Five for Friday - Measurement Style

For the first time I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs'  Five for Friday Linky Party. This week we focused a lot on measurement, so my post will be mostly about measurement. At the end, I've included details about a fun giveaway that ends tonight.

We started learning about measurement by reading How Big is a Foot? by Rolf Myller. If you don't have a copy of the book, CLICK HERE to be taken to an online reading of the book. 

This book is great to introduce measurement and for students to learn the importance of having standard measurement units. For a brief summary of the book, CLICK HERE. 

We then made our own paper beds for the Queen using our feet as the measurement tool (just like the King and Apprentice did in the book). We quickly found out why the King had such a problem...

all of our beds were different sizes, oh no...

In the middle of each bed they had to write the answer to this question: What was the King's problem? 

We then used rulers to make our paper beds the same size as the Queen's bed (3 feet by 6 feet).  I displayed all the beds next to each other so the students could see that these beds were the same size because we used the same unit of measurement. 

This is what they wrote in the middle of each bed.

 We also traced our feet and compared them to the King's foot. 

  

 Yes, that's my foot (sure am glad I had my toes painted for y'all to see).

 

This was my sample, so the actual measurements are not filled in. For the King's foot, I made them ahead of time and passed one out to each student (of course the King's foot was 12 inches long).

 CLICK HERE to download the Comparing Feet worksheet. 

And don't forget to enter this amazing giveaway that I'm co-hosting with my friend Laura from A Grace Filled Classroom. It ENDS TONIGHT, so hurry up and enter. You can win a $25 TpT gift certificate plus other fabulous products from 12 TpT teacher authors. Click on the picture to be taken to the raffle.

 

Sharing My Best With You

    

106 teacher authors have teamed up (thanks to Amy from Teaching in Blue Jeans) to give away their best products -- FOR FREE.  Continue reading to learn about my best selling product AND to enter the giveaway.

Read on to take a peek at my best product that's included in the giveaway.


This product is for EVERY TEACHER who teaches with the Words Their Way spelling program. There is one worksheet for each sort. Students are required to do two things with each sheet. The first is to use the words  from the sort to finish sentences. I really love this component because it requires students to have vocabulary knowledge of each word (a component that is definitely lacking from the WTW program). The second part of each worksheet is to sort the words according to their correct categories. In addition to sorting the words, students are required to tell the spelling pattern and sounds of each category -- this REALLY makes them think.

In addition to the worksheets, I've also included some other great information and resources to make your life a little less stressful.

The worksheet is a sample of what all the worksheets look like. The small sheet is their 'Word Study To-Do List' and it lists all the requirements for the week. When students have completed one task, they cross it off and move on to the next task. One of the tasks my students are required to do is glue their words to paper (step 5) and then go on a word hunt (step 6). As you can see from the yellow sheet, this student glued their words to the paper and then found two additional words that matched the sort. Students are encouraged to find the additional words by looking around the classroom and reading books.

I have included some of these resources for FREE in the preview of each product. Just click on the picture of each product's cover to be taken to the product.
 

Enter below to win the bundle of 34 BEST SELLING PRODUCTS for 2nd and 3rd grade:
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Continue on The Best for the Best Teacher Appreciation Blog Hop by clicking the picture below.

Let's Celebrate!

Do you love birthdays as much as I do? Well lucky for you, I'm giving away presents for my birthday -- yep, that's right, I'm giving YOU presents for MY birthday.  I'm teaming up with  Laura from A Grace Filled Classroom to host an amazing giveaway for our May birthdays. Read on to find out the details about the TWO amazing birthday presents we're giving away. 

  

Here's birthday present #1:

This first present is a $25 TpT gift certificate and winner's choice from my store AND Laura's store (she has some AMAZING products too). 

If you want to win birthday present #1, enter here:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

And here's our second birthday present . . . . 10 AWESOME products (seriously, these products are absolutely amazing) from well-known teacher authors.  Click on the links below each image to be taken directly to each lady's store to see more of their products.

Lisa Goodman                                                   Fern Smith

Cheryl Jones                                              Michelle Divkey

Lucy S.                                                                   Lauren S.

Erin Waters                                                    Monique LeMaire

Danielle Sanders                                              Marcie Taylor

If you want to win birthday present #2, enter here:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

GOOD LUCK, and happy birthday to Laura, and me :)

We Love Our Moms

Today we started working on our gifts for Mother's Day.  I wish we had lots of time to do fun projects, but we don't (I know you feel me on that one), so I decided to have my kiddos create books on why their mom is the best. This would incorporate opinion writing and text features -- plus, what mom wouldn't cherish a book like this. 

Our first step was accomplished thanks to this wonderful (and FREE) planning guide.  Casey Hallett created it and you can CLICK HERE to download it from her TpT store. There's more to her product than this one page, but that's all I used for this activity (I'm almost out of copies for the year, so I'm trying my hardest to only copy what is absolutely necessary).  

We then turned our planning sheet into an amazing book. 

 We discussed how some books are dedicated to people, so we all dedicated our books to our moms. 

Each page in the book has a reason and matching illustration as to why their mom is the best. 

Tomorrow we're going to add two more pages. One page will compare and contrast their personality characteristics with their mom's and the other will compare and contrast their physical characteristics.  I'm including that information because we've started our Life Cycles & Genetics Unit and this is one of the standards. 

In addition to the book, we also made these adorable magnets. And yes, every year I always make my mom the same presents my kiddos make theirs.  And every year, my kiddos ask me why I'm making stuff for my mom -- you never stop loving your momma, no matter how old you get.

The Great Kapok Tree

The Great Kapok Tree by Lynne Cherry is one of my favorite stories to read with my students. It's a tale of the deforestation of the Amazon Rain Forest.  We're in the midst of our geography unit and teaching central message, so this book was a perfect tie-in to both! 

If you don't own a copy of the book, CLICK HERE for a free e-version! 

Before reading the book, we took a look at the map of the Rain Forest on the first page. This was very important because we used our map skills and read the key to figure out what the green shading represented.  We also discussed what the map was missing -- a compass rose.  So, make sure you don't skip over the map -- I almost did, my kiddos were the ones who pointed it out (so proud of them). 

We read the story twice. The first time we just listened to the story and then we reread it and used information from the text to make a list of the reasons why people shouldn't cut down trees. 

In all, we came up with six different reasons why the trees should not be cut down. I then had each student highlight the three reasons they felt were most important. 

We then used those three reasons and wrote a persuasive letter to stop deforestation. I'm planning on actually sending them somewhere (when my students know I'm actually going to mail their letters to real people, they work SO MUCH HARDER), I just haven't figured out to what organization. Do you have any ideas?

 (he'll be finishing his tomorrow morning...)

 I have lots of books on the rain forest and I'd love to spend time reading all of them, but we're running out of time so my plan for tomorrow is put my students into groups of 2 - 3 and give each group a different book on the rain forest. As a group, they'll read the book and then summarize the most important points. If we have time, I'll require them to give an oral summary -- which will practice their speaking and listening skills too.