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!

Technology in the Classroom III

Here is Part III of quick tech ideas that I have completed with my 1st graders over the past several years. Many of the PDF examples I am sharing with you were done in Kid Pix. We now have Pixie in our computer lab, so a few of the ideas will have come from that program. In many ways the two programs are very similar, so you should have no trouble adapting the ideas! Hopefully you will find something here that you can use with your own students or maybe these lessons will inspire an idea of your own!

Technology in the Classroom II

Here is Part II of III of quick tech ideas that I have completed with my 1st graders over the past several years. Many of the PDF examples I am sharing with you were done in Kid Pix. We now have Pixie in our computer lab, so a few of the ideas will have come from that program. In many ways the two programs are very similar, so you should have no trouble adapting the ideas! Hopefully you will find something here that you can use with your own students or maybe these lessons will inspire an idea of your own!

 

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.

Valentine Activities

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

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!

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.