Five For Friday 05.13.16

As the end of the year is drawing to a close, life seems busier than ever. Just glancing over at my May calendar stresses me out! The last day of school is going to be here before I know it.

Our week was totally packed full with tons of different activities in science, math, and reading - my kids had such a blast with them this week that I thought I'd link up with Kacey at Doodlebugs Teaching for this week's Five for Friday to share some of them!

We started on our shapes unit this week, which is always one of my favorites! There are so many amazing, hands-on, fun geometry activities to do with your students. Since my first graders already have a strong concept of the shape names, I just did a quick review and re-introduced the attributes of sides and vertices. I gave each student a flat plane shape and called out different sorting rules - it was then their job to go around the room and find their matching group. For example, I'd say, "Find everyone who has a shape with 4 sides"; or, "Find everyone who has a shape with curved edges". And then they scrambled around to find their grouping matches.

After we practiced sorting by different attributes, we did our own little shape sort by counting the number of sides!

The shape sort and tons of other activities can be found here (click the picture to see more!):

We just wrapped up a little mini-unit reading the book Frog and Toad are Friends! My kids absolutely LOVED it and could not get enough. At the end of it, they made this adorable Frog and Toad craft with opinion writing - they had to describe which character they thought was the best friend and why. So fun!

Click here to get this activity!

We've been learning all about the ways Earth change, including the four layers of the Earth. I've been using a ton of different strategies to teach them about the four layers including songs, movement/tableau activities, videos, and anchor charts (blog post coming soon with all the details!). I wanted to include another hands on activity for them to complete, so I created a layers of the Earth flip book to go with full-color anchor charts! My kids used the anchor charts to fill in the blank for each book page to tell about what the four layers of the Earth were made of. They loved it! You can click on the picture below to check out more of the details!

In keeping with our Earth changes unit, we've also been learning about things like volcanoes and earthquakes! My teammate had this great little experiment to show how volcanoes erupt - using old film canisters, you glue an Alka-Seltzer tablet inside the lid and then fill the canister half-full with water. Then you put the lid on, turn the canister upside down on the ground, and then BACK UP! After awhile, the pressure builds and it explodes, just like a volcano! My kids were SO excited! Here's a little video so you can see how it went!

I only have 7 1/2 days of school left! So crazy! In the meantime I'm going crazy trying to figure out how I'm going to complete all my assessments, fill out all my end of the year paperwork, practice for our first grade performance, finish up end of the year projects, attend multiple meetings, practice for a teacher talent show, etc. etc. etc.! Why does everything pile up SO much at the end of the year? I know y'all can relate, so this meme is all of us.

We can make it!