Living in Florida means we don't really GET a Fall season. I mean, the weather cools down a tiny bit, but then all of a sudden it is a Florida Winter without the leaves changing color and of course, no snow. That being said, it actually feels like a Fall day here today! The air is crisp and not humid like it usually is and a few of the leaves are crunchy! Just a few... Happy Sunday!
What are you up to this fine day?
If you do not follow me on Instagram, you need to GET ON THAT. Tonight there is a Freebie loop for Halloween Freebies! I have teamed up with a huge group of teachers that will be offering a Halloween FREEBIE through Instagram starting at 8pm EST. Click below to go to my Instagram and follow me so you can get in on the fun!
For Second Grade Science, our first unit was The Human Body. I have to tell you, I was not impressed with the curriculum and resources available to my students for this topic, so, of course, I made my own. I made the pieces as we went along and kept adding to this growing project. I am finished teaching this unit, but The Human Body Unit had yet to be posted. So although it is late... better late than never, right?
Ladies and gents, this was definitely a labor of love. I put so much work into this and am totally obsessed with it. I'm actually sad that we are done with this Science unit and moving on because I had a total blast creating, teaching, and experiencing this with my students.
Before diving into the writing and the INB pages, my class and I did a lot of hands-on activities and read-alouds. We read The Magic School Bus Inside the Human Body, Parts by Tedd Arnold,and after learning about the brain, we totally learned the song "If I Only Had a Brain" from The Wizard of Oz. They loved it! I loved hearing, "Wait, Mrs. Smith! He would NOT be able to dance and sing if he didn't have a brain!"
I turned to Pinterest for a couple of hands on ideas, especially with the heart and the brain lessons.
Here's my Pinspiration for a timed "Beat the Clock" activity to help kids realize how strong and amazing our heart is! They had a BLAST. I found this idea through Pinterest which led me to The Primary Theme Park blog:
The heart pumps 1.3 gallons of blood per minute! So we got a gallon of water in one bucket for students to try and scoop to another bucket in a minute! I couple of kiddos got close but no one was able to. Of course it was raining outside the day we did this, so we did it inside, carefully on our Superman blanket. Thanks to the Pinspiration above, here's our try below:
Also during the lesson we did on the heart we did an AWESOME and extremely easy activity with our pulse. We put marshmallows on toothpicks, balanced them on our wrists after finding our pulse, and watched the toothpick dance! To spice it up a bit, we did an exercise video and then watched our toothpicks REALLY go wild with our heart rate even higher. The students were amazed at how the toothpicks were moving. Here's the Pinspiration from What the Teacher Wants blog:
And here's our try! I will be doing this every year. It was easy and it really stuck with the kids.
As we moved through the unit, my class did a fabulous job keeping track of their learning activities in their Interactive Science Notebook. I pulled a couple of resources from the Florida AIMS Life Science book, but I made a lot of my own. Check out the photos below. These activities are included within The Human Body Unit on TpT.
We also created "brain hats" which was another Pinspired activity. The students looked so cute walking around with their brains on all day. LOVED IT!
Here's the Pinspiration from Ellen McHenry's blog. The free download for the template is there. The Pinterest photo shows the different sections of the brain. I printed the template without that and the students colored the different sections.
Here's one of my kiddos sporting her new awesome brain hat! Here's what I learned: card stock is WORTH IT; use Scotch tape instead of glue and don't be skimpy on it; print the adult size version because there are some kids with BIG heads.
HOW CUTE IS THIS?! While we wore them, we read a mini-book from the Florida AIMS Life Science book (Brain Power) and learned "If I Only Had a Brain." I linked the video below. The kids loved it and it was a nice little break from the "work." ;)
Within the Human Body Unit, I included integrated Literacy and Math printables. The writing task cards were a big hit in my classroom and not only allowed me to see if the students understood the human body, but also allowed them to make self connections. There are several full color and black and white centers, including a True/False sort (perfect for practicing for true/false test prep), Word Wall cards (very handy to go with those writing task cards), and some really neat "brain games." Take a look at the preview and larger pictures below:
Check it out in my TpT store HERE or click the image above. I hope you enjoy this unit as much as I did!
