Week in Review

I posted my Testing Song in the last post. Several classes are going to sing it Monday morning to kick-off our testing week. My kids worked on it Monday and Tuesday. They had it down and were singing it during centers. Then at staff meeting Tuesday afternoon, one of the kdg teachers brings up that she didn't think it should say "Don't you guess.". She said they are supposed to guess as opposed to leaving the answer blank. We have sang this song the past 3 years and no one has ever said a word about this, but I do want to be a team player, so I sat with the said teacher's sister(who teaches 5th) and made the adjustment. So here is the revised version:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4viYvUGzTgqMUlQUmQzU3g1cEk/view?usp=sharing

We always make bags of brain friendly treats for the test takers. I teach at a very small school (2 teachers per grade level). So I usually sign up for to help out with the testing incentives. I want my former students to know that I am pulling for them. ; ) Anyway, I made a little poster for each testing classroom. I printed it on 4 sheets of paper to make it bigger. Since there are a bunch of Googled pics, I can't share it.

Each of the treats on the poster are in the bags for the testers. Then the first graders made drew pictures of the testers and I put them together by class to make a little quilt. Here is an example of the one for my daughter's class.

As you can see some of my students are in serious need of some art lessons. haha

When I used to teach kindergarten, one of my favorite websites was www.makinglearningfun.com
Now that I teach first I can still use some of their things. We have been studying plants, so this week we made the lifecycle of a sunflower from www.makinglearningfun.com. I added the words to each picture. I talk about my old teaching buddy a lot, she moved away and I miss her dearly. I don't have anyone at the moment that I create with. Anyway she was very sciencey (is that a word?), she wanted the lifecycle to go in a circle, so we would always trace pictures 3 and 4 from the back so the life cycle would be in a circle. They turned out great! Ignore my scratched up chalkboard, I just hung these for the picture.

Here is one upclose.

Here is another great one from www.makinglearningfun.com It is the seasons of an apple tree.

And here it is upclose.

Those 2 projects inspired me to make this frog life cycle. I already had the copy of the life cycle so I made up this frog to put it on. Here is the link from Scholastic. Thanks Michelle Blackburn!