I wanted to share with you some great fun we had on Halloween. Too late for this year, I know... but pin the pics and save it for next year! Our 3 second grade classes mixed with each other and rotated through 3 different activities on Halloween morning. My two teammates collaborated to do an activity with "The Little Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat" and my principal ran an activity about skeletons, complete with a brain break dance of "Dem Bones!' What a good guy!
My contribution was Ghost Foam. Yes, that's right... I got the idea for Mr. Science Bob himself and his foamy fountain. Hmmm.... we could just change that into ghost foam!
We started by brainstorming some alliterative words to create our foamy chant (each group chose a different word to start with - one group ended up with "Mysterious, marvelous mixed-up monsters!" as their chant. We practiced it a few times and then we were ready to set the ghost foam free.
You had to see their faces! It was great. (Maybe not for the other classes in hall who had to endure a few moments of screaming each time this happened!)After we made the foam (and while my lovely assistants were cleaning up for the next group) we charted what we noticed.
This activity was definitely a keeper. You could make it work for other things besides ghosts. Visit Science Bob to see more cool ideas, and click HERE to see my post about Science Day last year.
Last week we also had parent conferences, so I FINALLY got our "I am Special" board put up.
We had read Molly Lou Melon and other books with a theme of "be yourself." Everyone chose 6 reasons they were special and wrote them on the petals. Add an adorable photo and some leaves and stems and tah-dah--- super cute!
We also spent all of last week reading and examining Stellaluna. I used the most wonderful resource from Linda Kamp - absolutely amazing!
We talked about character traits, how characters respond to challenges, point of view and summarizing. This week we'll finish up with story structure and then put together a collage of all we have done.
We also worked on bats of the nonfiction variety - just as an introduction to main idea and details. They worked soooo hard on their bat writing.
Nonfiction is definitely an interest of theirs this year. Bats, owls, bugs, snakes... fire safety, Veteran's Day... you name it and they want to know about it.
Well, that was last week - now we're getting ready for this week. Finishing bats, adding some writing for Veteran's Day and starting repeated addition for math. I have found that I still have a few students who need more practice with math facts, so I created a little "Pumpkin Math" that I'll use both in my intervention groups (supported) an in math centers (independent).
3 different activities to practice facts - addition and subtraction included. I wanted to go a bit beyond just plain fact practice, so I included missing numbers, fact families and matching sums and differences. I like to find different ways for my students to practice skills for review. What's your favorite way to practice math facts?
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