Thank you as always to The Teaching Trio for one of my favorite linkies!
HAVE TO: The other day was my best friend Heather's birthday! I made her what we call a "Loot Crate." My husband and I came up with the idea and modeled it after the popular subscription box Loot Crate. Basically I make a box of surprise items that my best friend will totally love. My husband and I did it for our anniversary and the opening of said loot crates is on YouTube:
HOPE TO: I have such a fun Science unit in the making and I am ALMOST done!!! Here's a sneak peek I posted on Instagram the other day. I am totally in love with it and can't wait to share the finished product (hopefully today?!).
A photo posted by Amanda Smith - Daisy Designs (@daisydesignstpt) on
HAPPY: My baby puppy has an allergic reaction to something or something like that. She doesn't feel well now and is under the influence of puppy Benadryl. There's a picture on my husband's phone that I'll post to my Instagram when he wakes up ;) So make sure you follow my Instagram!
Wow, ya'll. Life has REALLY gotten in the way of blogging and Teachers Pay Teachers lately! This week was the dreaded "I don't have a second to breathe" week, so I am STOKED that it is finally the weekend! So happy to be here blogging and reading the posts I'm so behind on (with my pumpkin spice coffee, of course).
First off, it's a new Currently and I'm only 10 days behind schedule! :P Thanks, Farley, as always for the awesome linky!
LISTENING: Living in Florida means lots of rain, people. Even in October.
LOVING: As mentioned before, this week was crazy-talk. I am SO happy it is the weekend!
THINKING: My blog needs more love and I think I can finally give it the attention it deserves each week after the craziness that was September.
WANTING: Every now and then I play video games with my husband on his live stream (twitch.tv/brutallstatic) and talk to viewers and just have a lot of fun. I did that last night and now I want to play some more! It is addicting!
NEEDING: Did I mention it is raining? Yeah, that means I breathe funny. Need to take some allergy medicine but it just makes me so darn sleepy!
BOO-TIFUL: Any time I play online on my husband's live stream, he always broadcasts that I'm the most beautiful woman in the world. It sure does make me feel like I am!
While I'm here, let me take the moment or two to tell you that I am feeling INSANELY motivated today (and I hope it sticks with me). In my county every grade level at every school has an appointed STEM lead that goes to trainings and inservices to bring back valuable information to the team and lots of resources and teaching strategies. I had one of these all-day collaborative planning days with the STEM leads for Second Grade yesterday and I learned SO MUCH. I was a little overwhelmed but after sleeping on the info and looking over everything this morning, I am so excited to get the next Math unit up and running.
If you have some great Math center ideas or hands-on Math ideas, link them in the comments or share the pins with me on Pinterest! I have a couple of boards that I have Math ideas in (one is general and has a lot of Kinder ideas in it from last year... and the others are general second grade and printables). Check them out below! I'll be pinning like a maniac this weekend I think.
Before I begin... Happy birthday to my sister-in-law Autumn! <3 Here's a throw back picture to celebrate: (hopefully she doesn't read my blog a lot or she'd kill me for this...)
LOOK AT DA BABY FACES!
I was probably 21 ish in this picture which would make her a teeny tiny 15 ish. :P
Now onto The Sunday Scoop!
As mentioned in my last Sunday Scoop post, my Kindergarten Wonders packs are all bundled together with the exception of a couple of missing units. Unit 4 is up next to add and I promised it would be done by the end of September. I still have a few days left to keep my timeline going... but let's be real here... not a lot gets done after school in my exhausted state (am I right, teachers?), so I'm going to try to finish up today. NO... I HAVE to finish up today. One less thing to worry about this week! Other than that, the gym and the seriously never-ending laundry pile are on my to-do list today.
Unit 4 INCOMING!!!
My best friend was feeling under the weather this week and she texted me yesterday that she got all her homework done (my friends get really big degrees and stuff... I'll stay over here and play with the 7-year-olds for now). I'm hoping I get everything I need to do DONE so she can come over and we can have some friend time. I'm missing the summer days! But in the mean time, I'll be working on lesson plans for the week and binge watch Gilmore Girls at the same time. Anyone else do that?
