Thermal Energy with S'Mores

Have you ever wanted to make S'Mores with your class, but didn't know where to start? Well... this post is for you! Your students will LOVE making S'Mores and this is something they will always remember! Here are the supplies and ingredients you will need to start: 

Graham Crackers

Large S'Mores Marshmallows

Hershey Bars

Small Box with an open top

Aluminum Foil

                                     Black Construction Paper

                                               Siran Wrap

                                                    Tape 

You will also need to read this book: 123 Make a S'More with Me. This is a great opening "hook" to your lesson: 

Here is a YouTube video of how to make your solar oven. I show this video to my class and then we make them together. Click here

I spent one day with my class making the ovens and S'Mores during science time. We spent the next day putting the ovens outside in the sun and then a couple of hours later we went back outside to see how thermal energy changes melts the chocolate and we ate them! It was so much fun! 

The following week, we wrote a Procedural Writing story about how we made our S'Mores. We used these cards on our pocket chart: 

Now that the students had made their S'Mores the week before helped them remember the steps. 

We wrote a story on our procedural writing template. This resource has different ones you can choose from that best meets the needs of your class: 

We colored a S'Mores topper and glued it to the top of our writing.

They look SUPER CUTE in your hallway! We got a lot of compliments from teachers and parents about them.

In math, we used the S'Mores fire mat and practiced making addition and subtraction sentences using real marshmallows. So fun! 

If you would like to see the resource click here

This is a great way to wrap up your Thermal Energy unit! I hope you have fun making your Solar Ovens and S'Mores with your class!

What a fun and exciting way to end your week!

Love, Kara 

                                          Community Helpers Thematic Unit

If you love teaching thematic units and want to include a community helpers unit in your classroom, then read on! Above you can see my theme center with a poster of community helpers, and activities, puzzles, hats, and books for the students to read. 

Here are some great mentor texts that you can read for Community Helpers! 

Here are some anchor charts with interactive notebooks that I use in my unit: What is a Community, Community Helpers and What is a Good Citizen? I love making my anchor charts interactive with post it notes! 

Here are some craftivities that I do for Career Day. Each student gets to write about what they want to be when they grow up and make a craftivity to hang in the hallway. They are super cute! 

Click here to see my Career Day writing craftivities.

Here is a craftivity for Officer Buckle and Gloria. Click here to see the resource. 

Here is a craftivity for Roxaboxen. Click here to see the resource. 

At the end of your thematic unit, you can have your students create a town or village that resembles Roxaboxen. You can use paper box lids and have your students bring in all kinds of recycled items for them to create their own town. Here are some items that I had my students bring in: paper towel rolls, toilet paper rolls, sticks, pebbles, egg cartons, feathers, pipe cleaners, construction paper. Here are some examples of my villages that we made: 

They turned out so cute and the students really LOVED making them! Click here to see my thematic unit on Community Helpers. It includes lesson plans with suggested mentor texts, anchor charts, interactive notebooks, writing craftivities and end of unit project! 

Hope you enjoy it!

Love, Kara 

Apple Investigations and Craftivities for Your Classroom

  

Have you been thinking of what units you'll be teaching in the fall for science? You might want to consider teaching a thematic unit about apples! Under this umbrella unit, you can pull in TONS of skills: properties of apples, life cycle of apples, parts of an apple, the seasons of the apple tree, making 10 frames with apples, friends of ten with apples, apple BUMP games, graphing varieties of apples, making applesauce with procedural text,  Tall Tales with Johnny Appleseed, poetry with apples and expository writing about apples. 

See... it's endless about what skills and concepts you can pull together and make it fun and engaging for the students! And, the best part about this thematic unit... is the apple tasting! Having 

an apple investigation using your 5 senses is so fun! Have different stations set up so your students can investigate! Click here to check out this resource! 

 You can devote one day to bring in varieties of apples and have the students taste them, vote on their favorite one, graph them, and make applesauce with them!  Here is a recipe that you can try with your students in the crockpot!

Applesauce Recipe

After you make applesauce with your class, you can also have the students write about it using a procedural text!

Procedural Writing Templates
Click  here  to check out this resource! 

For this thematic unit, I've written 12 days of lesson plans with mentor texts, materials, directions, and examples. They are easy to follow and are user friendly.

Apple Lesson Plans

To help with the lesson plans, I've put together apple vocabulary cards to show the students. You can display these in your classroom on your anchor chart or pocket chart for an excellent resource for the students to use!

