Subtraction Game Freebie

Things are getting busy around here, but I found the time to make a cute subtraction game for my kids. 

They played today and it was a BIG hit:)

Click the image to grab your own copy. The directions are right on the board.

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Feelin' a Little Antsy ~ Perfect Picture Book Friday

My choice for this week's Perfect Picture Book Friday is a National Geographic KIDS book called Ants by Melissa Stewart.

Publisher: Scholastic, 2010

Genre: Non-Fiction, Early Reader, Ants

Intended Audience: Ages 5 to 10

Synopsis: This book is jam-packed full of interesting facts about ants, along with some big, bright pictures.

Opening Lines: Do you know how many ants live in the world? More than 10,000,000,000,000,000. That's a lot of ants!

Why I Like This Book: I read this book to my class yesterday and EVERYONE thought it was really cool. It ties in nicely with our writing unit on "All About" books. The large photographs and illustrations dominate each page so that visually it's very appealing and easy to follow. There are lots of labels, text inserts and zoom-in images. The text itself can be read by a competent Grade 1 reader. It also has some attention-grabbing sections, i.e., "The Ant Man" and "Superhero Ants". When we read the section on worker ants, the kids were amazed to learn that all the workers are females!

Here are some great resources for you:

Click this image to learn how to draw cartoon ants.

From DLTK's Crafts for Kids

DLTK's has the directions for this cute egg carton craft.

Source: Crafts Ideas for Kids

You could buy one of those cool looking ant farms from Scholastic OR you could click on this image and learn how to make your own ant farm.

This is a great fictional text to go along with your ant studies.

               

Enjoy your long weekend, my fellow Canadians!

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Look at our Beanie Babies!

We're right in the middle of a plant unit. The kids are loving it and so am I! 

Today we made our beanie babies.

After soaking some chick peas in water for about 15 hours, each child placed their very own chick pea into a snack-sized baggie with a damp paper towel. They decorated a name label and I added some wool to make it into a necklace.

They wore their beanie babies under their shirts all day long because they're learning that seeds need warmth and moisture to sprout, but they DON'T need sunlight.

Their job is to keep their "baby" safe all day, then the chick peas go into dark cubbies after school.  When the beans sprout we'll move them into pots.

We also dissected some kidney beans. Have you ever done that? It's great fun. 

First we observed the soaked bean and I wrote their observations on a chart. Then the kids carefully peeled off the seed coat and even more carefully pulled the cotyledons apart (I won't remember that word a week from now ~ haha!). They used their magnifying glasses to see if they could find the little embryo.

After that, they glued the parts of the bean onto this sheet and labelled the diagram.

Tomorrow we're spending the day at Butchart Gardens. If you've heard of Victoria, then you've probably heard of the gardens. They're very well known and absolutely gorgeous!

Have a great evening!

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A Most Unusual Book of Colours ~ And Some GREAT Resources

Our amazing librarian introduced me to an equally amazing book!

Title: The Black Book of Colours

Author: Menena Cottin

Illustrator: Rosana Faria

Publisher: Groundwood Books, 2008

Genre: Colours, Senses, Disabilities

Synopsis from Book List: How do you describe the colours of the rainbow to someone who cannot see them? This inventive picture book relates the ways Thomas experiences colours -- through his senses of smell, taste, touch, and hearing. To Thomas, red is the sting of a skinned knee or the tartness of an unripe strawberry; green, the scent of freshly mown grass.

Opening Lines: Thomas says that yellow tastes like mustard, but is as soft as a baby chick's feathers.

Why I Like This Book: This book is very unusual and innovative. I've never seen anything like it! The entire book is black, with embossed illustrations and braille. My class was fascinated with it and the realization that blind people can think of colours in terms of touch, taste, smell and sound.  One word of caution though: The braille is very difficult for blind people to read, as the dots aren't high enough to properly feel. A beautiful book for sure, but it's meant for sighted people to gain some insight into a blind person's world. 

Links to Resources:

1. Have your kids write colour poems, using only their 4 other senses. Click the image to grab.

2. Embossed art:

This beautiful artwork came from Kathy at Art Projects for Kids. For Grade 1's, I'd modify it slightly by giving the kids small chipboard to work on and have them make very simple and few glue designs. Be sure to visit Kathy for the complete directions.

3. No Time For Flash Cards has this fabulous list of resources. You really need to check this out!

Of course, AFTER I finished writing this post I realized that Beth, from By Word of Beth, already featured this book in Perfect Picture Book Friday!! Hopefully, Susanna (the hostess of this weekly linky) and Beth won't mind that I've done another review :)

Happy Friday, folks!

