Mammal Mania

 

      Our group reading was dominated this week by informational texts about mammals.  The students learned four general characteristics of mammals that they can (hopefully) tell you about: mammals have hair or fur, they nurse their young, they breathe fresh air, and have babies born "alive and well" (to quote the book we read on Monday).  One of our favorite books (not informational text) was "Oh, A Hunting We Will Go." The students all sang along with me and we discussed afterward which animals were mammals that were in the story. Here's the PM class singing along with me.

 

We explored the different mammals we can see at the zoo by participating in a group reading/writing activity called "The Zoo."  It goes a little something like this.



(Hopefully that video works....fingers crossed - if not, trust me, it was super cute and the kids totally enjoyed it). 

After a few days of guessing the animal hiding behind the cage, we chose some questions out of the Magic Fishbowl of Questions. One of the most engaging questions that had them all searching and wanting a turn was "Can you find a pair of matching words?" Here, Tyler found the words, "wonder."

    A few of the centers had a mammal theme as well.  In the Number Work center, there were two tasks.  One, to order the lions and lambs up to 40.  The other was to order the numbers (by skip counting by 5's) to reveal the mammal in the picture.  (They preferred the second task).

    At the floor puzzles center the students worked a wooden puzzle set with silly rhyming sentence halves (most having to do with mammals- such as the The fox is in the box).  When those were finished, they worked on individual word puzzles. 

The rest of the centers had nothing to do with mammals but were fun, nonetheless.  In the writing center, the students made rainbow sight words.  

The math games center was a repeat from the transportation unit several weeks ago: Land, Air, and Sea Subtraction.

 

    While the students are rotating through centers, one group at a time will go to their reading group.  Here's Miss Hisel teaching one of the PM groups.  

     A really great strategy that I've been using a lot recently (that helps both reading and writing) is taking sentences from the book the students just read and cutting them up into the individual words. (This works well with pattern books).  Each students gets a set of mixed up words and has to put them in order to make a sentence from the story. They LOVE this activity and request it now!

    The week, of course, wrapped up with  a mammal art project. Although it was less about art and more about science and sorting. The students were giving pictures of several different animals which they cut. Then they sorted them into the "MAMMALS"  group or the "NOT MAMMALS group".

 

    Our final event of the week was an Easter egg hunt, of sorts.  Mrs. Taylor and Miss Hisel cut out paper eggs and wrote as many sight words on them as they could in 5 minutes (because that's all the time I gave them since it was spur of the moment idea) and taped them throughout the halls). The students took their clipboards and pencils and tried to write down as many as they could find. 

 It is basically like our "Write the Room" activity, but better. This was a winner and we will definitely be doing this one again. I'm thinking we may use it with 'bossy r' words (written on something other than eggs) next week.  By the way, I promised in the newsletter that I would link the video to the bossy r music video we've been watching this week.  And here it is.  It's great.

     Have a great Easter weekend. I want to invite everyone out to the Scott County park tomorrow morning at 10:00 for the Easter Extreme that My Church (which is indeed my church) is putting on. There will be tons of candy, prizes, and bike give-a-ways.  Its all free.  I'll be there and hope to see my kiddos there too!