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: 

Back to School Tips and Tricks

                     My First Week of School Tips and Tricks

               Are You Ready to Start Another Year?

A lot of teachers are unsure about what to do during the first week of school. It can be a scary thing...even to veteran teachers. As standards, parents, expectations, and students change from year to year, it can be nerve-wracking to the point that you are so anxious the night before you can't sleep! In my experience, I feel a lot better knowing that my classroom is ready, my lesson plans are ready, my activities are copied and ready to go, because the last thing you want on the first week of school is to still be decorating, copying, and running around crazy because you don't have everything finished! 

In this blog post, I'm going to share with you some of my mentor texts, anchor charts, craftivities, interactive notebooks, science investigations, and graphing activities that I do during the first week. Maybe this post will help you get some ideas so you're not so anxious...well, maybe just a little! LOL

FIRST DAY of SCHOOL:
Set the stage for the entire year. The second the students walk in, greet them with a hug or a handshake. I teach them my safe greetings as they come in and they get to choose which one they want to do together. Here is a picture of my safe greetings: 

If you're interested in my safe greeting resource, click here 

Smile and be excited! Even though you're nervous, try not to show it. The parents are nervous too! You're going to have their child for many, many hours this year and they want to be reassured that you are the best fit for them.

On my student's desks, I have a blank piece of white construction paper, a small tub of play-do, and their name tag. I tell the students to build something that resembles an activity or vacation they experienced over the summer. After they build their object, then they are going to color a picture using 8 crayons. I tell them this because it helps to give them a longer task to work on so I can meet and greet parents and students who are coming in late. This activity takes a good 20 minutes. Its just enough time for me to get everyone in, take pictures, greet parents and take everyone to their desk.  Here is a pic of my desks on the first day of school: 

I make a PowerPoint of all my classroom rules, procedures, and expectations. I sit all the students on the carpet and we go over all the rules. This might take 2-3 sittings, but it is so worth it. I put pictures on my PowerPoint of my class from last year so they can see what it looks like.  We practice these routines:

1.) Sitting on the carpet: criss-cross applesauce
2.) Sitting in our desks: with tummies up
3.) Putting our backpack on our chair with both straps down
4.) Exchanging pencils from the pencil pails
5.) Raising our hand to speak and not blurting out
6.) Mr. Clicker Attention Getter: the students all look at me when I click Mr. Clicker- so they freeze and stop talking. We practice this about 100 times the first week! 

7.) Counting down from 10: all tummies are pushed in and the students have their thumbs up ready to listen. 
8.) Organizing their community tubs and what's inside of them.
9.) Using the restroom and flushing and washing our hands.
10.) Pushing our chairs in when we get up.
11.) Walking quietly to line up, with our wings and bubbles.
12.) Walking in the hallway quietly for secret walker.
13.) Earning bonus bucks for the treasure box.
14.) Saying "Thank you" when called on.
15.) Farm Contest: what is looks like and sounds like

If you're interested in reading about my Behavior Management Tips and Tricks, click here. It will explain about my Desk Contest.

Or, if you're interested in seeing my Behavior Management resource, click here.

These are just a few of the rules and procedures we discuss. Now, on to the academic and fun part! I think it would be easier for me to show you activities, mentor texts, and craftivities for each subject. Let's start with reading! 

I like doing a Kevin Henkes Author Study at the beginning of the year. I have his picture and photos of books in my Author Study center. In the colored bins, I have all of his books and book buddies.

If you're interested in checking out some of my Kevin Henkes linking literature resources, click here for Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse, and click here for Chrysanthemum. Click here for Wemberly Worried. 

If you're interested in checking out my Kevin Henkes Author Study resource, click here. Other books that are in the resource are: Chester's Way, Julius the Baby of the World and Owen. Here are some examples of writing craftivities that we do with Kevin Henkes:                                            

                                Lily's Purple Plastic Purse

                                                    Chrysanthemum

                                                    Wemberly Worried

Here are some interactive anchor charts and interactive notebooks that I use for reading:

                                   How Do We Treat Books? 

                                                    

                                                       What is Your Schema? 

                                                

                                                                  Text to Self Connection

                                                       I Can't is Buried

If you're interested in checking out my interactive notebooks and anchor charts resource, click here

                                                       Kissing Hand Craftivity

If you're interested in checking out my linking literature resource for The Kissing Hand, click here. We talk about how our emotions were the same as Chester Raccoon, and then we make this craftivity: 

                     Learning Our Initials with The Letters Are Lost

                                        

                                    Writing Mentor Texts

Here are some interactive anchor charts and interactive notebooks that I use for Writing: 

                                    Write From Your Heart

                                         What is a Dictionary? 

                      Student Dictionary for Writer's Workshop

If you're interested in the writing/spelling dictionary, click here

If you're interested in checking out my Writer's Workshop resource, click here.

 

Focus Poetry: 

Who doesn't love poetry! Here's a back to school poem called Special Me. 

I have poetry interactive notebooks with a weekly poem. We read the poem whole group as a shared reading, then we go over parts of speech and punctuation. The students get to glue in the poem and illustrate their mental image. 

If you're interested in checking out my focus poetry bundle, it has weekly poems for every month and holiday. Click here for the bundle. You can also purchase the fall and spring resource separately. Here is an example of my poetry center. This is where I display all of my weekly poems. The bundle also has these poems in large font to make your posters. 

                                                     Math Mentor Texts

                 Math Interactive Anchor Charts and Interactive Notebooks. 

                                   What are Mathematicians? 

                Click here for the Gumball Graphing Craftivity 

                    Click here for the Button Graph Craftivity 

       Click here for my Chicka Chicka Boom Boom graphing                craftivity.

If you're interested in my math interactive notebooks and anchor charts, click here

If you're interested in my graphing math unit with teddy bear counters, building blocks, buttons, letters, fingerprints, eyes, hair, names, and snap cubes, click here!

                               All About Me Mentor Texts

                                    All About Me Craftivities

                                 Me and My Family Tree

If you're interested in this family tree resource, click here

                                   A Rainbow of My Own

                                Super Cute Bulletin Board! 

If you're interested in A Rainbow of My Own resource, click here

                        The Little Engine That Could 

If you're interested in The Little Engine that Could resource, click here. This resource is perfect for teaching optimism and growth mindset! 

                                     Science Mentor Text 

If you're interested in check out my science interactive notebooks and anchor charts, click here

First Day of School Science Experiment: The Blooming Flower 

    All you need is the flower and a bowl of water. That's it! Super          easy to prepare! 

                              

This experiment will excite your students on the first day of school! Simply cut out a white flower (don't color it) and fold up the petals. Then have your students predict what will happen to the flower? Will it sink? Float? Will it collapse? Show your students the scientific method vocabulary cards and model a hypothesis. Then place the flower inside a bowl of water still folded up and watch the magic happen! The petals will unfold and turn into an open flower! Your students will get so excited about science that they will want to do more! I also send home a flower for my students to experiment and teach their parents. They LOVE this! 

If you're interested in check out my Blooming Flower resource, click here

If you're interested in checking out my Fahrenheit Friday BUNDLE with science experiments and investigations for the whole year, click here

And there you have it! I know it seems like a lot, but you know what they say...its better to plan too much than to plan too little. I hope you got some great ideas for the first week of school and I hope everyone has a fantastic school year! Please comment below and follow my blog! Happy Teaching!

                                              Love, Kara