Fraction Flowers

In honor of spring we made some fraction flowers.  As the end of the year approaches we have been reviewing many of our math skills.  Fractions happens to be one of our favorite topics to create learning centers for and practice activities.   This idea came from Ed Emberley's Picture Pie book.
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The children used circle templates (the inside of a masking tape roll works great as a tracer) to make the number of circles they wanted to use on white paper.  Next, they colored the circles their favorite colors.  Then, they folded their circles into halves, fourths, or eights to make equal parts.  You might have to do a mini-lesson on folding.  They cut the circles on the fold lines to get their fractional pieces.  On a white background, they laid out their pieces to make a fraction flower and then glued their pieces in place. On the back of the paper they had to write the fraction for each flower (1/9 blue, 2/9 pink).  I think they turned out to be pretty cute!  I was thinking that they could also be used for a Mother's Day card.  

Carried Away

Our class had a ton of fun learning prefixes and suffixes!  As an informal assessment students had to create a bundle of balloons (a parent volunteer used the die cut machine and had them prepared in advance) to show a prefix, a root word, and the new word they had created.  On the back of the balloons they did the same thing with suffixes.  To make it a little more exciting I took their picture to attach to the bottom of their balloons.  I think they were a huge success!

After a long drum roll... I am finally going to share our Dr. Seuss pictures.  The students had such a fun time deciding what they would protect if they were the Lorax.  We even got our administrators and specials teachers to join in the fun and take their pictures with "the mustache".  I made truffula trees after seeing a post from Mrs. Lodges's Library blog http://mrslodgeslibrary.blogspot.com/2012/02/truffula-trees.html.   The students also got to make their own truffula pencil toppers for the celebration.  This idea would be natural fit for Earth Day in April.  Visit our store at teachers notebook (http://www.teachersnotebook.com/shop/twotangledteachers) to get the graphic organizers we used for free.   As the Lorax teaches us, nothing will change UNLESS....

Great Openings

Wow, how time gets away from you!  We have been working on "all about animal books" for our expository unit in writing.  When it came time to choose an opening we really struggled to find openings that would grab the reader's attention.  So we decided to take a day to re-teach great openings for writing.  The children brainstormed great openers, thinking about what they would like to read about and we connected this to great food.  It sounds sort of funny at first, but they really know what the like to eat, so we had them think about food they would open up and take a bite of.   Then, we had each of them go back to their opening for their stories and find the one that would make readers want to open their easy and read it.  Once they picked the best opener they wrote it on a circle to represent an open mouth.  They then used a white circle to make their face and glued a small white circle that they wrote the opening on, to their face.  We only glued the top of the circle because underneath we wrote what happened next in our  story.  They turned out to be pretty cute and now the children always refer to them when we talk about what a great opening should sound like!

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

In celebration of his birthday our classes had fun reading The Lorax and deciding what they would protect if they were the Lorax.  First, we read The Lorax as a class and then completed the graphic organizer.  Next, we brainstormed things that they would like to protect (dolphins, the oceans, clean air...).  After that they completed their own graphic organizer and finally published their own paragraphs as the Lorax.  For added fun they cut out mustaches and we took their pictures with them.  Check back later to see the results!

Once upon a time...

there were two teachers who loved sharing their excitement for teaching and learning.  It is easy to get stuck in the monotony of the daily grind, but if you can find a spark of inspiration it can change your students' experiences and views on learning.  We have found many inspirations in the lessons we have read about through blogs and teacher created materials.  Now, we want to share the gems we have created with the hope to continue the chain of inspiration.  We hope you will follow us on our learning adventures.