Celebrate Earth Day With Plants and Seeds

With Earth Day quickly approaching, I would like for you to take a minute to look at the Environmental Health Unit, I wrote as well as some of the ideas about plants and seeds I am posting here. There are also a ton of ideas that Scholastic put together for you in Caring For The Environment You will find many ideas that you can use in your own classroom to help celebrate the day we celebrate our Earth!

Bulletin Boards: Spring Has Sprung!

One of the best things about teaching at Metz is the fact that all of my colleagues take such time and care to keep our hallways looking beautiful with student work. These displays allow everyone to have a glimpse on what is being taught in each room and are also excellent learning tools. I took some time last week to photograph many of these gorgeous displays to share with you. It is one thing to read an idea for a bulletin board in a magazine, but quite another to see a teacher's and her students handiwork! Enjoy!

St. Patrick's Day Activities

In keeping with my blogs of holidays past, I would like to offer you some quick, fun and simple ideas to use with your students to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. These activities cover a wide spectrum of academic lessons such as rhyming, estimation, writing, blends, surveys, graphs, higher order thinking, cooperative learning, science experiments, word play, and class books to ensure varied learning opportunities for your students.

 

Love Bug Art

The “Love Bug” activity, taught by my friend and amazingly talented colleague, Metz art teacher, Rebecca Nusinow, gives students a chance to integrate science, math and art skills to create an original insect.  The “love  bugs” my own students brought back to class were so incredibly cute, I knew I had to write about how they made them and show some photo examples!

Valentine Activities

Here are a few quick and fun activities with the theme of Valentine's Day!

100th Day of School

Schools start at many different times of the year usually in August and September. At Metz, we started the latest that I ever remember, and as a result, we are celebrating the 100^th day of school next week on February 4^th. Whether you have already celebrated the 100^th day of school with your little monkeys this year or having it coming up in a few weeks, I hope you can find some fun ideas here to use and have some 100^th day fun!

New Years Activities

The day after winter break I always head back to school and celebrate New Years with my students. A few years back I visited a Walgreens or Target the day after New Years Eve and picked up a bunch of hats, noisemakers, napkins, confetti and plastic glasses. I have all of this ready on the student’s desk when they enter in the morning. We wear our hats and toot our horns and crank our noisemakers throughout the day and offer New Year Wishes to everyone! It is an exciting way to return from the break and is it is a terrific way to introduce the special holiday we will be completing activities about for the rest of the week.

Holiday Activities II

Here are the photo examples I promised you in my Holiday Activities blog yesterday plus a few more sweet ideas with some additional photos I couldn’t resist posting! Enjoy!

Holiday Activities

It is that time of year, when the kids are so excited you can barely keep them focused and you are probably counting down the days until winter break with more bliss then they are! This past Friday, Metz just had a lovely “Winter Holidays Around the World” program with songs being sung about Kwanzaa, Hanukah, Christmas, New Years Eve and more. It was a great learning experience and made me realize I probably should have posted some of these holiday learning ideas last week! I suppose it is better late then never! Maybe you will be able to find one or two to try this week and you can save some other favorite ideas for next year.

Thanksgiving Activities

The holidays always inspire me to create fun and exciting learning activities and Thanksgiving is no exception. I love taking a real life event from my student’s lives to extend learning through language arts, math, science and creative expression activities. It makes for a more fulfilling holiday experience for me as well as for my students.