Life Cycles and Text Features

This week at school, we learned about life cycles of plants and in honor of Halloween, we did the life cycle of a pumpkin on paper plates and they came out totally cute! Of course I saw it first on Pinterest, so I HAD to try it! 

Here are a couple of examples:

In other news, in reading this week, our mini-lessons have been focused on non-fiction text features. One of my colleagues came up with the idea of having the kids do a scavenger hunt in different non-fiction magazines (Weekly Reader, Scholastic News, Time for Kids, and National Geographic for kids) and glue examples into a lotus diagram. They came out awesome! They had to find a certain number of examples for each feature and glue it in the lotus. 

Here are a few: 

I have more examples but for some reason, they are not inserting correctly. 

Anyway, it was a fun way to review the different text features they learned this week and I am using it as a major project grade. 

More fun stuff to come later!

Pumpkin Fun and Red Ribbon Week!

I shared with you last week the Great Pumpkin Seed Mystery Lesson, and I wanted to share with you the photos of our pumpkin being planted.

And now....the seed is germinating!! My kids were sooo excited when they came in yesterday to check on their plants and there were several beginning to grow! 

Tomorrow, we will go back into our science notebooks and record our first observations! 

On another note, it is Red Ribbon Week and I wanted to share our class door decoration because.....well...it's just freakin' cute!

My theme was "Make No Bones About It! We will be drug free!

The kids made chalk skeletons and wrote how they would stay drug free on the print out. 

Here is a close up: 

And because I love sharing stuff, here is the printable in case you want to use it in your classrooms next year! There are two files. One is the skeleton head cut outs and the other is the actual paper where they wrote their drug free responses. I am attaching the word versions so you can change it if you need to.

What are some themes you guys use for Red Ribbon Week?


The door judging will take place tomorrow so I will let you know if we win! =) 

I have also done, "Don't Get Caught in the Web of Drugs," with spider webs stretched across the door and students stuck their drug free responses and little plastic spiders in the web. 

My neighbor this year used, "Drugs are Corny," and had students use a response sheet like mine. The kids decorated a cartoon candy corn to add to the door. It was super cute!

I will have more coming about the life cycle of a pumpkin this weekend so stay tuned!

Thanksgiving Newsletter

Several of you have been requesting my a Thanksgiving themed newsletter, so here it is! I just used clipart from Microsoft Word.

Click the image below for the editable version!

I have more to share later, but I'm taking a night off from doing school work and going to play music trivia with friends!

The Great Pumpkin Seed Mystery!

Pinterest has so inspired me to revamp my Animal and Plant Adaptation to add some Halloween flare! So, I came up with the Great Pumpkin Seed Mystery!! 

The students have to use the clues to help me figure out why a pumpkin grew right in my yard! 

Here is the full lesson plan:

EQ: What are the stages of growth in the life cycle of a plant?

Read Aloud: From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons

AS: Complete a plants have, need, give tree map and add to over the next few days. 

TS: Tell class that something strange happened! A pumpkin grew right in my yard. I have no idea how this happened. Ask students to help you figure it out. Lead students to come up with you threw last years pumpkin away in that spot. Could we conduct a test to find out? CW observe pumpkin seeds and record in journals. CW discuss what things the seed needs in order to grow and record on tree map.

SS: CW then plant a pumpkin seed to observe the life cycle of over the next few weeks. SW record observations on a class chart over the next few weeks.

Click the image below for a copy of the flipchart to guide the lesson. The flipchart was created using Activ Inspire Promethean software, so it may not work if you don't have it installed on your computer.

Here is a copy of the science notebook tape in that I created to go along with it! Click below for access!

Stay tuned over the next couple of weeks for the completed Plant and Animal Unit! I can't wait to share!


And don't forget, there are only 3 days left of my Halloween-spiration Linky Party! Go share your Halloween cuteness!! 

South Carolina Region Cookies

I know it has been several days since my last post, but I have just been swamped at school after being at a wedding this past weekend in Charleston (which was beautiful, btw!)

To end our South Carolina geography unit, we decorated South Carolina shaped cookies that correlated to the different regions of our state. We have done this activity for the last two years and the kids absolutely love it! It is so much fun! I am providing the flipchart we used to guide the activity and also pictures of us in action! 

Click the image for the flipchart.

Here are some photos from the activity!

This is just the blank SC cookie before they decorated it.

Here is the finished product!

Other fun pics!

We displayed the flipchart in the cafeteria and reviewed the regions. As we went through, we discussed which candy item would best represent that region.

Regions and candies:

Blue Ridge - Chocolate chips to represent mountains

Piedmont - fruit roll ups to represent red clay soil

Sandhills - Yellow sprinkles to represent sandy soil

Inner Coastal Plain - brown sprinkles to represent the good soil

Outer Coastal Plain - White sprinkles to represent how rice is grown here

Coastal Zone - Swedish fish (I don't think an explanation is needed! haha)

This activity could be adapted for many different things! So even if you don't live or teach about South Carolina, you can still take this idea and run with it. I have seen it done to review the transcontinental railroad and I have also used it for reviewing the parts of plant and animal cells. 

If you have any questions about this, please e-mail me at glauren4556@gmail.com and I would be happy to help!