Science Day Fun

Whenever I think of science, I always go back to my 80s roots! Love it! I'm totally blinded by science! Have always had a passion for it and love instilling that passion on to my students. 

Last Friday, we had Science Day in first grade! It was a HUGE success! The kids were just so stinkin' excited (and pretty darn cute!) to participate. I cannot take credit for the idea as an another teacher suggested it, but we ran with the idea and it is one I think we will do every year! 

It really was so simple to do. 

1. Send home a letter to parents encouraging them to dress their little scientist.

Click to download for FREE! You will need KG What The Teacher Wants font if you'd like the fonts to match. You can download it for free here. 

 2. Do a simple experiment in your classroom! OR you could rotate classrooms and each classroom does a different experiment. 

We just decided to stick with our own classrooms as we weren't sure how it would go but I think we will rotate next time.

Check out my ADORBS scientists!

We started our lesson by singing the Scientific Method rap song! Have you heard it yet??

In our classroom, we decided to do an experiment on Chromatography or the separation of mixtures. 

I started out with literature as I always do:

It has great pictures and colors! This last picture was by far my favourite as it lead me to my question and hypothesis:The chameleon asks, "If I stay on a leaf, I shall be green forever, and so I too will have a color of my own." As you read through the book, the kids find out that this is not true and then I started my scientific think-aloud... have you ever wondered what colors make other colors?

The kids started raising hands and telling me about primary colours and how to mix them. It was amazing but I had to remind them that as scientists, we need to plan and experiment and execute it! 

I had already cut strips of a coffee filter and had taped it to a Popsicle stick (depending on the size glass you have you may to trim it a bit so that when you place it in the water, the bottom of the strip touches the water).  Black is a neat colour to use as you get to see so many colour variables but you could use any colour marker. Please do not use permanent markers. Also, one of my little guys choose yellow and it didn't show too much colour variation but it could have been the marker manufacturer. They all make them so differently. That's the best part of this experiment! 

(click on the pic to grab your student copy for FREE! Answer key is included)

The students made their predictions and then using their color of choice, placed a dot near the bottom (maybe half an inch). My mom helper that came in that day and I poured the water. 

Then they waited and watched. They were so amazed!!!

I made sure they drew their observations and recorded their results. They were surprised when they saw the colours creep up their filter strip!

I like this little one's-- see the colours he mixed on the bottom of his paper? He was trying to figure it out! So clever!!!

It really was such a great day! Our kindergarten team joined us for the fun! The teachers dressed as Mrs. Frizzle! They were adorable!!! 

This is my little kinder this year! He was so excited to be a zoologist! 

I hope that you can implement a science day at your school! 

If you'd like more science ideas, please visit my It's Elementary Science Pinterest Board! I've got tons of ideas waiting for you!

Gettin' Froggy ALL week!!

Yes, friends! I said it!! We got our frog on this week! 

Seriously, not my favourite things in the world but my kids have been lovin' them all week! Our story this week is "The Kite" from the Frog and Toad series.

I love this one, especially when Toad shouts, "Up, Kite, Up!" Sounds so like me when my kite doesn't go up, either! Or when I go bowling and I hurdle the ball down the lane and I look at it anxiously and jump up and down as if my vibrations will somehow make the ball turn and go down the middle and get a strike! 

Can you relate?? LOL! 

Anyhow, we moved on to another favourite story, "The Lost Button" and we wrote riddles and made buttons. Some buttons weren't finished when I was taking pictures but this one was! We are having a riddle party tomorrow!

Then we made these cuties! Frog life cycle head bands! They loved it! I introduced them to the frog life cycle with this great song from the Singing Biologist. It has a catchy reggae beat to it! I've caught myself singing it this week! 

Though, I do think the highlight of their week was playing "Would you like flies with that?" a phonics game I made to help practice our phonics patterns this week! I don't know about you but anytime I can use everyday things, in this case a fly swatter, to help make learning fun, I am all for it! They swatted flies and had to sort them into the correct "french fly" boxes! 

All these centers are in my Gettin' Froggy With It Pack! You can check it out here. 

To help tie this all in, today we went to see the play, All Year with Frog and Toad! AMAZING!!!

