Colored Rain

This week I only had kids Monday and Tuesday.  Today is a furlough day...whoever chose October 31st for a furlough day was brilliant!  So during our short week, we did a science experiment connected to clouds.  Not sure where the original source of this project came from, I found instructions in an old science idea binder of mine.  You layer water and shaving cream.  Then drop food coloring onto the shaving cream.  When the "cloud" gets to heavy, colored rain happens.

Love this kid's intent observation.   And I am leaving you with the page we used to work through the scientific process.

 

Happy Wednesday,

Silhouette Season Art

Have you visited Hope.  She has a great blog and is from my neck of the Nation.  Anyway, go check her out.  I found a fun art project she did and then adapted it to our work with seasons and weather.  Here is her art blog post...Tint/Shade/Silhouette Art. 

First we thought about what our favorite season was and a color that we thought would represent that season.  Next we used a blob of colored tempera paint and a blob of white tempera paint.  (I love these trays...thank you IKEA.)

We started with a white circle.  Then added a paintbrush full amount of our color and mixed it with all the white on our tray.  Then painted around the white circle. 

Repeat this process until all the page is painted.  Then let dry.

Next we ripped black paper, for the ground, and glued it on the bottome.

Then we had to think of an image that was part of the season we chose.  We drew our idea with pencil and cut it out.

 And then glued our image on the paper.

Next week, we are going to add some poetry.
Happy Finally Friday!

How to Teach a _____ to Read

Today we finished reading an adorable book called, How to Teach a Slug to Read by Susan Pearson.  It was so fun.  Then we talked about who taught us to read and what we remember about it....cuz it was sooo long ago.  Since it is fall and pumpkins are so popular, we made a page for our upcoming book called, How to Teach a Pumpkin to Read.  Here are some ideas:




Ask your pumpkin questions about the story.

Get the pumpkin's favorite story and make it a good size for reading.

Get it's favorite book.  Make it repeat after you.

Read the same book over and over.

Teach the pumpkin how to stretch out the words.

Tell the pumpkin to sound out the words.

How would you teach a pumpkin to read?
Happy Thursday,

Baseball and Books

So the World Series starts tonight.  Let me be clear...I am a Dodger fan.  Always have been and always will be.  There is no possible way for me to root for the Giants.  So by default, I am cheering on the Tigers (and my friend Jenny is in Michigan.)  Unfortunately, this makes one of my students unhappy he is a huge Giants fan...we lovingly call each other "frenemies".  Here is the letter he wrote me today:

"Dear Miss Foote,
I really think the Giants are going to beat the Tigers.  Even though Miguel Cabrera has the Triple Crown, the Giants have the 2010 Rookie of the Year, Buster Posey.  It does not matter if they have the best rotation because the Giants have won six straight elimination games.  Please root for the Giants.
Go Giants."

So funny...I may have to borrow my brother's Will Clark jersey.

Enough baseball, onto other class related items.  In Reading Round-Up (where everyone goes to 30 minutes of leveled reading instruction) we are working on characters, using Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary books.  As we read our book, we added post it notes to the anchor chart.  We kept track of a character, a description, and where we could prove it using the book.  Then I copied their post-its onto the chart.

Once we finish our book, we are making character trading cards.  We looked at a few baseball card for ideas and then went to work.  I think they are pretty great:-)
Ralph from The Mouse and the Motorcycle

 Ramona

 Fudge, from Fudge-a-Mania

Happy Wednesday,

Self-Portrait Palooza

My friend wanted me to post about this awhile ago, but it kept getting interrupted by other things:-)  The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades are all in the same hall.  Each of us teachers have done self-portraits with quite a bit of variety.  So without further ado....here are the self portraits.

Ripped Construction Paper

Scissors and Construction Paper

Picasso's

Colored Pencil (These are from my class, you can read more here.)

 Then we wrote words that described ourselves in the border.

Happy Monday,