My Five Senses

My class explored their Five Senses this week and I must admit... it's one of my favorite units! I'm linking with Doodle Bugs Teaching  to tell you all about it!

 

I'm pretty proud of the Five Senses Paper Bag Book we made!  I took a little of this & a little of that along with some imagination to come up with the concept.  The kids and parents loved it! 

 

I started by stacking three brown lunch bags on top of each other. 

 

I folded them over and punched two holes along the side.

 

Then I laced a ribbon and tied it to bind the paper bags into a simple book.

 

 

Next, I used a few of the Five Senses graphics from here to label the pages of the paper bag book. 

 

The fun begins as you turn each page to discover a little surprise while you explore the Five Senses!

 

See the colorful rainbow...

 

Hear the jingle bell...

     

 

Smell the grapes (we used the smelly Mr. Sketch markers!)...

 

Taste the chocolate (a yummy mini Hershey bar tucked inside the paper bag pocket!)...

 

Touch the soft fabric...

 





 

 

 

We squeezed real lemons and made delicious lemonade!  Another crowd pleaser!

We sorted pictures in the pocket chart according to what sense we use.  I found this wonderful FREE set of pictures at the Kindergarten Kindergarten blog. I absolutely love using these real photographs instead of drawings or clip art! 

 

 

We sang Dr. Jean's "Five Senses" song all week!  It's on her Kiss Your Brain CD.  It's really easy to learn SEE-HEAR-SMELL-TASTE-TOUCH with Dr. Jean!

 

 

We ended our Five Senses week with a fun Taste Test.  We sampled salty pretzels, sweet chocolate chips, and sour Skittles.  We then recorded our favorite taste in our Science Journal.

 What are your favorite Five Senses activities?



Five for Friday - Pumpkin Spice & Names Are Nice

 

Time to join Five for Friday and to catch up with everyone after a busy 2nd week of school!

 

The temperature in Georgia is 89 and the humidity is off the charts but I started my Friday feeling like there's FALL in the air!  All it took was a dash of delicious Coffee-mate Pumpkin Spice creamer in my morning coffee!  This big bottle costs less than one cup of that ol' expensive Starbucks pumpkin latte, too!

 

 

 

We worked hard on our names this week at school.  From rainbow writing to name puzzles and graphing how many letters to magically appearing names...these kids know their names well! 

 

We also practiced our handwriting in a wonderful name booklet I found  here.  By the end of the week, my students were very proud of how well they could write their name and I was thrilled with their improvement!

 

On September 11th, our school had Red/White/Blue Day.  Many of our students are trying to learn the Pledge of Allegiance, so I decided a Flag Napkin Book would be fun!  I found a package of patriotic July 4th beverage napkins in the clearance bin at the grocery store.  Then I cut white paper to fit inside and stapled it all together. 

  

 

Next, I printed the words to the Pledge of Allegiance with simple graphics I found here.  The kids cut the pictures, put them in the right order, and glued each page into their napkin book.

 

And this is what the assembled Flag Napkin Book looks like:

 

 

I was inspired to create these by the wonderful Kim Jordano in her Bookmaking session at I Teach K this summer!  The possibilities for Napkin Books are endless!

I have a gift card to a local nursery that I'm itching to spend.  I'm ready for fall flowers to freshen up my planters and pots.  Something like this would be beautiful!  I'm really afraid it's still too hot.

 Only happened a few times this week but it always makes me smile!

 

 





Have a wonderful weekend!

Wordless Wednesday - Name Graph

I always enjoy seeing the wide variety of Wordless Wednesday pictures at the linky party hosted by Miss DeCarbo of Second Grade Sugar & Spice. 

 

This week I'd like to share the "How many letters are in your name?" graph my Young 5's class did as part of our All About Me activities.  I wrote the letters of each student's name on Post-it notes and had the children place their letters on the graph paper.   We then counted how many letters each chld had in their name as well as who had the least letters and the most letters.  Of course, any name graphing activity must include a reading of the classic book Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes.  My class listened intently to this book and were amazed anyone could have thirteen letters in their name!

 

What is a favorite name activity you do with your class?



Monday Made It - September

 

Most of us are back in school and can say we've somehow "made" it through these first few days.  They are exhausting to say the least.  Here are a few Back to School projects I wanted to share with 4th Grade Frolics September Monday Made It linky party.   

My Poetry Journals are finished!  In fact, the kids have already illustrated their first poem in them and were asking if they could take them home.  They love their Poetry Journals!  I'm loving this new, smaller size journal. I typed up all the monthly poems as well as our Good Morning songs, printed two to a page on legal size paper, cut in half, and bound together in a simple cover.  I made the cover from a cute notepad I found at the teacher store. 

 



Here's a picture of the pocket charts which house our monthly Good Morning Song and Poem.  We sing and recite them daily during Morning Meeting so the kids learn them fairly quickly. 

 

I made new labels for all my Math Center tubs.  I found most of the pictures on the Lakeshore Learning website, clicked to copy, and printed them on my labels.  Anyone else remember the chore of cutting pictures from old catalogs to label your classroom?

Next up is actually my sweet husband's Monday Made It!  I have the standard Lakeshore teaching easel in my classroom but realized the space underneath was wasted.  Oh sure, there are models of teaching easels you can buy with built in shelves & elaborate racks but they are incredibly expensive.  I described what I needed, asked the hubby if he could built it, and watched him take more measurements than NASA scientists.  Here's the result...

 

A wonderful, sturdy shelf underneath my easel!

 

It's perfect for storing bins with our center name tags, a box of sentence strips for the Question of the Day, and miscellaneous things I use during Morning Meeting.  I love how we took unused, wasted space and turned it into a storage problem solver in my small classroom!

 

 

I'm working on a pennant banner to hang over our hallway art.   In the meantime, the kids created some adorable "Me" dolls and shared a few of their favorite things.  The parents enjoyed trying to guess which doll was made by their child based on the clues!