Happy Easter and Earth Day!

Good morning and Happy Easter!  I hope you are enjoying a fabulous day with friends and family.  May you also be able to sneak candy from your child's basket without being caught!  (How awesome are those Reese's Eggs!)  Even more importantly, may your students not eat Easter candy for breakfast in the morning!!!

I am excited for next week and teaching about Earth Day.  It even falls on a non-story week/ assessment week in our reading series, so I will have a little more time with it. 

Here is my packet of Earth Day activities I use with my class.  It is available in my TpT store.  I am going through it today and will probably be adding to it today.  If you have already bought it, you of course will get the update free, so keep an eye out.  I'm feeling a QR code activity coming!

Here are two freebies you may like!  The first is a Spring Break writing graphic organizer and paper.  (We had our Spring Break weeks ago, but I know many are beginning or ending their break now.

The second freebie is a "I Can Recycle" graphic organizer and writing paper.  I love doing this activity with the class.  I bring in a bag of "trash" from home and we sort through it to determine what we can recycle and what is trash.  You could even take it further and and add in composting.

Looking for more freebie fun?  I will be linking up with Classroom Freebies Manic Monday linky!  Check it out!

We love worms!

We had a great time getting dirty today!  As an extension of Earth Day we have been learning about earthworms.  We started out with the cute KWL chart I blogged about earlier.  Then we read several great books about these very interesting little guys.  The kids and I loved everyone of these books.  The stories were great and we even learned many interesting facts about worms.

We read a few traditional non-fiction books about earthworms as well as internet research.  The students were really engaged in all of these lessons.  

After reading and researching, the real fun began!  I spread out a plastic picnic table cloth and we gathered around.  I then proceeded to dump out a container of red wigglers!  I wish you could have seen their faces.  At this exact moment I was elevated to the coolest teacher and girl ever!!!  I was amazed at the kids who had never played with these little guys.  After talking about what we were observing, I told them how to handle them and not to squeeze to hard.  I also had to reiterate that "yes we learned they can regenerate a part of their body if a small section is cut off but we are not doing this today or ever!"  Then I paired them up and passed out plates of worms.  I then realized I should have also mentioned not to kiss the little wigglers!

After we examined out red wigglers with magnifying glasses and were over the gross factor, I pulled out another container.  This container was full of night crawlers and they were HUGE!  The kids loved them even more.  I added a night crawler to each place and we examined and compared the two.  The body parts were easier to see on these juicy little guys.  

Then we took the plates back to our seats and filled out an observation sheet of what they observed.  We measured them with rulers too!  I loved watching them try to figure out how to get them to be still and straight!  I took some great pictures too!  (I will admit it took us a little while to bring it back together after all this fun!)

Tomorrow we are comparing our worms to gummy worms!  I will be sure to share!

Have a great day and don't be afraid to get dirty!

I Speak for the Trees!

"I speak for the trees!"  is the popular theme from the Dr. Seuss classic The Lorax.  This is a great story to share during Earth Day and Arbor Day.  You can find some great resources for teaching The Lorax at www.seussville.com.  There are also some great ideas as always in the land of pinterest.

Why is it important to speak for the trees?  Why are trees so important?  This is a great time of year to teach about trees.  Their life cycles, the many different kinds and why they are important.  While teaching about trees and all they give us, don't forget "The Giving Tree."  Every year I read this story I have a child cry during the story.  This is often the first time they become so immersed and emotionally involved in a story that cry (as their teacher usually does too!)

Here is a summary writing activity to conclude your study of trees.  Click here to grab it free.

I hope you have a fabulous Earth Day and celebrate every day!

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!

There is so much going on in our room and we are having fun learning this Spring!  It is day 9 for our eggies!  (Only 18 or 19 days left to the big hatch!)  The kid were super excited to see the little guys moving inside their eggs today.  The writing where we predicted what will hatch turned out great.

I was blog stalking hopping and saw this adorable craft and post about Mrs. Dwyer's A+ Firsties big hatch today.  You should head over and check out her great pictures.  I showed them to my class today.  We are all so excited for our little guys to peep out!

We also started our Earth Day unit today.  After discussing the basics of the 3 R's we made these.  They look great in the hall.

As I was wasting time looking around the net today I saw this picture several places and I think it summarizes everything so well!  We can still learn from Mr. Rogers.  I really wished there were more people like him in our neighborhood.  I hope to remember this when we we get those hard questions from our kiddos.