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!

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.

 

Technology in the Classroom I

Recently, your team of Teacher Advisors put together a collection of ideas on how they integrate technology in their own classroom to make the ordinary extraordinary. In addition to those clever ideas, I have some additional quick tech ideas to share with you that I have completed with my 1st graders over the past several years.

A Book of Hugs

In keeping with the theme of love for the month of February, I would like to share with you an activity I completed with my students using the book A Book of Hugs by Dave Ross. 

Peace Begins With You

In addition to teaching about the wonderful life and accomplishments of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I like to extend the celebration of his birthday into several lessons on peace; peace within our selves, peace with others and peace between nations.

President Obama's Inauguration

With the incredibly exciting Presidential Inauguration of Barack Obama coming up on January 20th, I thought I would share with you some links of lessons and resources. I hope you find time to teach about this historic event so your students are able to feel that they have been a part of our country’s democratic process. I know my own first graders are fascinated with President Elect Obama and pictures of him are hung all over our classroom. We have one particular solemn looking photo that is hung on the Good Citizen Board because the kids like to think he is looking down on us making sure we are all doing a good job in our work. They are such cute little sweeties, I really love working with 1st graders!

New Years Photo Examples

Here are photo examples to go with my New Years activities!

Grant Writing For Your Classroom II

Last week in my blog Grant Writing I, I listed some of my favorite grants, many of which I had success with. Of course I can’t possibly share all grants that are available, so I wanted to follow up with links to websites that have many different types of grants, scholarships and contests listed.

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.

Do Your Homework! (and read up on the latest ideas)

Even though we are a couple of months into the school year, I wanted to give you some link to some informative articles and ideas about using homework in the classroom. It is never to late to add some new twists in your own homework assignments for your students. These recent articles might just give you some ideas to make the ordinary, extraordinary!