Apple Vocabulary Cards

  Johnny Appleseed is another fun story to read. Your students can write a biography about him with a craftivity! Click here 

For interactive notebooks, the students can illustrate using their 5 senses for each season, label the parts of the apple, illustrate the life cycle and many more...

For math, I've put together many different math games and templates. There is an apple BUMP game, making friends of 10, problem solving, and graphing. Click here to see the math mats! 

Click  here for BUMP games! 

There are two focus poems that I've included in this unit. The students can cut them out and glue them into their poetry notebook and illustrate a picture. Under the picture I always have them write a caption... "I drew, or I illustrated." This helps the students understand what captions are and how they work. 

Here are some cute craftivities that you can do with your class!
Seasons of the Apple Tree click here
 

Apple Investigation using Properties and Measurement
click here

Last, but not least, I want to share with you my apple theme center. This is where I put apple games, baskets of apples, books, posters, and hands on activities about apples for the students to use. The theme center is always a class favorite. My students get so excited when they come Monday morning and see a new theme center... they know they are learning something new!

Apple Theme Center

I hope you got some great ideas about how to incorporate apples into your curriculum for the fall! If you are interested in checking out my Apple Thematic Unit, click below.

Apples Are A "Peeling": A Thematic Unit

Love, Kara

                        Linking Literature with Watermelon Day 

Have you ever had a book that you didn't know what to do with it in your classroom? Well, if you have Watermelon Day by: Kathi Appelt... you're in luck! I'd like to share with you some activities and ideas that I've done with my first graders.  My students LOVE this book and it captures their attention thru out the whole story. I use A LOT of expression when I read this book to my class and I have their full attention. I like to use this story at the beginning of the year, usually in September. This book lends itself to activities in writing, reading, math and science. 
If you wanted to, you could use this story for the whole week, and read it every day and do a different activity. The possibilities are endless! 
The first activity I do with my first graders is writing. We talk about tiny moment stories and how a watermelon symbolizes our tiny moments. Here is my anchor chart that I use: 

Tiny Moment Stories

This is how I begin our unit of personal narrative. I got the Tiny Moment idea from Lucy Calkins... by the way if you haven't read any of her books, they are amazing for writer's workshop!
This anchor chart really breaks the idea down for the students about what a tiny moment is. So, we brainstorm different parts of this book that are tiny moment stories. We talk about how the whole watermelon symbolizes a big topic, a slice of watermelon symbolizes a smaller topic, and the watermelon seeds symbolize the tiny moment. A tiny moment is a "snapshot" of their lives. Later, I'll have the students write their own tiny moment story together as a class. They color, cut it out and glue into their schema notebook. 

Another activity you can do with this story is a craftivity of a watermelon. I use a watermelon template that the students cut out and glue pink, red, green, and black construction paper squares on it to make it look 3-D. Here's my hallway of watermelon craftivities. I just love these!

Or, you can have your students write a how-to story about how to grow a watermelon: 

I also do an interactive writing piece with my students that has facts about watermelon. I call on students to come up and write a sentence about what we learned about watermelons from the story. 
Here's my interactive writing out in the hallway: 

Interactive Writing Piece

After the students do their craftivity, the next day we use our 5 senses to experience a watermelon. I bring in a small watermelon and we touch, smell, taste, hear, and look at it's attributes. We use a tape measure to see how many inches around it is for the circumference and we weigh it to see how many pounds it is. Last, I let them taste the watermelon. You could cut it up, or already have it cut up from home. Here is the template that I use for measuring our watermelon: 

Here is the template that I use for our 5 senses: 

We also talk about the life cycle of a watermelon: seeds, seedling, sprout, vine, and watermelon. We use this template to color, cut out and glue into our science notebook. 

We also practice retelling the story from beginning, middle and end. I have sentence strips on my pocket chart that we put in order. Then, the students get to write or illustrate their own beginning, middle and end of the story. If you have reluctant writers at the beginning of the year...which we all have... let them just draw pictures. Or, you could scribe for them! 

I hope you have gotten some good ideas and activities to use with Watermelon Day. This is one of my favorite books to read to my class and I hope it's one of your favorites too! If you are interested in more of my ideas and activities for this book, check out my Watermelon Day packet: 

Linking Literature: Watermelon Day

Love,
Kara 

                                     Graphics Courtesy of: