I don’t know about you, but we’ve been hard at work learning about place value and how to make numbers in the teens (10+__ = __).  I decided to get out my Ten Frame BINGO game so that we could practice recognizing quantities on the Ten Frames.

There are enough mats for a whole class to play with completely different mats.  We use unifix cubes as markers, but you can use what you have.  I call out a letter and number and the kiddos have to find that combination on their mat.  Calling cards are included as well.  I’m giving one away free to a lucky someone who comments on my blog post–you may need to make your way to my blog if you’re reading this on Facebook or Twitter. 🙂

We planted some lima bean seeds last week to find out if they would grow using the lights in our classroom instead of the sun and if they would sprout and grow with no soil. I hung them on a clothesline near the ceiling.

We always write down the steps so that the kiddos can refer to them as they plant. 

We also fed our compost worms this week:

We keep our compost box in our classroom and most of the time, you don’t even know its there! 🙂

You may remember the Glitter Boards I made a few weeks ago:

You can see them here as well: http://instagram.com/p/mvlY0xREXy/

I use them as exit tickets.  I write down a sight word, math problem, science or social studies word, etc. and in order to be able to leave or go on to the next activity, the kiddos have to give me the answer or read me the word or tell me the definition.

Here we were using them to change beginning sounds in words. On this board, we were practicing our old and new sight words.  You can see where I differentiated for different learners.  I want to make sure all the kiddos have success so that they see this as a fun activity.

I usually keep one of these on my easel and one by the door.  When we have a few minutes after lining up, I write something on the board and either go down the line to get an answer or hold it up and tell the kiddos to raise their hand when they know the answer.

It cost me about $6 for all the materials–the frames are from IKEA for $3.00 each and I got the glitter paper from Stampin’ Up!  ( I sell Stampin’ Up! if you’re interested!) 🙂

My kids love the Headbandz Game!  We use it to help us learn our new sight words each week!

We choose someone to wear the Headbandz headband and we stick one of our sight word cards in the holder on the front.

The other children then give clues to help them figure out what the word might be.  At the beginning of the year, they were allowed to give letter names, but now that we all know most of our letter sounds, they have to only tell the sound that the letter makes.

The kiddos are allowed to tell how many letters are in the word, a word that it rhymes with, someone’s name in our classroom who starts with the same letter, and they can tell if a letter in a certain position is a consonant or a vowel.

I give written clues as the children give oral clues:

“The word has 3 letters”

“One of the letters is the vowel /e/”

“The first two letters together say /sh/”.

We play once or twice a week and we are not tired of it yet!  This would be fun as a station or a small group activity too!

We are currently studying plants, ponds, and the animals and plants that live in and around ponds.  All year, I’ve been making sensory tubs when I can for our science area and I think this is by far their most favorite tub!

I made the lily pads by cutting a thick green sheet of foam into lily pad shapes. I also got some stick-on foam flowers to add some color to them.

I purchased the plastic life-cycle set at Michael’s for about $7.00.

The eggs and the tadpole with back legs.  I got the green pebbles at Michael’s as well.  They were on clearance and are a greenish/clear color.  They are in different sizes and shapes, so they really do look like rocks in water. 🙂The frog on his lily pad!

We have been learning about plants recently…hoping that it will help Spring to make its way here a little faster!  It seems to have worked because its beautiful here today!

Here are some activities that we did to help us learn more about plant parts:

We also checked out different plant parts on different plants:

At the Spring Blogger Meet-up, one of the goodies received by a teacher was Mr. Greg’s glue sponges.  I was so jealous!  I really wanted them!! 🙂  Seeing them finally kick started me to make some of my own, for less than $10 for my entire classroom.  We have been using them for a couple of weeks now and the kids LOVE them and I LOVE that glue sticks are gone!!  The kids were the ones to notice that we were using an awful lot of plastic tubes just to glue things on, so even they see how great the glue sponges are!!

I have to say that we are quite talented at using our glue sponges.  Here the kiddos are gluing larger sheets of paper into their science notebooks.  They were the ones who figured out that they should just touch each corner to the sponge to make it stick.  I’ll be honest…I was a skeptic at first.  I thought for sure that we would have kiddos sticking their fingers in and pulling the sponges out, but honestly…not a problem so far.  I did introduce them in April, so we are almost done with the year.  We shall see how it goes introducing them at the beginning of the year next year.

Mr. Greg also suggested spritzing them with a Listerine/Water mixture each week to keep bacteria down, so I headed to Target and got a spray bottle and some Listerine…I’ll be squirting them down on Monday!  They will also smell minty fresh. 🙂

Give them a try…with good modeling and directions, they will become your new favorite thing too! 🙂

Sorry to be neglecting my little blog lately…I’ve been BUSY!!  The first week of April, I traveled to Boston to receive my Shell Science Teaching Award.

I was presented with this rear bumper cover from the #22 car belonging to Joey Lagano.  It’s currently sitting in my living room waiting for me to take it to school and hang on my wall. 🙂

I met some amazing people and did some great networking in the science world, so I’m excited to see where that takes me in the future!

I was also able to attend the NSTA Conference while I was there and learned some awesome new science ideas to try in my classroom, so as I use them, I’ll be sharing them with you. 🙂

I also got to visit some historic sites…we helped to dump tea into the Boston Harbor, saw where Paul Revere lived, and checked out the Make Way for Ducklings bronze ducks–so cute! 🙂