This was all I was allowed to take a picture of! 

Again, my fabulous team!!! I lub them very much!!!

Me and my own sweet firstie!! It is such a blessing (some days a test of patience at the end of the day when I have to get stuff done!!!!) to have him with me at school everyday! 

Next week, we have a 3 day week with kiddos and then a teacher work day for grades then SPRING BREAK (run-on sentence!! I know!!)! The beach is calling my name!!! In the meantime, we will be doing St. Patrick's Day centers on Monday.  You can read about my magical pudding that I will be doing again here! The kids go crazy for this! I am also leaving you with two fun centers to help bring some Irish fun to your classroom!! To download these fun freebies, please click on the cover pages! If you download, please leave feedback! I'd love to know what you think! :-) 

Happy Friday tomorrow! 

Mid-Week Update!

It's Hump- Day!!! Just imagine the camel walking thru my classroom making such a ruckus!! LOL! We have been so very busy (as I am sure you all have been!). We just finished our 1st grading period and it was report card crunch time. I had to hurry and get last minute grades into our online grading system. Do you all have that? I have a love/hate relationship with it. It's nice because it calculates your grades for you BUT like all computer systems it gets glitchy! I'd love to know how you all keep track of your grades and how are you required to enter grades (formatives/summatives, how many of each, weights, do you do a total points system or do you have standards based grading?? I am sure I could open up a big can-o-worms with this one!) So, yeah... that kept my panties in a bunch last week. 

This week we worked on some fun and cute projects. I finally got my "The Biggest Pumpkin Ever" bulletin board up! Too cute!

We started by reading the story and then brainstormed ways to grow the biggest pumpkin ever.

My sweet friend and room mom, Shawna, did this for me! She had it perfectly set up for me and I was a dolt and didn't realize that she put the numbers ON THE BACK-- I had them write on the back! So she improvised my dumb mistake. I think it came out beautifully and I am eternally grateful for her!!!

And to keep my biggest pumpkin ever, my bloggy friend, Laura from Peace, Love, and First Grade had this adorable craft idea for a Jack-o-Lantern lantern! It is the cutest! Click on her name to get the directions on how to make this festive craft!

We also finished up our studies on nocturnal animals. We made our Owls in the moon and dissected our owl pellets. The looks on their faces were priceless when they saw and heard what they were but once they started digging in, they were totally engaged and in love! They couldn't wait to get home and share their bone findings with their families!

If you'd like to learn more about owl pellets, click on the pic above to see where I got them! 

Too cool! I love doing this project with them.

We are learning about Pumpkins this week to celebrate our field trip to the Pumpkin Patch next week. I plan on using my 

next week when we start my pumpkin math and science unit. It is always so much fun! If you downloaded it already, please go back and re-download it-- I added a circumference page to it! Just click on the picture to grab it at my store! 

We are also working on digraphs this week /sh/ and /th/ and I know that they will need extra practice with it, so I created a fun, pumpkin themed phonics game for this week to help them practice

If your kids like pick up sticks then they will LOVE this game. I just wrote /sh/ and /th/ words on Popsicle sticks and they had to drop them down and sort them for /sh/ or /th/ at the beginning or end of a word. 

Click on the graphic above to grab your FREEBIE today! 

And that's not all! I just couldn't let the creativity stop there! I guess I am just not a fan of phonics practice where you have to rainbow write words/write them 3 times each, bubble write your words-- sometimes those are great but it's fun to play a game and learn, too! I like to create phonics games for them and I was so tickled when my brain concocted this one:

The kids all flocked to this center! They were like ants all over my room looking and reading for clues:

I haven't quite polished it up yet-- I just had it classroom ready but as soon as its ready I will post it up! So as you can see, we have been pretty busy! We are working on Key Ideas as well in reading. I always theme my week and tie in the Common Core standard for the week. If you are working on Key Ideas, please check out my Key Ideas Pumpkins freebie as well (click on the pic)! It has helped my guided reading groups tremendously this week. 

Hope you all have a great rest of the week! Don't forget about the giveaway that ends Friday!! Click here to enter!

Love to you all!