Sharin' a Little Sunshine {for Spring}!

Happy Monday, everyone! As happy as a Monday can be, anyways, right? Okay, so the truth is, we all dread Monday mornings, but I've got something to share with you that will hopefully brighten your day with a few ideas and freebies for Earth Day this week!

I'm linking up with my Arizona blogger friends over at our new collaborative blog, Hello Sunshine, for our brand spankin' new "Sharin' a Little Sunshine" linky!

This linky will occur once a month, each with a specific theme! This month we will be sharing ideas and resources with a Spring theme. If you join us, each month you will find a frame like this...

Click on the image above to open a Google Doc where you can click on the two links at the bottom!

...Where you can fill it in with book suggestions, activities, ideas, products, freebies... ANYTHING that fits with the Hello Sunshine linky theme!

Here's the scoop on all of my Earth Day themed activities pictured above:

To kick off our Earth Day activities, I choose one of the books pictured above and read it to my students to provide a little bit of background knowledge. Then we create a web of ideas on how we can help the Earth.

Once we finish brainstorming, my students can refer to our web to complete their Earth Day writing craftivity and choose 1-2 ways they would help the Earth. After completing the writing portion, we create the Earth! First, the students draw a big circle on blue paper, cut it out, and glue it at the top of a piece of big construction paper. Then they'll trace their handprint, cut it out, and glue it in the middle of their world. Then, they cut their own random pieces out of green to make it complete!

You can grab the writing prompt freebie by clicking on the image in the "Links" section of the Sharin' a Little Sunshine frame at the top of this post! It will take you to a PDF in Google Docs where you can download it for free!

In keeping with the Earth Day theme, I love when I can integrate multiple subjects into one activity... I am always trying to come up with various ways for my students to practice their sight words, and one activity my kids absolutely LOVE doing is Sight Word Sentence Builders. They complete this in small groups during literacy center time and they have gotten so good at building the mixed-up sentences in order! In each set, there are 3-4 different sentence cards provided. Each sentence has a different colored border so they know which words go in each sentence - that way there is no confusion. The students build the sentences together in a pocket chart and then read them all together using pointers to see if they make sense - this also helps them practice reading fluency and sentence structure along with mastering their sight words!

Once they build each sentence correctly, students have a recording sheet to write all of their sentences in blank boxes as a check for understanding. This allows me to see if the group built the sentences correctly as well as if they were able to write the sight words correctly.

These Earth Day sentence building activities - and MUCH more - can be found in my "Hoppin' Into April {Sentence Building Activities} pack in my TPT store. You'll also find themed sentence builders for baseball, spring, and plants in this pack! You can click on the picture in the linky frame in the "Links" box at the bottom to check it out!

Are you interested in linking up with us for our Sharin' a Little Sunshine linky over at Hello Sunshine? Click on the button below to grab the empty frame and link up with us to share your ideas and activities for Spring! We'd love to have you!