Friday, March 11, 2011

Plagues 3 through 8


Wow! We have had a crazy week but a fun one. I have been getting over this inner ear weird virus thing. Mostly just sinus pain and positional dizziness but still enough to make one feel a little lousy. Anyway, school must go on!
Here are the pictures from the plagues that we have read about this week. The third plague was the plague of the gnats. We made finger prints on a piece of paper and drew little wings on the the finger prints. I used washable ink but we all still had purple hands that day.

The fourth plague is the plague of the flies. We cut out shapes, oval, trapezoid, circles and glued them together to make this cute little fly. I added some clear trapezoids to my white ones for added affect on the wings. The fifth plague is the disease on the livestock. David's children's bible talked about the animals dying so we made x's for their eyes. John made a horse and David made a cow. Other animals the bible mentioned were camels, donkeys, and sheep.The sixth plague was boils on the people. This one was hard but we found a way to represent it as good as we could. I had a cookie cutter that we traced and punched out little red dots for the boils. Notice the boys sad faces they drew on the people. The seventh plague God sent was hail. I know cotton balls don't do it justice but it was what I had on hand. The eighth plague was the plague of locusts. We found a cute idea online for a grasshopper and adapted it to what a real locust looks like. Here is a picture of the cute grasshopper craft.


And here is what a real locust looks like. Here is what we came up with.


They are a little scarry looking. They can definitely do some damage to crops. Only two more plagues to go. Look for those sometime next week. Have a great weekend.

Friday, March 4, 2011

Moses and the 10 Plagues

We are working our way through the Old Testament and are currently studying Moses and the 10 Plagues. I have really enjoyed our study. For the first plague I got a pitcher of water and added red food coloring. They liked watching it turn red. We talked about how blood would be thicker than water and then we made this craft. I got a clear little cup and had the boys fill it with red construction paper.

The first plague water turned to blood.The second plague is frogs all over the land. You fold paper as if to make a snowflake but make a frog pattern instead. You have to use your imagination a little bit to see the frogs.And this is what you end up with. The boys enjoyed giving the frogs jiggly eyes.We placed the frogs all over the school room.
Here is our pocket chart recording all ten plagues. This is serving as a visual reminder of the plagues for us.



I have really enjoyed my laminator. I can thank my brother Kurt for it because I used my gift card he gave me for Christmas to purchase this fine machine. It does a wonderful job.
These are the cutest picture/word cards that I found at www.dltk-bible.com/word-list/moses/moses-index.htm So cute!


More plagues to come!

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Louisiana, 100th Day, and Tacky

February has been a busy month for us. First I wanted to share our calendar space. We have a calendar routine that we go through every morning. We practice number order, patterning, place value, counting money, time, writing the date (both ways), days of the week, months of the year, and weather graphing. I found the patterns for time, money, and place value here.Thanks to the awesome homeschool mama and teacher over at oneplusoneplusoneequals1.blogspot.com
I love my calendar header. I made these around nine years ago when I taught public school. February is one of my favorites.These are my cute frogs. They wear hats that say yesterday, today, and tomorrow. I got this idea from a teacher that I student taught with. She had patterns for bears and every month has a different hat. The t-shirts help the kiddos identify the days of the week and their order. We have been studying our great state of Louisiana this month. We are going to take a trip to New Orleans and see all these things we are reading and learning about. I have enjoyed all of Johnette Downing's books. We read Today is Monday in Louisiana and the activity below I used with Down in Louisiana. The book talks about different animals found in our state. My little four year old is still learning his numbers and counting with one to one correspondence so he was responsible for this pocket chart activity.
We made our state bird out of card stock. The Eastern Brown Pelican was cut out and colored and put together with glue and sticky tack. My four year old decided express his artsy side with this pelicans second wing. The pelican pattern allows you to make a pouch to put a fish in but we have yet to make a fish for him.

Here is our state flower, the magnolia. We used card stock and the patterns came from a fellow teacher years ago.

We bought a king cake for the boys to try. David loved it. John would rather have a doughnut. I'm excited for them to try beignets at Cafe Du Monde.


We made a K-W-L chart. We had not filled it out when we took this picture but the boys didn't know much and wanted to know a lot. I think they have learned a lot but I believe experience is the best teacher.


