Family Unit

I passed out on the couch after school and took a 3 and a half hour nap and I feel rejuvenated and wide-awake...so it's blogging time! :)

A few weeks ago we did one of my favorite units: all about families! We talked about our families and discussed how families are made up of people who love us and all families are different. Of course there are MANY great children's books on families out there, and I wanted to share a few that I read. One of my favorite authors is Laura Numeroff (author of Give a Mouse a Cookie) and she also has several books about families. We read What Mommies Do Best (What Daddies Do Best) and What Sisters Do Best (What Brothers Do Best). She also has ones on Grandmas and Grandpas and Aunts and Uncles. Each book is two books in one! :)

We started out the first week sharing who was in our family and drawing a picture of our families. We also wrote stories about what we do with our families but I forgot to take pictures of those. :(

We also did a class book that I made called "We Like Our Families" about why we like our families. The kids had such cute responses!

I like my family because they feed me.

I like my family because they take care of me and they love me and they give me food, water and air. They help me when I get hurt.

I like my family because they kiss me on the cheek.

I like my family because they love me so much.

During the second week, our weekly poem for shared reading was called "Families." It was a cute finger play and the kids loved it ! I made matching fingers to put on the poetry pocket chart (you add one finger each time you talk about a family member) and my teammate pointed out that the mother line hand looks like the loser sign. OOPS! The kids never noticed though. :) In their poetry folders they drew their families and circled sight words.

In math we made family addition sentences by writing down how many girls and boys were in our families.

Our final project was making family trees! I had everyone make trees with construction paper and cut out triangles for the girls in their family and rectangles for the boys.

We are just about to finish up our Jobs unit so I will be sharing that next! Our Fall Break starts after tomorrow and we get two weeks off! (A HUGE perk of year-round schools) :)

Apple Unit

Along with our plant unit we did a short apple unit. Since I was doing plants during science, I mainly used these apple activities during reading and math. I got many of my activities from Deanna Jump's apple unit. First I read her book, Who took the Apples from the Apple Tree? The kids absolutely LOVED it! We then made our own class book and it is by far the most popular class book. The kids loved my drawing at the end....I love to hear them giggling as they read it in the library center.

We also read an apple poem that goes to the tune of I'm a Little Teapot. I found it here along with several other cute apple poems and fingerplays.

After decorating the front, a few of my kids drew some adorable pictures on the back.

We also did several word problems that were apple-themed. When I have students do word problems, I do not tell them how to solve the problem, but instead let them come up with their own strategies. At the end of math, I let a few kids share their ideas so the rest of the class can learn from each other. As a way to differentiate, I leave blanks in my questions so kids can insert higher and higher numbers.

First problem: Student 1 ate 2 apples and Student 2 ate some apples. They ate 4 apples altogether. How many apples did Student 1 eat?

Second problem: Student 1 has 6 apples. She wants to share with Student 2. If she and Student 2 get the same amount of apples, how many apples will each girl get?

My favorite activity was also from Deanna's unit. She had a short apple poem craft that went from eating an apple to planting the seeds that grow into a tree.

Coming Soon: Family Unit!

Map Activity

Here's a short activity I did with my kids to talk about different kinds of maps during our map unit. I also wanted to review different vocabulary words that they often mix up (like city and state). I made a fill-in-the blank book using word and images from google. I had the kids fill in the name for the continent, country, state and state we live in, and color the map.

On the last page I had the kids draw where they lived and fill in the blank with either house or apartment.

We did this at the end of our unit after talking about map keys, symbols and the compass rose and completing several activities creating and reading maps. I wish I could tell you ALL of my kids are geography experts now, but they still tend to answer "TEXAS!" when I ask what country we live in or "AUSTIN!" when I ask what state we live in.

Oh well...close enough, right? :)