Leprechaun Twist and Super Scientist in Full Swing!

So I know it's been forever since I've posted, and I could tell you all about my horribly busy life...(teacher, mother, student, wife, etc.) - so pretend I did {Blah, Blah, Blah} - Now I feel better! :)

I just had to share these Leprechaun posters we did when we returned from Spring Break.  The wanted posters are from Erica Bohrer and you can find them here.  Instead of drawing a picture this year, my kiddos dressed up as leprechauns.  Yep!  I bought a green plastic hat, bow tie, shamrock sunglasses, and some stick on beards and my students were transformed!  We laughed so hard and had so much fun taking these pictures. Here are some of my students  leprechauns!

Even the GIRLS wanted the beard and mustache! 

I printed out their pictures, cut them to fit the poster and they loved writing about the wanted leprechaun (themselves)!

I wanted to share some photos of my SUPER scientists (and I do mean SUPER)!  I am amazed every year at how excited and very serious my first graders are about their experiments.  If you would like to know more about the Super Scientist Experiments in my room, you can read my original post along with some freebies that accompany this project.  Now to see the magic:

  Erupting Volcano

Tornado in a Bottle

Oil Bubbles

Rising Heat

Magic Milk

Liquid Mix-Up

Screaming Glass

Acid Test

Dancing Raisins

Air Pressure Water Rocket

We still have many more left and they can't wait until it is their turn.  I love to see their eyes light up, and the "ooohs" and "ahhhs" and "wows" as they perform their experiments.  I hope to make a presentation with all my super scientist experiments so that students (and parents) will have a keepsake of all the awesome science experiments we did throughout the year.  

Tomorrow is Friday... Yay!  Going to see Hunger Games this weekend.  Any fans out there?  Can't wait!

Science Experiment ~ Mayflower Freebie!

It's hard to believe it is already time to go back to school.  I've had a wonderful break and wanted to post about an experiment my class did before the break.  Since our school is a K-5 elementary, I was able to get together with one of our 5th grade teachers to plan an activity involving both her 5th grade class and my 1st grade class.  We began by learning a little bit about the Mayflower and toured the ship online, learning about various sections of the ship. 

The experiment we decided to try with our 5th grade buddies is by no means an original idea, but actually came from Deanna Jump and her Simple Science Volume 1 packet.  I purchased this packet and tweaked the activity a little to fit our needs.  This experiment originally was to be used with the book In 1492 by Jean Marzollo, but since we were approaching Thanksgiving we focused on the Mayflower. 

After discussing the huge ship, the passengers, the cargo and everything the large ship held, it made us wonder how does this boat stay afloat?  Students then went back to stations where they were given a ball of clay, a tub of water and a recording sheet.  The first thing students did was drop the ball of clay in the water and record what happened.

Students did predict that the clay would sink and many students had the same conclusion... the ball of clay sank!  Now it was time to think about how they could turn the clay into a sailing ship.  Could they make this ball of clay float?  Students thought of a design and began shaping the clay with the help of their 5th grade buddies.  It took several tries before finally we began to hear shouts of "Our ship is floating!"

Everyone was so excited to look around at their neighbor's ship to see what theirs looked like. 

The 5th graders were just "helpers" in this activity, but they were so encouraging to my first graders and allowed them to think about this experiment.  It was so great to look around and see the level of engagement of all students. 

The experiment had really just begun, because once students got their ship to sail, they must now see how many bear counters it can hold (and record their information).  Let's just say it became a little bit of a competition.

This ship only held about three bears.  But the next ship held much more.

And some learned just how many their ship could hold before it started to sink.

Once students had recorded all their information, they cleaned up their area and then went to buddy read around the room until all students were finished.  I think they enjoyed this as much as the experiment!

Once everything was cleaned up and put away, we came together again and each partner was able to share with our group just how many bears their ship held.  We had punched out some bear dicuts that we wrote the number of bears on for each partner and placed on a large bar graph based on the amount of bears.  I was so caught up in the lesson, I forgot to get a picture of this.  I can tell you though, that the largest number of bears a ship could hold was 23!  We were all amazed! 

I made a recording sheet to go with this activity to include more writing space for my first graders.  It is a freebie and click on the image to get your sailing ships experiment recording sheet.

Overall this was an excellent experience for all involved and we have decided to try and get our 5th grade buddies to visit again for another activity soon.  We hope to get together again before Christmas.  Do any of you have upper grade level "buddies"?  How often do you get together and what type of activities do you do?  Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and I guess Christmas is just around the corner. (I'm not sure I'm ready!)  Have a great evening!

BEWARE....of a really L.O.N.G. post!

Has it really been over 10 days since I have posted?  WOW!  All I can say is we have been VERY busy and with Parent Teacher Conferences over and done with, I hope things SLOW down a bit.  I am happy to say that I had 100% participation and was able to visit with each and every one of my fabulous first grade parents!  To get caught up, I hope you don't mind that this may be a VERY long post... so read on if you DARE!

First, I would like to share our Zoo Animal Research projects we did after returning from our field trip from the St. Louis Zoo.  If you missed that post, read about it here.  We read a bunch of non-fiction books about animals we would like to research.  We were able to see many of these during our field trip.  After reading the books, we would make anchor charts (tree maps) about the facts we learned about these animals.  They are NOTHING fancy, but here are a few of our anchor charts.

After learning about all these animals, students picked their favorite and wrote down facts about their zoo animal on a graphic organizer that looks like this:

Click on the picture to download.