We celebrated our 100th day at the beginning of February. The boys had fun and I even got a little mini photo shoot in with them. You take what you can get when you have boys.

This was our second year to do the 100 snacks activity but they love it so much and David is actually counting it himself now. We had quite a spread.
In late January we read Tacky the Penguin. The boys really enjoyed this book.

We made Tacky's of our own and they sat with us as we read the book. My sweet big boy is the photographer and that's why you don't see him with us but his penguin is sitting on my shoulder.

Here is a homemade Venn diagram where we compared Tacky to his friends in the story. Coming soon our study of Moses and the 10 Plagues and more Louisiana studies plus some Dr. Suess.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Mittens,Snowmen, and Penguins

We finished up our Mitten unit last week with a few more activities. I found this mitten estimation activity at Chalk Talk: A Kindergarten Blog . Mrs. Larremore has a lot of fun Mitten ideas. We altered it a bit by doing perimeter with goldfish and marshmallows, area with cheerioes, and length with marshmallows. The boys loved getting to eat their snacks after they measured.
I found this cute activity from Mrs. Carroll at The First Grade Parade. Isn't it precious! It is the animals from The Mitten! You can click here to download it from Mrs. Carroll!





My boy with a silly smile. He loved it! Thanks Mrs. Carroll!


I decided to make this using my Target dollar finds. My little guy is learning to differentiate between sounds. This week we were working on f and h.




Here is my precious little guy. He is proud of his work on the fridge.




Coming soon Penguins! Here are just a few of the things I found to use with our unit study.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Mitten and a Little Catching Up

We have been busy, so busy that I have not been updating the blog much. This week we are doing a book study of The Mitten by Jan Brett. I found some great prepared and free materials for this study. Here is my little guy using some materials I found at http://www.stayandplaymama.blogspot.com/



First I had him find the numbers and put them in order on the clothesline. Then my first grader read a poem that I had printed on chart paper. The poem is found at stay and play also.




Here are my boys with the chart we made after reading the story.




The first day, before we read the story we made predictions and checked them after reading.



I cannot remember where I got this but I had scanned it into my computer. The boys each made their own mitten and we sequenced the story by telling which animal went into the mitten first, next, and so on. Here are some other great mitten resources. www.thefirstgradeparade.blogspot.com/2011/01/mitten-loads-of-fun.html I love, love, love, her animals from the mitten blends game! So cute!

www.whattheteacherwants.blogspot.com/2010/12/mitten.html has a free printable writing activity.

www.swampfrogfirstgraders.blogspot/2010/12/animals-in-mitten-probability.html has some great math activities to go with the story. She has a probability post and a counting on printable.


We have a few more days left on this study so I will post more later.


Here are a few extra activities that were simple to make and use. Thanks to all the teachers that share their creativity. It sure does help this homeschooling teacher!

I love letter tiles! You can use them many ways here is just one way my preschooler is using them. I found these upper and lowercase letter charts at http://www.prekinders.com/




Way back in November:
I found these turkeys over at Ms. Collins First Grade Parade blog. Here is the link
www.thefirstgradeparade.blogspot.com/2010/11/time-for-turkeys.html Here is the way I used it with my first grader. I love Ms. Collins's blog! Thanks for sharing!


For my preschooler I used the turkeys to help him match upper and lowercase letters.


These were scarecrows that I used to help my preschooler with counting and one to one correspondence. I printed out the scarecrows on cardstock my son puts the "patches" on the scarecrow to match the number.



My little cutie!



Okay, I cannot remember where I first saw this, so sorry! My little guy loved this activity! He rolls the die and finds the square that matches what he just rolled. We name the number and count out that many erasers. If your child is having trouble with one to one correspondence this is a great game. The other thing I think this teaches is a visual reference without having to count each dot. (great for adding objects later) This activity can be easily changed seasonally by using different erasers.



I'll have more to share soon. I went to the teacher store the other day and found some great things to share.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Wow, The Mitten Anyone?

If you are in need of a great book to read with your kids The Mitten by Jan Brett is wonderful. I found a site with a ton of printables that you can download for free www.stayandplaymama.blogspot.com. Don't forget to leave her a comment if you download. Happy New Year!