Earth Day, Easter, & A Little Randomness

Happy Wednesday afternoon blog buddies! I am home today due to icky, yucky, bad, rainy weather. Glad to be home.. but double ick on the weather part! I am on bus duty this week so I found myself going to school extra early for that this morning but then getting to come right back home due to early, super early dismissal. I've been cleaning, blog stalking, and loving on Dexter today. I was soooo excited to get to watch my soaps today since getting to be home... but bad weather didn't allow for it....the weathermen were filling us in on the latest happenings with the weather and it took the place of ALL my soaps today. So.... I thought I would blog about what me and my *almost* 2nd graders have been up to lately..Due to helping with the TCAP testing and having track and field days we haven't had a whole lotta extra time for much. But here is a few little extra things we done last week....

For Earth day we made the Earth cookie recipe that I found on April Larremore's blog. The kids loved them and they were YUMMY! :)




We read several books about going green!



The kids loved Michael Recycle.... and even pointed out that the words rhyme! :) We completed a writing activity with an Earth day template I found from the Mailbox magazine.... I forgot to take a picture.. but the top part was a smiling Earth that said "My Pledge To The Earth." Students colored the earth and wrote what they pledged to do at the bottom. We pasted on green or blue construction paper. They turned out good. Students had some clever comments.... like "I will recycle my mom's Mt. Dew cans!" :) Students completed some activities where they classified and then put objects in categories based on how they would recycle it.. paper, glass, aluminum. And we have been working on a poster for a litter poster contest. I sure hope we win!!!!

We went to school on Good Friday to make up for a snow day. Boy ole boy was I one tired ole gal at the end of that day! We took our regular Friday tests, plus did Eastery crafts and activities, an egg hunt, and had a party with tons of food. I nearly needed a third day off to just recover from my GOOD Friday! ha 


We made Easter basket cupcakes.



On a side note I sold my car Sally this past Saturday. Although, I had outgrown her and didn't love on her nearly as much as I should have towards the end I was sad when the young college lad drove away in her. I kept telling myself it was ok to let her go because like I mentioned I didn't love her nearly as much towards the end as I did when I first got her. Sally was a gray Mustang. I thought I was so cool in college when Mustang Sally would come on because that was MY song about MY car! HAHA  I will miss her but I guess all things must come to an end and on to bigger and better, right?? umm...right??  Well after several (depressing) days of new car searching with not a whole lotta luck I finally found a replacement for Sally. I now have a Daisy.... she is a white Jeep Grand Cherokee Overland. I think me and her are going to become good, good friends! And if it wasn't coming a small hurricane outside at this very moment I would totally go out and snap a pic of Daisy to post! haha

Tomorrow is E's birthday and I think I'm more excited than he is! I've been wrapping his presents today.... I've had them hidden away beacuse he is sneaky! I love to give gifts so needless to say I can't wait till tomorrow to give them all to him! :) Well that's all I got for today folks! I think I will go snuggle up with this cutie patootie and watch Ellen. :)




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Easter Ideas

My gal pal who teaches Kindergarten at school shared a cute chick craft idea with me and I made one today. All you need is a large yellow pom pom, 2 wiggly eyes, some orange construction paper, and an egg carton. So a big shout out and thanks to Mrs. Stefanie Walker for sharing the idea! I think the kids will enjoy making these little cuties next week! :)
I got to brainstorming and decided to try making a bunny. It's not near as cute as her cute little chick though. I didn't have any large white pom poms... so my bunny is hot pink! haha

What do you think?? Pretty darn cute right? Well the chick is anyways! ha



I plan on having my kids make these to hold some of their loot they get at the Easter party. I found the bunny pattern from a Mailbox book and then just pasted it to a white paper sack.



And I found some yummy Easter cupcake recipes in one of my cookbooks. I can't decide which I am going to do... but I think the basket looks easier than the rabbit! Sorry for the awful glare on the pic... I took several... same glare every time though! ha



What are you doing with your kiddos for Easter?? Happy Friday night blog buddies!! It's the WEEKEND!!!!!!

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Easter Bunny Bulletin Board

Here is a pic of the bunnies the kiddos made for our April bulletin board project. Thanks to my mom for coming up with the pattern for the bunny! :) The girlies made pink and white bunnies and the boys did yellow and brown.

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Butterfly

A few weeks ago we read the story in our HM book "Butterfly".... about the life cycle of the butterfly. Here are some of the things we did to go along with the story.

Students drew the stages of the butterfly lifecycle and labeled...




 These life cycle of a butterfly craft kits came from Oriental Trading. My mom got these for us. Aren't moms the best??



 We made a tasty snack... want to make one of these too??
You will need..... a pineapple ring cut in half
2 spoonfuls of yogurt
sprinkles
1 large pretzel rod broken in half




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Fairy Tale Stuff....

Well I finally got my computer back!! Wha hoo!! It is back up and running thank goooodness!!!

Here is some stuff I did for a fairy tale unit back in February/March and just now getting to post the rest due to no computer. I had already posted the Goldilocks stuff. My original plans were to have a totally awesome fairy tale post with a ton of details and pics....however I didn't get pics of everything and this is a little late..well alot late posting it since it's been awhile since I've done it... but better late than never, right!?  Hopefully you will find something useful!! :)


We read Hansel and Gretel...

and completed a KWL chart.


Students decorated houses with candy like the one the witch lived in. :)





We read two versions of the story Cinderella.


We did a character comparison using a Venn diagram.


We made a carriage like Cinderella rode to the ball in.


We read The Gingerbread Man and The Gingerbread Girl.....


and we compared both stories using a Venn diagram.


We also read Jack and the Beanstalk and completed a story map. No pics here... I was out of town this day so the kiddos did the Jack and the Beanstalk activities with a sub. :(

We concluded our fairy tale unit with a Fairy Tale feast. Students dressed as their favorite fairy tale character and we ate breakfast. Our feast included pigs in blankets (Three Little Pigs), Oatmeal (The Three Bears), pumpkin bread (Cinderella), Gingerbread squares (The Gingerbread Man) and we had a variety of fruits with dip and juice. They really enjoyed the feast!!!





We graphed our favorite fairy tale. It was super close but The Three Pigs got the most votes! Sorry forgot to take a picture of the graph. We also completed a fairy tale writing activity and students wrote their own fairy tale using some of the characters we had read about.

And if you missed the post about Goldilocks and The Three Bears.. CLICK HERE and CLICK HERE
or for The Three Little Pigs..CLICK HERE

CLICK HERE for some of the documents I used for this unit.
(The first document was one I adapted from a Mailbox magazine.. the boxes were too small on it so I made my own.)


Again... I was hoping for a better post.. but didn't get a pic of everything we did.


Happy Saturday folks!





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