Anyone out there?? Who knew 2 weeks could fly by so quickly?!? Who knew a 17 month old could get hand, foot, and mouth, cut two bottom teeth, miss Easter Sunday festivities, get a horrible cold, cut two top teeth, and have wretched allergies all in 2 weeks? Well, me either, but such is life lately. To top it off, we started our fabulous week of standardized testing this week {and I won't get on a soapbox about testing 5 and 6 years olds...another post, another time ;) }. Back to that cutie 17 month old that has had a rough go of it...here's a picture from this past Sunday when we had a "do-over" of Easter.
I know I'm a little biased, but could she get any cuter??
While time has been flying by, we wrapped up our insect study with butterflies. My kids were just a little obsessed since we had these in our classroom. Every morning they would immediately go over to see if all the caterpillars had made their chrysalis!
When we first began our study of butterflies, we of course learned about their life cycle. We did a little paper/pencil activity, but having the caterpillar cups in our classroom where the kids could see the life cycle actually happening really made a huge difference!
After reading some informational stories about butterflies, we charted what we learned and the kids wrote about their learning. We used watercolors to paint butterflies that we attached to our writing.



We also read one of my favorite stories, Charlie the Caterpillar. It's such a sweet story about the meaning of a true friend and also perfect to discuss how a character can change throughout a story.


Probably my most favorite activity while we study butterflies is making these caterpillar puppets to go along with the story, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We read the story, then sequence it using pictures from my sequencing pack. Then, we use paper plates that I've cut the middle out of to glue the pieces that the caterpillar ate each day. We also write the day of the week on the back of the plates to help us in our retelling. The puppets are tube socks that I dyed green and hot glued eyes to. After we make the plates, I let the kids get in partners to retell the story. They begged to do it over and over!





My friend Deeanna created this project and it is a favorite of everyone! You have to do it if you haven't taught insects yet! It had my kids so excited about retelling a story! {Click here to see Deeanna's pack}
To celebrate our learning of butterflies, a sweet mom sent us some butterfly bubbles. The kids had a blast with them!



Last Friday, most of our butterflies had emerged, so we released them, not wanting to keep them caged for the weekend. When we came back today, the rest of the butterflies had come out of their chrysalids! It's always so funny to release them...the kids are excited and sad all at the same time! This last picture might be one of my favorites from all year...what learning is all about!



This week we're moving on to plants. I'm hoping to make things as fun as possible, since we're worn out by the time we get finished testing each morning!
Here's to a great week!
I'm super excited to be teaming up with the ultra-talented bright ideas group again this month to bring you another round of inspiring ideas to take back to your classroom! I hope you're finding lots of things you can use as you make your way through all of the awesome posts!

Today, I want to share a little about how I use calendar time in my classroom.

Calendar is one of my favorite times of the day and with the recent shift to common core, I became very disheartened when I heard from many teachers saying they weren't doing calendar anymore because it's not "common core." While there may not be a specific standard in the common core that states to do calendar, you can meet SOOOOOOO many standards by having a well thought out calendar time, and I am a huge advocate of keeping a calendar time in the the lower grades. {It's also a social studies standard in many states, including Florida, where I teach}. Here's an wide view of what my calendar looks like {it's in the front of my room in front of my group rug}.

After morning work, where my kids do a quick review activity page and I check folders, do attendance, etc., we come to the rug and start our day with calendar. I know this isn't possible for everyone, but after 10 years, I HAVE to start my day this way! The first thing we talk about is the date. We turn over the card with the big number for the date at the bottom, then we decide what pattern piece we need for the day. Yes, I know patterns aren't common core, but it doesn't hurt to be able to repeat a pattern ;).  At this point, we also use the calendar to answer questions such as, "What day of the week was April 3?," or "How many Fridays have we had in April?" {As a side note, on the first day of each month, we write any important dates on the calendar so I don't have to be asked a million times when the field trip is!}.
Next, we discuss what day of the week it is, what day it was yesterday, and what tomorrow will be. This is a great opportunity to teach those positional words {before, after}!
Then, we use money to make the number of the date {this is not a kinder CC standard, but we just do it for exposure and it's great for working on counting on} and then we use base ten blocks to determine how many days we've been in school. This has helped my kids so much this year go beyond the kindergarten base ten standard of just using base ten for teen numbers.
Probably my most favorite aspect of our calendar is our ten frames. Each day, we add a dot to make the amount on the ten frame match our number for the date. I start by asking how many we have, then continue by asking if we put one more, how many do we have. We also determine how many more we need to make 10, 20, or 30 and once the date gets past ten, we talk about how we have a group of ten and so many more. It is an awesome number sense activity each day!
The last two parts of our calendar are tally marks {just to work on another way to make a number} and our weather graph. The graph is great for a quick review of more/less/equal.
We finish up by singing the days of the week and months of the year, which is also not necessarily a CC standard, but it's definitely a life skill!
I hope that if you're not currently implementing a calendar time, you'll reconsider next year. In just a few minutes, you can get in some great math vocabulary, number sense activities, and hit some social studies standards!
If you would like to see more ideas from my classroom, be sure to follow me on Instagram {I post there a lot!} and Facebook!
Now, be sure to check out the amazing bright ideas below. I'm sure you'll find lots to help finish your year on a high note!


