paper plate polar bears

Today we learned a few more facts about polar bears and added those facts to our pocket chart. Then I had the girls write and draw 3 facts that they have learned so far. I found anohter cute polar bear craft from here and had them make him! Isn't he cute?

polar bear, polar bear

This week we are talking about arctic animals! I bought this amazing pack from Teacher Bits and Bobs' TpT store. Seriously, these packs are great - I love that I can still plan in themes and reinforce things that we are learning this year AND that they are so adorable! (picture taken from teacher bits and bobs blog)

We went to the library yesterday and checked out some non-fiction and fiction books about arctic animals ~ especially polar bears. Before reading a book about polar bears, I asked the girls what they already knew about them. I wrote their answers on index cards in blue. Then, I read them a book about polar bears. After reading the book, I asked the girls if they learned anything new and recorded their answers on index cards in pink. (don't judge the color of my wall ~ it's a major oops color!)

And of course, I had to follow this activity with a craftivity! I found this adorable polar bear craftivity on Pinterest ~ have I mentioned before how much I *love* pinterest :) You can ckeck out the teaching blog that originally posted about these polar bears here. I found the emergent reader at making learning fun.I have another polar bear craftivity that I plan to share, so be sure to check back tomorrow!

playful penguins

Last week we learned about penguins! It was a lot of fun and the girls really loved the penguin craftivity that we did! I think they were more impressed with my collection of scrapbook papers that I have stashed away! We started the week off by doing a KWL chart - Know, Want to know and Learned. They actually knew more than I thought they did about penguins. Ethan was even able to tell me a fact or two about penguins, too!

We organized all of the facts that they knew on a chart that looked like this -
We did it all together and I modeled how to fill out the chart on our dry erase board. Then I gave them a copy for them to fill out. These graphic organizers came from Fun in First. They used these charts throughout the week as a reference for other things. We worked on words that begin and end with sh, ch and th (digraphs) that I got from The First Grade Parade.
We reviewed what verbs are and I had the girls make a flip chart of verbs that penguins can do.
I had the girls write 6 facts about penguins to go along with the *cute* penguins that they made!
We went to the library and checked out a bunch of non-fiction books about penguins that we read throughout the week. They also labeled a penguin that I got from First Grade Blue Skies.

***Check out our lapbook that we made a couple of years ago about penguins.

snowman poem

I thought it would be a good idea to add in poetry to our literature genres and when I saw this on Mrs. Jump's blog that she was sharing for free as a homework assignment, I quickly recreated it so I could use it with the girls. The girls had to read the poem and then illustrate the beginning, middle and end in the boxes.

snowflake similes

It had been a while since we talked about similes so I made this sheet for the girls to write some similes about snowflakes. After they wrote their similes, they water colored the snowflake.

"The snow is as cold as ice cream. Snowflakes fall as softly as rain and as quietly as a leaf."