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Fast, Easy, Extremely Cute Mother's Day Gift & Card

Last week we went to Little Elf Garden Centre and the kids all received a marigold plant. I picked up some Dollar Store tin pots and three different acrylic paints. The kids dotted the pots with their fingerprints, then when the paint was dry they used black sharpies to add details to the dots to change them into bugs, flowers and the sun.  This is what they came up with! Aren't they adorable?  I have to admit though, I got the great idea from our kindergarten teacher:)

This morning we made our cards and they only took us an hour!

I used buff-coloured card stock folded in half. I called the kids over to my back table, one-by-one, and painted their hands with blue tempera for the bird body handprint.

While the blue paint was drying the kids used my fancy craft scissors (the ones that cut zig zag lines) to cut up pieces of brown paper bag. Those were glued on for the nest.

Then they added a little yellow paint for the beak and glued on a googly eye.

When everything was dry they printed:

I love you 

And you love me

I'll always be your chickadee!

Happy Mother's Day!

The card idea was from The Craft Nest

I know it's getting very close to Mother's Day, but if you're a last minute kind of guy or gal, these were seriously easy and relatively fast.

Before I go I'd like to introduce you to Jenny, a new blogger. I revamped her design for her last week and then Jenny asked me to guest post.  I hope you pop over to "Ignite Learning with Conscious Discipline" and say hi!

       

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Easy Pastel Art & Currently

Do you like using pastels in your classroom?

I used to avoid them because they tend to be messy, but this year we've used them a fair bit and I'm starting to LOVE them.

The colours are just so vibrant and the pastels themselves are so soft and easy to work with.

I read my class this gorgeous book called Happy. I blogged about it earlier and suggested a couple of activities to be done with the book (you can find that post here).

After we read and talked about Happy, I had the kids turn and face each other. We remembered the different emotion words together as a class and I asked the kids to demonstrate that feeling with their faces only. They did a great job and had lots fun with it. There were tons of giggles:)

After we did that I had each child think of one emotion word that they were going to use in their own picture.

Everyone received a piece of black construction paper and some pastels and went to work creating their fish.

I walked around and asked which emotion their fish would be expressing and printed the word in pencil on their sheets.

And here's what they came up with!  I just love them:)

Before I go, I'm going to join in on the Currently fun. Thanks, Farley!

Happy Sunday, friends!

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Chalk ... the book!

My choice for this week's Perfect Picture Book Friday is CHALK by Bill Thomson.

Publishing: Two Lions, March 2010

Genre/Topic: Juvenile Fiction; Imagination

Intended Audience: 4 to 8

Opening Lines: There are none! This is a wordless picture book :)


Brief Synopsis (from Amazon.ca): A rainy day. Three kids in a park. A dinosaur spring rider. A bag of chalk. The kids begin to draw...and then...magic! The children draw the sun, butterflies, and a dinosaur that amazingly come to life. Children will never feel the same about the playground after they experience this astounding wordless picture book and the power of the imagination. Bill Thomson embraced traditional painting techniques and meticulously painted each illustration by hand, using acrylic paint and coloured pencils.

Why I Like This Book: I read this book to my class a couple of weeks ago on the recommendation of our teacher-librarian and I'm really happy I did. The illustrations are so beautiful and gave my kids so much to talk about. We had one of our best "grand conversations" after reading Chalk.  My class was really in to trying to figure out whether or not the dinosaur actually came to life with the "magic" chalk. I have to admit, I kind of had to steer them a little bit into the possibility that the children in the story were using their imaginations:)


Links to Resources:

1. I wish I had found this first one before I read the book. Renee Carver from ThinkPlayToday has a TON of fabulous suggestions to go along with Chalk. If you're a teacher, you must go visit her.

2. This is a no-brainer:) but get your kids outside drawing with chalk!!

3. Encourage your children to use their imaginations through some simple drama activities. We had a drama expert working with our kids yesterday and she did "Drama Stories" with them. It's super easy. Divide your class in half (performers/audience). Whisper to the performers what they will be miming (eg., playing basketball). The audience watches quietly while the performers do their thing. Then the audience guesses what the mime was. These weren't random guesses, though. Each guess had to be accompanied with an observation or two or three that led to the guess. My kids LOVED this activity.

4. Here's a lovely chalk art lesson using wet chalk, white tempera paint and sharpies. You can find the directions at Kinder Art.

I hope you enjoyed these ideas. As always, you can find more wonderful book suggestions at Susanna's blog!

Happy Friday!

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