Earth Day

I couldn't decide on the many ideas I had for Earth Day this year, so I did two projects with my kinders.

The Lorax is an awesome story and has a great message for Earth Day.

I have the original book The Lorax, of course, but I also have two other books that are have the character The Lorax in them. 

All of these books are great. And of course, there is the movie, which I personally loved. Our kindergarten field trip was to see The Lorax in a theater last year. 

So what I did with my class was I used this freebie from a blog I found through Pinterest. 

I copied mine on plain old white paper though so that the kids could color it on their own.

We re-read The Lorax (original) and I asked them the question that the book leaves you with: What would do if you received the last Truffula tree seed from the Onceler?

And these were the results:

"I will plant a Truffula tree and I will plant it behind my house and I will take care of it and I will water it."

"I would plant it on tow. I will water it. I will let it get sun."

The other idea I came across was one where the kids make a hand print Earth.

Cute, but next time I will use a lighter blue......

This is where the book "How to Help the Earth by The Lorax" came in. We also read other nonfiction books about taking care of the earth.  

"I will say "Please do not throw trash on the Earth!" "

"I will turn off my lights when I go."

Kinder-"Garden"

Our Exploration Room is back! This time our theme is plants, creepy-crawlies, and all things spring!

Our adorable reading center!

The flower shop: Petersburg Petals!

There are also wings and antenna headbands to dress up as bugs!

Hopscotch rug between reading and the math and puzzles shelf.

Science center complete with snakes, bugs, frogs, a pond, balances, magnifying glasses, and real bugs in acrylic. 

Blocks center complete with a barn, farm animals, and trucks.

Grass growers - one for each class. I think we'll go with a little green guy. I will let the kids name it and we can see which class can grow the tallest "hair!"

Art Center

Our door! 

 Adorable little planters! 

We named ours Alvin!

Planting a garden!

Working at the flower shop!

Reading buddies

He is making the shapes on the bucket.

Spring Fling in effect!

The art wall!

Hopping into First Grade!

Sooo, here we are. The last two weeks of school! (My class graduates kindergarten on May 29th! Oh my!)

We LOVE the Froggy book series in our room! (If you are unfamiliar with the series, I highly recommend any and all of them and guarantee that you and your kiddos will fall in love that little guy as we have!)

This picture will take you to an author profile for Jonathan London and all things Froggy!

We have been reading the Froggy books all year long, and I put out my summer read aloud basket a few weeks ago and the kids were particularly interested in one book called Awesome Amphibians!

So, we read Awesome Amphibians and a few more Froggy books and then made our very own frogs! (I got the frog pattern from a friend and fellow kindergarten teacher at my school.) So I had my kinders color their giant frogs as morning work and then write a story about the frog (or toad, as some of them noted the bumps on the picture!).

 "My frog is jumping on a lily pad and it went in the water."

"My frog is loving the water because it lives in the water. If it doesn't go in the water, it will die." 

"My frog is poison. Do not touch my frog because it's poison". 


I couldn't resist sharing this, too! I was assigned a School Buddy this year since it is technically my second full year. This is what I found on my door handle last week. :) 

 So cute!

And this my message board that I use to display some of my gifts from my students! I also added my School Buddy's note! :)

Bugs, Bugs, Bugs!

This week we are studying insects! In the fall, near Halloween, we did a unit on spiders. Now it's all about insects!

I found a cute song on youtube to teach the parts of an insect, but of course I can't access it from school! So I wrote the words on chart paper and taught my kids the words and we do it our way! :)

Here is the link to the song on youtube:

This song is so cute and an effective way for kids to learn the body parts of an insect! 

Today we made this little project as a science and math lesson - bugs and shapes AND following directions!

This one was the model I made, and students were given squares of each color paper. I told them what shapes to cut and how to label and then I showed this one and had them glue their insects together!

When the insects were complete, I let my kiddos choose where to hang their creepy crawlies in the room! Very cute!