While we've been learning about insects these past two weeks, my kids have been loving our literacy workshops and math centers. I love having a variety of centers, so my kids are practicing lots of different skills! Not all of my kids do all of these centers either - they do the ones related to the skills they need the most practice with. Here's a quick peek at what we've been working on. {If you click the picture, it will take you to the pack the centers are from...most are from my Spring pack and my friend Deeanna's Going Buggy pack}
Rolling Word Families: The kids spread out pictures, roll the dice, then find a picture in that word family and write the word on their recording page

Caterpillar Vowels: Making caterpillars by matching pictures with the same medial sound
Words That Bug Us: Discriminating between real and non sense words
Matching Words: Matching more difficult words to pictures...they know their is only one picture for each letter of the alphabet, so that helps them :)
CVC Word Match: Not technically insects, but the kids love reading their words and finding the matching pictures
Ladybug Addition: Counting spots and adding them together
Honeybee Subtraction: Writing subtraction equations for what the picture shows
Rolling Numbers: Working on forming our numbers correctly
More or Less: Determining if a number is more or less than another
Ladybug Number Lines: Finding missing numbers on a number line
I forgot to share these pictures yesterday, but last week, we went outside to see if we could catch any bugs. My kids LOVED looking for insects! We only were able to get a few ants, but during recess, our neighbor Mrs. Calloway, caught a hornet for our classes to inspect. The kids loved it!

My kids are so into all things insects and they're eating up everything we're doing! I love this time of year!!
Y'all, this poor little blog has been a little bit neglected the past few weeks! Spring Break has come and gone {and it snowed on us!!} and we are back in full learning mode as busy as ever. Fortunately, the weather has been beautiful here {until yesterday and now there's flooding - boo!} and this sweetie and I have been in the yard almost every afternoon {hence the reason no blog posts!}.
She's finally walking pretty well {if you follow my instagram, you know we struggled a little!} and she is into everything now!
At school, we've been busy learning all about insects. This is always one of my favorite themes and my little ones are pretty into it as well! We started last week by discussing what we already knew about insects. Then, we read a non-fiction story about insects and added some new learning. We used our big bug to help us learn the parts of an insect then each of the kids made their own diagram of an insect. They turned out great!




We learned all about honeybees and wrote an interesting fact we learned.


We also learned all about ants. We wrote two interesting facts we learned and attached them to these cute ants. I gave the kids the red pieces and a big black piece and told them to make an ant. No step by step directions for this one. I love the way they all turned out so unique!


While we were learning about ants, we read Hey, Little Ant and charted reasons the boy should or should not step on the ant.
The third insect we learned about was fireflies. I don't have a non-fiction book about fireflies, so it was a good excuse to talk about other ways to do research. We charted what we learned, then the kids wrote about fireflies. We also read The Very Lonely Firefly and charted what happened in the beginning, middle, and end on a big firefly. This was a great visual for my kids to see that most of the story happens in the middle since the thorax/wings were the biggest part of the firefly.


In math, we made insects to hold our Buggy for Math journals. The kids loved doing these each day and they were great practice to get my kids thinking about which operation to use! This is part of my Buggy for Math craftivity pack. 



I used the insect fact book from that same pack to let my kids write a little informational book about insects. They turned out so cute!

Whew, that was a lot! Hopefully I'll be back tomorrow to share some of our ELA and math centers we've been using. Hope you all had a great Monday!!
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