids that love to sing and dance and that is how they learn.  They remember every word to their favorite songs, but have a hard time remembering to put a capital letter at the beginning of their sentence.  When writing a sentence is written about in a song, they remember it.  I use a lot of  Miss Jenny Fixman's songs in my teaching.   I absolutely love my Phonics Time cd.  I may have had to order it again from using it so much!

You can check out the link below
Miss Jenny Fixman

One of my favorite cds of hers is this one!

We love singing these songs and then doing hands on math activities to go with her songs.

I have tons of math center puzzles that I do in my classroom to go with skills that we are learning.  Today I added this one. 

I created a 10 more, 10 less, 1 more, 1 Less pack for fall a long time ago.  My kids LOVE it.  I used fall clip art and am so picky with things I have out during the year.  I didn't want my puzzles with fall clip art out all year, so I created a new pack.  This one has a puzzle for EVERY number 1-100.  I can pick and choose what numbers I want out and when I want them out.  The clip art that I used will allow me to keep them out all year, not just in October and November.  I'm weird about that...I know.

If you don't have this book....head out and buy it now!  You won't be disappointed!

Dental Health Egg Experiment

Have you ever wondered what pop or juice does to your teeth?  In our kindergarten class we decided to do an experiment to see what would happen if we drank pop or juice and didn't brush our teeth.

We took 10 eggs (not hard boiled) and put them in clear plastic cups.  We covered them with different kinds of pop and juice and made our observations of what the eggs looked like.  We predicted what we thought would happen to the eggs after sitting in the liquids.

We recorded what we thought might happen to the eggs in our journals.

After 2 days, we checked the eggs again.  We noticed that the eggs that were sitting in the pop were discolored.  The shells of the eggs that were sitting in the Gatorade, grape juice and Energy drink started to look like the liquid was eating through the shells.

 Pop

 Grape Juice

 Energy Drink

Gatorade

We checked on the eggs a week later.  All of the eggs in the regular pop and the water were stained.  The 4 eggs that looked like it had the most change are below. The egg in Gatorade had the most change.  The shell looked like it was almost gone.

 Diet Pop

 Grape Juice

 Energy Drink

Gatorade

We checked the eggs again after 2 weeks.  We noticed the same changes occurring.  The shells looked like they were being eaten through. (I am not sure where my pics are...maybe on other camera?)

The eggs below having been sitting in their liquid for 3 weeks.

 The egg that was sitting in water looked okay.  The water mostly evaporated from the cup.

 The egg that was sitting in the Root Beer looked stained and like the shell was disappearing.  All that was left in the cup was a thick syrup.

 The egg in the Grape Juice was the grossest.  There was mold forming all over the sugar that was left in the cup and on the egg.    The shell had been eaten through.

 The egg in the Lemon Lime soda didn't look too bad.  It was bumpy.  All that was left in the cup was sugar water.

 The egg that was in the orange soda was pretty stained.  The soda started to eat through the egg.  There was a syrupy, sugar mixture left in the cup.

 The egg in the cola was stained.  There was a syrup left in the bottom of the cup.

 The egg in the Diet Pepsi was gross.  That's the best that I can describe it.  It looked like it was burned and charred.  The liquid left in the cup was a filmy, mucky mess.

 The egg shell that was in the Energy Drink was eaten through.  There was a lot of sugar left in the cup.

The egg in the Gatorade had most of the shell gone.  This is the egg that we noticed the biggest change in.  There was only sugar left in the cup.

We determined that the Gatorade was the worst thing for our teeth, followed by the Grape Juice and Energy Drink.  We threw out the egg that was in the V8 juice after week 1 because the juice became a thick mess covered in mold.

We learned that if we can't brush our teeth soon after drinking one of these beverages, we should at least rinse our mouth out with water.  Hopefully after doing this experiment my kids will keep in mind what could happen to their teeth if they don't brush them.

We really enjoyed writing in our journals after we made observations of what was happening.

I highly recommend doing this with your kids.  Mine loved it and we had great discussions.
Sara

Valentine Chains: 14 Days of Love

I hope you are all having a great February.  The last 4 days, I have uploaded freebies to my TPT store.  I will be adding 10 more to go with the 14 Days of Love give away.  You can find them HERE.  Just click on the most recently uploaded area where my products are listed.  Today we had so much fun doing our DAY 4 activity.

The first thing they did was read and trace over the sentences on the 3 different colored pieces of paper.  We talked about each sentence and how it applied to them.  I couldn't believe how quiet my room was as the kids were tracing each sentence.

After they were done tracing the sentences, they brought their 3 sheets of paper to me.  I cut them into strips on my paper cutter.  They could have cut them out themselves too.

 They then went back to their table spots and glued their strips into chain links.  We talked about making a pattern out of the strips.  They did great at this.

 I then played the song, "I LOVE" by Tom T. Hall.

 We talked about all the different things that we loved.  I gave them a big heart to draw pictures of the things they loved on.  They cut out the hearts after they were done.  I gave them another heart that they are going to put their picture on.  For now we just wrote our names on it.

 We cut the two hearts out and stapled them together with the chain in the middle.  These will be hanging on our ceiling soon.

You can grab this activity HERE.  Check back daily for more freebies. :)
Sara