Spiders!

We had a great time this week reading and learning about spiders.  It was a great introduction to fiction and non-fiction books.  We began the week reading Eric Carle's The Very Busy Spider.  The children loved the repetitiveness of this book, and soon chimed in right along with me.   I made sequencing cards with DJ Inkers clip art for the children to wear when we re-read the story on Tuesday.  We were supposed to make a list of all our characters in our reader's workshop notebooks, but that never happened! Time got away from us!  I also forgot to snap a picture of the children with the re-telling cards! I'll do that this week! 

 

Here are a couple of spider activities that we did in our math centers that I posted earlier.

 This is the Jill Egglton poem that we read throughout the week.  On Friday, we highlighted all of the S's and illustrated the poem.  I was so proud of this little guy! It was the best drawing of  a person that he has ever done! He copied mine, but it's a start, right??!

 We also played a fun game called "Spill the Spiders."  This is another one of Kim Adsit's fabulous ideas!  Put a select number of items in a container.  Sit in a circle and pass around the container until you stop the music.  When the music stops, the child will dump out the spiders and count them back into the container.  This is great for one-to-one correlation as well as counting skills.  I've done this a few times with other seasonal things, the kids LOVE it! I keep adding a few each time so it gets progressively harder.  You could also have them count backwards when taking the spiders out (just tell them how many there are to start!)

My mom was cleaning out her Halloween decorations just in time to give me this great spider web! We brainstormed words that start with /s/ and added them to our spider web.  I also had a GIGANTIC spider web that I hung from the ceiling! I wish I would have taken a picture of it before I took it down to hang up our spider glyphs!

We also read many non-fiction books about spiders.  We made a chart like this one from Deanna Jump's Blog.

 I used 2 experiments from Deanna's Simple Science packet - the children LOVED them!

 First, we did an experiment to learn how spiders kill and eat their prey.

Then we did an experiment to understand why spiders don't stick to their webs!  You can find the directions for the experiment as well as the response sheets at TPT .

I had planned to read this book as part of our preparation for our spider glyphs, but when I went to get it out on Friday - it wasn't in my lesson plan drawers.  Hmmmm.... I think my wonderful 3 1/2 year old swiped it out of my school bag and it never got to school! Oh well.. I had a back-up plan.

 

We read this version instead - the children LOVED it!

Earlier in the week we read this book:

 

Using these two books, we created a fun spider glyph! (Although my hand still hurts from cutting out those little spider legs!)

 We then analyzed our data from our glyphs.  This glyph as well as a great emergent reader (and many other spider activities that I didn't have time for) can be found in Deanna's Spiders packet on  Teachers Pay Teachers.

We also did a sorting activity on the whiteboard that came from Mailbox Magazine.

 

At the end of the week, we made a venn diagram comparing and contrasting elements of fiction and non-fiction books.  These are also on Kim's Reading Comprehension packet.  I forgot to snap a picture, so here is the picture from Kim Adsit's website 

Up next...oceans!

Math Centers

The new system for math and literacy centers is working so great! I'm really loving having 8 groups!  For math centers, the children choose where they want to go in the room - all have made really great choices this week!  I don't mind if they work on the floor, at a counter, or at a table, as long as they are getting their work done!  I keep the math centers in those 3 drawer sterlite drawers - I just call the kids by groups and give them their drawers.  The literacy centers are placed at different places throughout the room.  During literacy center time, the kids go to those spots. (Since some have pocket charts, they need to be at a specific spot!)

Here is a picture of the rotation chart:

 The numbers are for the math center drawers, and the letters for literacy centers.

This is how the centers look for literacy centers - there is a matching sign on the wall (or in this case the easel) and on the basket.  I think this has helped the kids know exactly where they need to be.  Phew!

Here are the math centers we did this week, and will continue to do next week:

 Halloween eraser graph - I found the dracula and cat erasers at the Target Dollar Spot, I had the pumpkin erasers (but I saw them at target this year), and I used plastic spiders.  I put them in a bucket and let the kids take a hand full.

 Spider addition:  the kids rolled the dice, counted that many spiders and put them on the first web, they did the same thing for the second web and counted how many they had all together.

 This cute clip art is from DJ Inkers -- love the monsters!  The kids measured them with unifix cubes and links.

 This idea came from Mailbox Magazine - the kids throw the ghost in the air and color the side that the ghost lands on.  When one side is full, they stop and compare with their partner.

 The children practiced writing their numbers to 30, and then counted the little lima bean ghosts into the pumpkins.

 Patterning with Halloween stamps. (From Target last year)

 Adding with cat playing cards (from Target last year)

Teen number sequencing

Halloween Literacy Centers

Do you ever feel like you had to keep adjusting the way you do things to fit the needs of your class from year to year?  Earlier, I posted about my literacy centers and writing time - splitting the kids in half so some were writing and some were working at literacy centers. Well, that didn't work for this group of kiddos.  I have a pretty rowdy bunch with some pretty significant behaviors.  I also didn't feel like I was getting in a good writing lesson plus share time for the kiddos.  So, I went back to the old model of 4 rotating centers (4 because my Mondays are wacky and it worked out better to have 4!)  Well, the groups got too big, and kids were not working well together.  So, I came up with the buddy system.  The kids got to choose their own partners and they work with these partners during both math and literacy center time.  (They are also their journal share partners).  Since the kids are working in partners, I need to have more than 4 centers.  So, they are now rotating through 8 centers for 2 weeks. (There are also two groups of 3 - I made sure that these groups included the kiddos that get extra intervention support, so they are not always their for the full literacy and/or math center time).

Here are the literacy centers for this week:

 Listening Center:  We are reading books about monsters this week, so the kids are listening to The Great Monster Hunt.  On their response sheet they will draw a picture of what they thought the monster looked like and what it actually did look like.  This is a really cute book!

 Sight word haunted house: The windows on the house open and close, the kids look behind the windows and read and write the sight word they see.

 Letter/Sound Sort:  This idea came from Deanna Jump.  The children cut apart the pictures and sort them according to their beginning sound.  This will be a center that will stay the same.  The kids can try to label their pictures when they are done.

 Spider Rhymes:  The children find the matching pictures that rhyme.  I gave them a little extra support with this one by using matching scrapbook paper for the rhymes.  If they have trouble finding the rhymes, they could look at the paper.  When they find the match, they write the words on their response sheet. (I made labels with the words and stuck them on the back).

 Sight Word Roll a Word: No explanation needed :)  This one will stay the same too! (Just the words will change!)

 Spooky ABC Shake up- I thought I had a picture of the cute cover - I'll try to remember to post one later.  I got this idea from First Grader...At Last.  She uses numbers and the kids write addition sentences.  I thought this was great for kinders though!

 Pocket Chart: The sight words of the week are like and my, so the children match the colored web to the color word.  They then wrote the word on a matching response sheet (I like my _____ spider web) and colored a spider at the end the same color.

 Poem Reconstruction:  10 Little Pumpkins.  This was the first poem reconstruction that we have done, so I kept it pretty simple.  The kids cut the strips out, and put it in order.  They can either read the number words or look at the number.  I made the pocket chart below to support their learning.