We were going to take this information and write it in a report format.  I wanted them to have that copy practice and forming complete sentences using our "tree map" style.  However, we just were too pressed on time and we wanted to display our projects during Parent Teacher conferences.  So we decided to keep our information on this piece of paper and create our animals out of construction paper.  The SKY was the limit and I was SO impressed with how these turned out.  I love that they are not cookie cutter and they are each unique and designed by first graders.  Here are a few closeups of their animals.

Here is how we displayed these in the hallway.  I also placed some pictures of our zoo trip around our reports for the parents to view while waiting.

In addition to writing our Zoo Reports, the students wrote some spooky stories last week that we were able to hang up on our OWL display wall in the classroom. 

And here is a close up of one of the stories.  I love how she incorporated "spooky owls" in her story at the end.  Do you think her teacher likes owls?

We also learned about compound words and created compound word bats to "fly" around our classroom.  Students learned to recognize two seperate words in a compound word.  We wrote compound words on the bellies of our bats and wrote the two words that make up the compound word on each wing.  Here is a picture:

Then we hung them from the ceiling on our name clips.  I posted about this on Frogs, Bees, and Under the Seas as a guest blogger during their Spooktober celebration. I also posted about a fun Halloween treat also...(edible eyeballs)!  The kids LOVED them.  So if you have time to swing by there, check it out! :)

Next week is Red Ribbon Week for us.  We had a door decorating contest, so we had to come up with an idea for our door.  I HONESTLY tried to stay away from owls, but when I came up with this saying, "OWL" pledge to be drug free... I just HAD to do owls.  They turned out super cute (I think).  Here is a picture of our door.

And here is a closeup of the bottom of the door.  I took a picture of the kids "pledging" to be drug free.  The winner gets a pizza party so we have our fingers crossed.  Although, there are so many great door creations, it will be tough.  I may just have to make that a separate post and share with you all of the red ribbon week door decorations. 

How do you celebrate Red Ribbon Week?  We have dress up days every day next week - starting with wearing RED on Monday.  Thanks for hanging in there if you made it to the end of this post!  Have a great weekend ~

Super Scientist ~ Changes

I had a few people ask about the Parent Letter that is included in the Super Scientist Pack.  It has "First Grade" in a couple of locations so I made it more generic to use across grade levels by just referencing Our Super Scientist Journal.  If there are any other changes that you would like, please let me know.  I don't mind at all.  Here is the more generic version that should work for multiple grades.

Click HERE for the download. Have a great night...

SMILES ~

Super Scientist ~ Repost Freebie!

I have been getting lots of compliments and comments about my Super Scientist post.  I decided to repost all my forms in a packet for teachers to use.  Take a look at my original post to see how Super Scientist is introduced during the year.  It is absolutely one of my favorite things in first grade!  My teacher buddy who started this with her class is a looping teacher so she actually started Super Scientist with her Kindergartners.  It is a good idea to make up a schedule that lists the students name and week they are to be the Super Scientist.  It also informs the parents of the upcoming activity.  I did not print out a schedule at first and I had a lot of "When is it my turn?" and "Can I go next?"  With having a schedule, I can have the students check the schedule to see how many students are before them... I don't even have to look at the schedule after I pass it out - when the Super Scientist is finished, everyone (including the NEW Super Scientist) lets me know that it is THEIR turn!

Click HERE to download a copy! 

SUPER SCIENTIST

I want to share with you one of my FAVORITE things in First Grade.  After January, our first grade class begins a Super Scientist Experiment each week.  First, I MUST say this is NOT my original idea.  One of my teacher buddies has done this with her first graders for a couple of years.  I believe she got the idea from Mrs. Meacham's site. 

Here is what we do... a student is chosen to be the Super Scientist and is sent home with a Science Experiment book, a Super Scientist Journal that includes a Lab Report and Pictures of past experiments and a letter to the parents explaining the procedure.  Here is the book I send home with my students:

Students usually choose an experiment to do from this book, however they do not have to.  They may come up with an experiment on their own if they choose.  This book has AWESOME color photos and ranges from very simple to more difficult science experiments.  It also uses items that you can usually find around the house.  

Once students have chosen their experiment they must fill out a LAB REPORT.  I have included a picture of one below.

CLICK HERE to get yours!

Then students prepare all of their materials for the big day and bring them to school on their scheduled day to share their experiment.  Students can't wait to wear the lab coat and safety goggles.  I have to document everything and arrange the pictures in a word document.  I then print two copies.  One for our Super Scientist Journal and one for the student. 

So that other first graders get a chance to see a variety of experiments, our first grade classes SKYPE with each other.  Since we have document cameras that can be used as web cams, we create free accounts and can see into each others classroom via our projectors and smartboards.  Students can then ask questions about the experiment and the Super Scientist is actually being interviewed by the other students.  It is amazing at the answers these first graders give.  It shows just how much they understand!

The students then complete a JOURNAL PAGE about the experiment and it is compiled into a book for the Super Scientist of the week along with their pictures.  Here is the journal page:

 CLICK HERE for the journal page!

I would like to share the lab picture page I create of a student after their experiment.  Here is what the page looks like without the smiley faces ~ privacy.

 Notice the microphone in the last picture on the table.  This allows the student to talk to the other class that is watching via SKYPE.  I am also sharing the Super Scientist Journal Cover (that contains all the lab reports and pictures for our class), and the Parent Letter that is sent home with the Science Book and Journal.

CLICK HERE for a copy!

Here is the Parent Letter.... Addressed to the next Super Scientist!

CLICK HERE for your copy!

I will try to post some pictures of the actual journal I send home with the students and some of the completed lab reports.  I would love to hear about your favorite things in first grade or if you do anything similar for science!