End of the Year Writing Celebration...Fairy Tale Ball!

End of the Year Writing Celebration....Fairy Tale Ball! 

Fairy Tale Ball Tablescape
At the end of the year, our first graders get to pick a fairy tale to retell from beginning to end. They use all the writing skills that they have learned from the whole year. They use nice handwriting, beautiful illustrations,  great sentences, lots of adjectives and dialogue. We work very hard in May to take this story through the writing process to publish this book. This is the story they will be reading at our Fairy Tale Ball.  I've made fairy tale writing templates for our students to use for this. 

The students use these templates for Brainstorming, First Draft, Student Conference, Proofreading, Teacher Conference, Editing and Revision, Final Draft, and Publishing. They have a blast retelling their favorite fairy tale and getting to illustrate their pictures. 

We discuss all the story elements for a fairy tale and what it usually has that makes so special. We use this anchor chart: 

We discuss the three main authors of Fairy Tales and what country they were from: Charles Perrault, Hans Christian Andersen and The Grimm Brothers. We use this poster to help us decide which fairy tale we want to write about: 

We also use these story element cards to mix the magic! 

We cut up the cards, and put them in a mixing bowl while we are discussing the story elements, and use a magic wand...the students LOVE this! 

On the day of the Fairy Tale Ball, each student brings a food that goes along with their story. So, if they wrote about Rapunzel, they bring radishes. If they wrote about Snow White, they bring apples slices.... catch on? They bring a basket to put their food in for our tablescape. I also have one parent make a castle cake for us to enjoy. Here are some examples of cakes I've had in the past: 

On the day of the Fairy Tale Ball, they get to dress up like their character from their story. They get to read their story to the parents and then the parents write them a compliment in the back of their book. The students love this! Here are some of our characters from our Ball with their published story. Can you see the gold sticker on the cover? 

The Snow Queen 

Beauty and the Beast

The Gingerbread Man 
The students had a blast at our Fairy Tale Ball. Maybe next year you'd like to have a fairy tale ball too? If you are interested in checking our my fairy tale writing resource click here:Once Upon a Time...A Fairy Tale Writing Unit

I hope you live Happily Ever After! 
Love, Kara 

Let's Spring Into Science! Investigations and Experiments from January to May

If you LOVE teaching your science curriculum through experiments and investigations, keep on reading! I've created a packet full of fun and engaging experiments and investigations from January to May. All of these experiments I've tried out in my classroom, and my students LOVE them! I've categorized them into months using themes to drive the skill and focus. In this packet are lesson plans with mentor texts, anchor charts, interactive notebook activities, craftivities, expository writing templates and vocabulary cards.  

Monthly Themes:
January: Winter, Arctic, Antarctic, Penguins, MLK
February: Objects in the Sky, Valentine's Day, Presidents, America
March: Spring, Weather, Texas, St. Patrick's Day
April: Plants, Life Cycles, Insects, Rainforests, Easter
May: Rocks and Volcanoes, Ocean and Beach, End of Year

By using these suggested themes, planning science investigations and experiments are super easy and fun! I hope you enjoy them!

For January the science experiments and investigations are:
I See Icy Icicles
Winter Investigation using 5 senses
Precipation Investigation
Blubber Experiment
Glacier and Iceberg Investigation
How to Make a Marshmallow Igloo
Diversity Experiment

For February, they are:
Will This Melt My Heart?
Shadow Investigation
How To Make a Lincoln Log Cabin
Phases of the Moon
Constellation Investigation

For March, they are:
Investigating Spring using 5 senses
Pinwheel Investigation
Oil Experiment
What Makes a Rainbow?
Cloud in a Cup
Cloud Investigation
How to Make Chili

For April, they are:
Tree Investigation
Sunflower Investigation
Bean Investigation
Butterfly Investigation
Ladybug Investigation
Frog Investigation
Terrarium Investigation

For May, they are:
Edible Dirt Cup Investigation
Rock Investigation
Layers of the Earth
My Pet Rock Investigation
Volcano Experiment
Shark Investigation
Whale Investigation
How to Make an Ocean in a Jar
Shell Investigation

So...there you have it! Science in the Spring! I hope you got some great ideas about about how to incorporate science investigations and experiments in your classroom! If you are interested in checking out my Spring Into Science packet, click below.
Love, Kara 

Let's Spring into Science: Investigations and Experiments from January to May

Baby, It's Cold Outside...so stay warm inside with Jan Brett! 

Jan Brett is one of my FAVORITE authors to teach literature with! There's so much that you can do with her books...it's endless. She has perfect stories that go along with the Christmas and Winter season. Above you can see the craftivities that I've created to go along with some of her winter books.  The students can retell the story, and then make the character to go around their template. My students LOVE making these craftivities and they are so fun!

