Plants and Spring?

I wish I could say it feels like spring here, but alas, I am home today because of blizzard conditions and a chance of up to 20” of snow.  Not so fun.

So, I’m going to quickly share with you what I have in my math and literacy drawers this week.

Here is a sampling….

If you’re interested in these centers, they are still 20% off until tonight! You can find them here!

I’m also looking for some things from YOU!

What topics would you like me to blog about?

What questions do you have for me?

Leave a comment below so I can fill up my rather empty blogging calendar with ideas!!

Plant Centers are FINALLY done!

We started our plant unit last week, and the kids have been trying out a new organizational format with our math and literacy centers and so far it’s been a hit!

I’ve been working really hard on these activities to make sure they align with the common core and are fun!

Love this sweet little craftivity by Cara!

We are expecting a bit of a blizzard tonight here in the upper midwest (boo), so it’s hard to wrap my mind around the idea of planting our flowers next week. This is the worst spring (winter) we’ve had in a LONG time!

Anyways, if you’re interested, here is a peek at my Math and Literacy Centers for Little Sprouts! I’ve created 3 separate bundles: one with both math and literacy and separated math and literacy.  I hope you like it!

 

 

The first five people to guess my favorite flower (I have 2!) will win a copy of this pack! Go!!

**Update!** That was fast!  My favorites are tulips and daisies! Daisies were my wedding flower, but if I would have gotten married earlier it would have certainly been tulips!

Congrats to:  Alexa (Bilingual Scrapbook), Shelley, Kristi, Mr. Naparalla and Gwen!

**Alexa, Ms. Naparalla, and Gwen send me your e-mail! growingkinders@gmail.com**

Plants and Seeds

We have just 4 days left until we are done for the year! I don’t have much for you – I guess I’ve been a slacker in taking pictures these last few weeks. 

We did our unit on plants a few weeks ago. I don’t have many pictures … sorry!  Here are a few that I had on my computer:

We did this fun painting project during free choice time at the art center. The kids just dipped a plastic cup in paint and then added the petals with a q-tip.  They just used a marker to add the stem, leaves, and grass.  Later in the week we measured the flowers with unifix cubes.  This project was inspired by an idea from Kim Adsit.

This writing project is one of my favorites of the year!  We read the book My Garden by Kevin Henkes, and the kids create their own gardens.  Love their creativity and imaginations!

Here are our cute little flower pots that we made.  It might be hard to see in the picture, but I cut up little squares of tissue paper and the children glued it to their cups (they painted it on with a mixture of glue and water).  I only used primary colors so the children could see the color mixing.  The signs came from Kim Adsit’s plant unit.

I’ll be back tomorrow with some pictures from my beach/summer unit! I forgot to snap pics on Friday!

Plants and Seeds

Wow, I can’t believe I am going back to April for postings!  How crazy is that?! Obviously I was busy writing my final paper at that time and had no time to do anything else!

So, here is a glimpse of what we did in our classroom when we learned about plants and seeds!

We made our adorable Plant Books – the kids used these crayons to decorate the cover:

 

I love how they make the colors just POP on construction paper.  They are also fun to add to the art center every now and then to spice things up a bit!

 

We read lots of fiction and non-fiction books this week about plants and seeds.  One of my favorite authors, Kevin Henkes, has this BEAUTIFUL story:

I love, love, love, love, love this book! His illustrations are stunningly beautiful and I love how imaginative it is!

After we read, we brainstormed what OUR gardens would look like if they could grow anything we wanted.  Here is a sample of their writing:

 

 

 

 

   

Here are some pictures of our plant journals.  We included observations about our plants, things we learned, as well as story responses.

Here are our sweet little plants we planted.  Each child got to pick their own seed, but they didn’t get to see which pack it came from.  They made predictions of which plant they think they planted.  These sweet little labels came from Kim Adsit’s pack.

{LITERACY CENTERS}

We pulled miniatures out of a can and wrote the word next to the correct long vowel.  Don’t ‘cha just love the Lakeshore Miniatures?! 

This page came from my blogging buddy Julie Lee.  She is a total rock star! I get a lot of ideas from her.  The cute little carrots were found at the dollar tree.  This center we found was quite challenging for some kiddos, so I put a green mini-dot on the back of the first letter and a red mini-dot on the back of the last letter.  Simplified things a bit for those that were having a tough time.

Another great center inspired by Julie.  The children chose a fruit or a veggie and write a sentence using that sight word.  Can you spot what’s missing from this sentence?

At this center the kids chose a stamp and filled in the missing vowel sound. 

This one came from Julie as well.  The kids matched up the flower pot blend to the correct picture.

{MATH CENTERS}

Most of these centers were inspired by or from Julie over at Mrs. Lee’s Kindergarten.

Counting by 10s with watermelons. 

Adding with fruits and veggies.

Patterning

Coin values and coin combinations.

Practicing with time to the hour and half-hour. 

Some other ideas: (These are from the head start room down the hall!)

Aren’t these just lovely?  They look so pretty hanging from the ceiling!