Earth Day is April 22nd

Happy almost Earth Day!

I am hoping that the warm weather finds us up here in North Idaho.  I need to warm up my bones a bit.  Not much snow this winter, but since the official first day of spring we have had a storm every week that has dropped a few inches of white stuff on us.

Things are still freezing into the 20's at night and my bulbs are shaking in their leaves!  It looks like Earth Day might be more like what people traditionally consider the first day of Spring in these parts.  From today until Earth day, our temps are supposed to finally hit the low 70's during the day!  Yeah! But just to keep us on our toes, the nights will still drop down into the 30's...brrrr!

Earth Day is on Wednesday, April 22nd.  In our school it will probably be an Earth Week.  Monday is Art so that is when I will do my Art project.  Tuesday is when I do my whole class writing cuz that's one of the few days I have my whole class.  Wednesday we will plant something...not sure what yet. Thursday is supposed to be computer lab, but it turns into science day after spring break each year because the upper grades take over the computer labs for ISAT's. And then on Friday we have Garbage Pick-Up Day around our little town.  Each class takes gloves, big garbage bags and their hiking shoes, picks a street and starts walking and picking up trash.  They love being out of the classroom and so do I!

Here is the project that will encompass my writing and art this next week.  The kiddos love it!

You can find it on TPT...for only $3.  15 pages of fun :)

Are you ready for JANUARY!?

Start your New Year off in your classroom with this creative Art/Writing project about Martin Luther King, Jr.

Here are a couple great books to read to your primary classes to go along with the study of Martin Luther King's life, death and his legacy.

I love this series of historical books for my primary students.  My library has some of the titles, but I am growing my own collection as well.

A Picture Book of Martin Luther King, Jr. by David Adler

 Happy Birthday Martin Luther King by Jean Marzollo.  

Beautiful artwork in this one along with the story of his life.

Martin Luther King Day Ideas

Here are some links to ideas to use when studying about Martin Luther King...

You have to start with a good book.  Here are a couple good ones I've used:

Martin's Big Words

A Picture Book of Martin Luther King, Jr

My First Biography: Martin Luther King, Jr

Then after you've read a good book or two to build schema...then you can move on to planning and plotting and writing and interpreting.

Here is a freebie I made...this is a sample of what the finished product could look like.  It is on my TpT store with the writing template.  Feel free to use it :)  Click HERE to download.

Here are some other teachers with some fun and clever ideas...plus some other sites too:

Classroom Freebies

Free coloring page on TeacherVision

Kinder Alphabet 

Flying into First Grade

This is a good video on Brain Pop (I had never found this site before.  It's cool!)

Crazy for First Grade

Check out this Fingerprint Peace Dove art project.  It's amazing!

Free Kids Crafts.com

Poem Freebie

Word Search

This site has a historical narrative for you to read if you are rusty on the details of Martin Luther King Jr's life.  

Well, that should get just about anybody started.  If you still haven't found what you need, then pop over to TpT and search for free Martin Luther King stuff.  There is quite a bit more on the site.

Early Happy New Year!

Our disrict has a weird schedule this year.  We don't go back until January 7th.  New Year's will seem to be done and gone by then.  Then to make things even more complicated, we will be having our "Christmas" parties on January 11th.

It seems that some very naughty kids decided to spread rumors about shootings and bomb threats at some of our local schools.  They posted and spread rumors on some of the social networks locally and so we had school cancelled in the three largest districts here in North Idaho.

So we will come back to school in January enjoying some Christmas/New Year activities...combined with the end of the quarter assessments of course.  Piece of cake.

So, optimistically, I've come across some fun things to celebrate the New year with--in a perfect world of course.  Perhaps some of these ideas will be useful for you too.

I thought this poster would be a good start!  This poster was made by +Sarah Winchell.  She posted it on her blog: I Dream of First Grade.  

Fun in First has a fun poem she posted last January.  She also included a goals worksheet that you could adapt for your class and the new year.

Here is a great time matching game to start the New Year.  The First Grade Parade (one of my favorite blogs to visit because she has wonderful freebies!) created this one.

Jennifer Drake's TpT store has a lot of fun, low cost activities for the New Year.  This coloring page is a freebie in her store.  It will be great for the end of the first day back when my first graders burn out and are ready to go home :)

And here are an assortment of freebies on TpT related to the New Year.

New Year's Resolution Friendly Letter

New Year's Writing and Craft project (perfect for hanging in the hall!)

New Year's Creative Writing Stationery

New Year's ABC Order

New Year's Clip Art

Explaining what a resolution is can be difficult with young children.  They haven't had time to make all those mistakes that we resolve to fix each year :)  But here is a fun book that puts it in terms that kids can understand.

Squirrel's New Year's Resolution

I am certain that this is more than I could ever complete in a week.  But it's a fun list to choose from just the same!

Happy New Year everyone!!

Reuse those baby food jars!

Last school year I had a 1st grader with a little brother who was very hungry.  So her mom fed him a lot and then she sent the baby food jars in to me.  I love when there are little siblings at home and this works out.  Baby food jars are awesome!  I use them for all sorts of projects.  We use them for watercoloring, mixing colors, making treasure jars at Christmas, planting seeds, and more...

I found a blogger who has a list of 20 ideas for using those extra baby food jars.  Check it out:

20 Uses For Baby Food Jars