For December I read:
The Gingerbread Baby
The Wild Christmas Reindeer
Christmas Trolls
Who's That Knocking on Christmas Eve?
The Night Before Christmas

For January I read:
The Mitten
The Hat
Annie and The Wild Animals
Trouble with Trolls
The Three Snow Bears

I've created a Jan Brett author study packet that has lesson plans with mentor texts, writing craftivities, interactive notebook pages, vocabulary cards, anchor charts and math games. 
If you love Jan Brett as much as I do, then you'll enjoy this packet!

These lesson plans are jam packed with materials, question stems, directions and examples. There are also vocabulary cards for the characters for The Mitten, Parts of a Reindeer and Parts of a Polar Bear. 

There are also anchor charts with a lesson plan for each one! They include questions stems, activities, and suggestions on how to teach each skill. I've included: 
Beginning, Middle and End
Cause and Effect
Text Connections
Main Idea
Story Elements
Characterization
Theme
Sequence of Events
Inferencing 

With each anchor chart, I've created an interactive notebook activity, that the students can complete, color, cut out and glue into their reader's notebook. I've also included some winter math games: Winter Counting Ten Frames, Winter Roll and Add, and Winter Roll and Subtract. Also, there are Reader's Theater puppets for The Mitten that the students can color, cut out and glue onto pop-cycle sticks! 

If you're interested in checking out my Jan Brett Author Study Packet, click below. You'll have such a "cool" time with this one that you'll have to pull out your hats and mittens! LOL

Have a wonderful week....Happy Teaching!

Love,

Kara 

                 Winter Author Study with Jan Brett: Grades 1-3

Christmas Time is Here and It's Around the World! 

Christmas Around the World Theme Center

Ready or not... it's almost here! Have you been thinking about what you're going to teach during December? There are so many possibilities! There's Christmas Around the World (which could take the whole month depending on how many countries you teach), Reindeer, Gingerbread, Evergreen trees, Writing Letters to Santa, Christmas Math Games, Elf on the Shelf Diaries... it's overwhelming! It's a lot of work, I admit, but if you're like me I LOVE to decorate my classroom for Christmas and I do it for the kids. Some of them never get to experience the decorations and holiday fun stuff... so I want to give that to them.

I'm here today to share with you my Christmas Around the World thematic unit. I teach 6 countries: United States, England, Germany, Mexico, Russia and Holland. Within these countries, I teach my students about where the country is on the map, the flag, how they say "Merry Christmas" in each language, the traditions and customs they have during Christmas and the food that they eat there. We have a blast learning about traditions and customs around the world! I can't wait to share them with you today! If you're interested in checking out my thematic unit: Christmas Celebrations Around the World, click below! 

Christmas Celebrations Around the World: A Thematic Unit Grades 1-3

I've created lesson plans, a student travel journal, a student passport, craftivities, interactive notebook activities, vocabulary cards, math games, and science investigations for this thematic unit. The lesson plans have mentor texts, materials, directions and examples of craftivities. They are very user friendly. 

Here is the student passport that I created:

For each country, we color in the country, stamp and the flag. The students keep this in their Travel Journal so we can keep track of the countries we learn.  Here is the cover page of our Travel Journal: Traveling Around the World for the Holidays! We complete two pages each day. One in the morning and one in the afternoon. I also have a table of contents at the beginning of the book. This is supposed to resemble an expository genre: using Table of Contents, Labels, Captions and Diagrams. 

For each country, I created a 4 square where the students write about the food, traditions, customs, how to say "Merry Christmas" and illustrate the flag. Then on the other side, they illustrate pictures to go along with the country and glue them in the book. Here is United States:

Here is England:

Here is Germany:

Here is Russia:

Here is Mexico:

Here is Holland:

I've created vocabulary cards for each country, that you can print and laminate. I usually display these on my pocket chart or my theme center for the students to read: 

For each country, I read a fiction story and a non-fiction story so we can compare the two books. For example: for Germany, I read The Gingerbread Baby for fiction, and Christmas in Germany for non-fiction. And, we even eat gingerbread men cookies! If you're interested in checking out my packet about the Gingerbread Baby, click below:

Linking Literature: The Gingerbread Baby Grades 1-3

We do a really cute Gingerbread Baby craftivity and writing! We write about how we can catch a gingerbread baby using a sequencing template. 

We also decorate a gingerbread house using icing, candy, pretzels, paper plates, ice cream cones and cereal! It's so much fun! 

When we talk about England, we do a science investigation with Evergreen trees. We read a book about trees and compare the Evergreen Tree with the Deciduous tree. Since the holly berry comes from England, we investigate different Evergreens: Blue Spruce, Holly Berry, Cedar, Frazier Fur, White Pine, Grand Fur, and Pine Cones. 

I have these branches in baggies that I have collected over the years and the students observe with magnifying glasses, then illustrate and label them on their template. Here is a picture of all of my evergreen branches:

This is the template that my students use when they rotate around the room and observe all the different evergreens. They have so much fun learning about them! 
                                          

As you can see, in December we are extremely busy, but we are having a BLAST at the same time! I hope you got some great ideas about what to teach in December for your students! Have a great week! Happy Teaching! 
Love, Kara