Five for Friday

It was definitely a Freaky Friday. Some people will have the chance to experience a solar eclipse, supermoon, and the spring equinox today. Here's what I experienced...

 

Yep, snow. On the 1st day of Spring! Guess Mother Nature thought it was April Fool's Day.

We've been rocking around the clock learning all about time. Our 3rd grade objectives are identifying the hour, half hour, and quarter hour, identifying and writing minutes, and determining elapsed time. First, we made clock foldables to identify the hour and half hour. The clock is 2 layers so students have a visual aid for minutes. I found the free templates at The Adventures of a Polka Dotted Teacher. I used cardstock for the bottom circle, printer paper for the top circle, construction paper for the hands, and brads to attach everything. Here's what my model looked like:

 

After drawing  mini clocks divided into sections to show o'clock, quarter past, half past, and quarter to we used the Smartboard to practice identifying time. The students LOVED playing the interactive games  Stop the Clock and Bang on Time.

                      

Another favorite activity was going on an "I Spy Time" scavenger hunt. I found the free clock patterns and recording sheet at What the Teacher Wants. I whited out the dots and added letters and lines so students could identify time not necessarily in 5 minute intervals, then laminated and hung them around the classroom and hallway. Students recorded their answers on the "I Spy Time" recording sheets...

 

 

 

We continued working on our plant unit this week learning about pollination. We used a bee puppet, coffee filter flowers, and paprika "pollen" to demonstrate what happens when pollinators such as bees fly from flower to flower. Here's our "bee" landing on the 1st flower, where the paprika pollen sticks to his "legs"...

 And, here's our bee landing on the 2nd flower where he deposits the paprika pollen...

Another plant activity we did this week was making "Grass Heads". Students designed faces on construction paper, which I hotglued to plastic cups. Then, they filled the cups with potting soil and sprinkled grass seed on top. Hopefully, the seeds sprout so our grass heads aren't bald!

 

 (Note the snow outside. Ack!)

During one of our learning activities today a student announced, "This is hard!" which lead to a chorus of  "Tests are hard!" and "Writing is hard!" and "Standardized tests are hard!" and "School is hard!"...you get the idea. The student who made the 1st declaration then proclaimed, "The only thing that is easy in life are video games. If you do bad or die, you just hit replay." I couldn't help it...that statement made me laugh! 

Wishing you a weekend filled with laughter and learning!

Five for Friday

This week was a short one, starting with two snow days due to the 1st  blizzard of 2015. While parts of the Northeast got blasted, the blizzard was more of a bust here in NJ. Instead of the predicted 2 feet, my area got maybe 6 inches. Which was fine with me as I can think of more fun ways to spend the day than without electricity or digging out! Here's the view outside my backyard once the storm cleared...

 

 

Our classroom Smartboard has been installed and we've been having so much fun using it! We've had interactive lessons, watched learning videos, and even listened to classical music while working on drafts during Writing Workshop. It made me grin when one student asked me if "Chopsticks" was playing in today's world of Miley Cyrus and Justin Beiber. Here we are using the Smartboard to classify renewable and nonrenewable natural resources during our science soil study...

Speaking of soil, we got down and dirty examining soil samples. We drew what we found and identified 4 important uses for soil...

We also learned about the three types of soil and 4 layers of soil by making flip books and watching Smartboard videos about them.

Learning the steps of dividing with remainders was tough, but we accomplished it! I tried to make lessons as visual as possible using manipulatives that students divided into groups, anchor charts with helpful hints to remember the steps of dividing, and videos. One fav was long division with Mr. Duey...

 

 

Another hit was "Division Dunk". The class was divided into 2 teams. Each teammate got to "dunk" a basketball into a net if he or she solved the division problem on it correctly. The activity is available at my TPT store...

Division Dunk 

 

Another product available at my TPT store is Snowglobe Stories

Students wrote stories about waking up to discover they were trapped in a snowglobe and what happened. Our writing was accompanied by a craftivity where we made paper paper snowglobes depicting a scene from our stories. Glitter glue and foam snowflakes made our work sparkle...

Here's the model I made to show students...

 Enjoy the weekend!!!