Speaking of lesson plans, I'm excited to plan for the Wednesday Science Day!!! I don't know about your school/county, but in our district on Early Release Days, we do Science ALL DAY LONG. The kids love it, I love it, and it gives us the time necessary to really delve deep into hands-on experiments that we don't normally have the time for. We are working on the human body right now and I have a lot of ideas colliding in my brain. Can't wait till Wednesday!!!
I also have a Human Body Unit in the works to post to TpT and will be finalizing it in the coming weeks to share. I am loving the results so far and I think you will, too.
Have a fabulous Sunday, everyone! Thanks for stopping by!
Yesterday FLEW by, ya'll. Don't you hate when your weekend days just fly by like they didn't happen?? Phew! Another busy week ahead and I'm telling ya, I just want to lay around today. Can't do it though! I have a LOT to do and here's the scoop:
BUSY BUSY BUSY!!
I am not happy that I have another week of soft/liquid foods after this oral surgery. Two weeks!!! That's just too long! On the bright side, I've lost 4 pounds... But I really need to blend up my lunches for the next couple of days. My Ninja blender is too loud to do in the morning.
I REALLY hope I have the time today to work on a couple of projects for my TpT store, one possibly being a freebie (more on that later...)! If you haven't seen, my Kindergarten Reading Wonders packs are now bundled together. They are quickly becoming some of my best selling packs on TpT and I'm so excited to get them finished. I bundled them together before I have completed Unit 4. The good news is that the bundle is a growing bundle, meaning it's cheaper right now than it will be when it is fully completed. I really would like to finish up Unit 4 today (probably won't happen but if I work SUPER hard, maybe...) and add it. So if you are on the fence about purchasing the bundle, NOW is the time before the price goes up. If you purchase it before Unit 4 is added, don't worry, you will get the updated product free of charge when the unit is added. This goes for Unit 10 as well which will be posted in February.
Click the image below to check it out now. It has all the links to the products included which are individually $20.
I also really hope I can get some reading in today! I am reading Ken Follett's World Without End at the moment and it is soooooo good. It is the sequel to The Pillars of the Earth which was AMAZING.
These books have been out for a while, but I just recently discovered them. He also has written a newer series which I can't wait to get my hands on. Have you read these books? I LOVE them!
Well, we are a few weeks into school where I am (Central Florida) and boy, am I tired! I saw a hilariously true thread of comments on a post somewhere about "You know you're a teacher when..." and they were all related to back to school. For real, though, you know you're a teacher when you wish bed time was 6pm (and sometimes it really is...).
I'm pretty sure everyone is back to school now, being it's after Labor Day. When did you start school this year? We started August 17th!
But let's get to it: the back to school CURRENTLY!
Had a dental procedure last week and it's one of those ones that takes freaking FOREVER to heal... so I'll be on a soft foods/starving myself diet till the 18th... I also have dragon breath. It's not pretty.
Moving on...
This is my first year in Second Grade and so far... I am LOVING IT SO MUCH. My class is fabulous (and crazy small... only 15 kids?!). They are so enthusiastic to learn and excited to be there. We were doing a close read the other day and coloring the sentences where we found text evidence and a student seriously just yelled out, "This is so cool!" What?! Is this real life?!
Here are a few pictures of our first few days and more to come later!
Gotta love it! This is out "stuck" board. It's an exit ticket on Fridays with something that stuck with them. The plan is to find out more about what interests the students, make sure they learned something valuable, and that there aren't any misconceptions on a topic they learned about. It also helps me find out more about what my students respond to (what types of lessons, activities, etc.). On the first week we went to the library, this student was so excited to get a book!
I put polka dot tape on their desks for a quick math game and you'd think they won the lottery!
I asked them what they WANTED to learn in 2nd grade and these were the answers I got. I told them I wouldn't delete this picture from my phone so that I could make sure they get to learn some of this. Luckily, a lot of it is actually stuff they WILL learn! Lucky me!
Stay tuned for more fun photos of Back to School!!!
