Dinosaur Bones or X-rays!!

This can be a dinosaur activity to go with your favorite dinosaur story or a letter Xx activity!  Either way it is a blast!  I set up a bin full of sand and the paleontologists excavate the sand with a tweezers to find the bones.  This activity works on one-to-one correspondence and developing fine motor skills!

Post-It Linky Party!

You can never have enough post-its!!!  I use post-its to track my story stretcher ideas.  Inside many of my picture books you will find post-its with ideas and projects that I come up with for various stories.  My students also give me inspiration on activities to incorporate with books.  This is a quick and easy way to keep track of these ideas.

I have also realized that some dry erase markers do not want to wipe off and it drives me crazy!  I have a poster board story map that is laminated and instead of filling it in with a dry erase marker, I now use post-its.  After reading a story, the students can write the parts of a story on a post-it and add it to our story map.  For instance, each character in the story would get its own post-it and when writing the problem of the story each word in the sentence would get a different post-it.  This also helps with sentence structure!  My students enjoy writing on the post-its and adding them to the story map.  It also tunes them in to comprehending the story!!  The students also enjoy making a pattern on our story map using various colors!

Post-It Linky Party, come and join the fun at http://mrsrojasteaches.blogspot.com/

Back 2 School Bonanza!!

Are you ready to go Back to School?  Erica Bohrer is hosting a Back to School Bonanza Giveaway that should help you get in the mood!  Twelve fabulous bloggers have teamed up with her to give one lucky winner a huge back to school prize pack!  Scroll, down to see the twelve tantalizing prizes you could win.The contest will run until midnight eastern time, on Thursday, July 28th. You have 4 chances to enter HERE!!

ABC Rocks!

I found this idea on a few blogs and I love this easy and inexpensive letter manipulative idea!  I bought some river rocks from Hobby Lobby along with some cute puffy letter stickers.  I placed the stickers on the rocks to create word building or abc order manipulative.  I used lowercase letters because I find my students do not like to use lowercase letters and the texture of the puffy stickers makes a wonderful sensory tool!  I also added a border around the vowel rocks with a silver permanent marker.

First Day of School Activities- Linky Party

Thinking about the first day already gives me the first day excitement/jitters!!!  When the students come in on the first day of school they have a small Ziploc bag with a ball of uncolored playdough.  Inside the ball of playdough is a few drops of food coloring.  They squish the playdough while it is in the bag.  If the playdough magically turns colors that means we are going to have a fantastic year making new friends and learning!  After it starts to change colors, the students take it out of the bag to blend the color and create the letters of their name.  I love hearing the excitement when it starts to change colors!! 

This summer I taught an Eric Carle class and I thought I might try to do this project on the first day or week of school, because who doesn't like to get messy during the first week of school.  Our ending project for the summer school class was to paint paper using many colors and textures and create it into a name banner.  We started out painting a background color.  Then we chose another color and a tool to add texture (q-tip, cotton ball, stamps, sponge, etc.)  Then the students chose a third color to add with bubble wrap.  When the painted paper was full of their favorite colors and dry, we used stencils to trace and cut out the letters of their name.  The letters were then glued on and decorated to create a wonderful name banner. 

Swimmy

We read the story and created an ocean background using watercolor paints and salt, which creates a neat design.  Then add tissue paper seaweed, little fish, and Swimmy!  To finish we added Mod Podge! 

Eric Carle Projects

I enjoyed teaching a summer school class titled The World of Eric Carle!  I completed many projects to go along with many of his stories and the students also gave me some inspiration for projects to use in my classroom!  Most of our projects were created from painted paper.

Alphabet Constellations

The students worked as a team to build the alphabet during my space unit by using marshmallows and toothpicks.

Brownie Points

Brownie Points were created for positive reinforcement.

Mouse Count

Mouse Count math lesson!  The students designed their own snake sock puppet and loved it!!

Happy 4th of July!!

Happy 4th of July!  We turned these hand print eagles into windsocks for the the 4th, but it could be used for any patriotic holiday!

Mixing Colors Experiment

We mixed colors in this project from the story Mouse Paint. The students loved this and they experiment mixing their own colors on the mice.

Papa, Please Get The Moon For Me by Eric Carle

During summer school, I am teaching a class on Eric Carle and we did a moon phase activity from CopyCat and modeled the phases of the moon with an Oreo. We also blended colors together to create this beautiful painting.