Spider Week! {LOTS of FREEBIES}

First off, the winner of Sweet Explorations is Stefanie! I just emailed your copy to you :)

We had a great week learning about spiders! This was such a high interest unit! The kids learned a lot. We read several nonfiction texts about spiders and filled out our can/have/are charts.

We made a graph to see who is afraid of spiders in our class {Mrs. Lynes and Mrs. Barreras are!!} You can pick up this freebie from my store {HERE}.

This idea was originally Cara's, but I had to modify it for my large team teaching class :)

 

We worked on repeated addition by rolling a dice, drawing that many spiders, and counting how many legs in all. The kids loved this. Dice makes everything more fun :) You can get that freebie {HERE}.



 

We worked on facts and opinions, spider style, with Amy Lemon's freebie! She has made a powerpoint of facts and opinions. We had our kids make an "F" or an "O" with their arms after we read each statement. Good, quick visual assessment. Then we did her fact and opinion sort.

 

We also used Amy Lemon's spider cinquain poem freebie. We made our spiders a little differently, but they still turned out super cute!

 

 

Lastly, we did our Spider Fact Booklet Craftivities! We used the larger version from this pack, and ohmiword, the kids did AWESOME. And it was the day after Halloween!! In this pack, there are a few different graphic organizers to differentiate for different levels of writing. Take a peek at some of their work!

 

 



Our hallway is covered in spiders, but at least they are stinkin' cute :) This week we will be learning about American symbols and Veterans! Have a great week!

Five for Friday, Pumpkin Seed Fun & Spider Freebie!

Oh man, TGIF, you guys!! I am linking up again for Five for Friday! You should link up, too!

 

 

#1: Our sweet boy, Ashton, wrote this during work on writing the other day. I don't think he knows how much I needed to read that. This year has been a stressful one, not with students, but with paperwork, nearly impossible expectations, RTI, feeling like we can't teach because of all this stuff, etc. Anyone else feeling like this? I hate, hate, hate it :( But this little guy must have some kind of intuition, because he always seems to know when we need to hear or read something like this. We always say he has such a wise soul.

 

 

#2: We took our sweet niece and nephew to Mr. Hubby's family fall festival for work last night. Cutest little butterfly and polar bear that you ever did see!

 

 

#3 is all about pumpkin seed fun as we wrapped up our pumpkin unit! We used Abby's Pumpkin Seed Data freebie. We also used pumpkin seeds to write doubles story problems, since we are working hard on addition strategies!

 

 

We also used seeds to work on estimation. In the past I have done pumpkin seed estimation where they take seeds out of pumpkins and make groups of 1s, 10s and 100s... Well, we wanted to do something a little less messy, a little quieter {HA} and less time consuming, so we estimated how many seeds it would take to cover up different sized pumpkins! I have a few versions of this activity in my Fun With Pumpkins pack.

 

 

To end the unit, we did our inside/outside pumpkin craftivity! We had done a lot of our observations last week, and just opened up two more pumpkins to review today. The kids always love this craftivity, which can be found in my Fun With Pumpkins pack :)

 

 

#4: Our school received a STEM grant this year, so yesterday we had our first training. I am working on a mini-pack to go along with this Skittles activity, and it should be posted soon, along with more details... :)

 

#5: We will start our spider unit next week, which, believe it or not, I am excited about. Have I mentioned that I HATE spiders?! :) We will be using this freebie from my store. Pick up a copy by clicking on either picture. {Can someone explain why the pics are gray!?!?}

 

 

And I have also updated my Spider Facts to include a mini booklet, a large writing piece, and some extras. It is now 20 pages! Pick up a copy by clicking the picture below!

 

HAPPY WEEKEND!

Spider Fact Booklet Craftivity! {1 copy to give away!}

After our pumpkin unit {photos coming in the next week or two!}, we will be start a mini unit on spiders! Believe it or not, I actually had fun with it last year, even though I hate, hate, HATE spiders in real life. I wanted our kiddos to be able to record their learning, because it a unit of such high interest! So I whipped up this cute little fact book that I am so excited to use :)

 

 

You will get all templates to create this booklet, as well as a spider brace map and spider acrostic poem. Check it out {HERE} or by clicking on one of the pictures!

 

**I will choose a random follower to get a copy of this fact booklet! Just leave me a comment with your email! ** Congrats, Tania! I have mailed your copy to ya :)

Spider Unit Plans {THANKS, Amy & Cara!} plus a FREEBIE

I. HATE. SPIDERS. They are gross and scary! EW. I hate even talking about them. That being said, I have never done a spider unit... But this year I am sucking it up for my kids. {Plus I have found a lot of cute ideas on Pinterest and in Blog-Land!} I even researched and made a spider fact book {which involved me looking at LOTS of nasty, close up pictures... EW}.

So here are some of the things I am doing... Many of the ideas are not my own, so please click on the pictures to go to the original blog! I want to give credit where credit is due :)

We are going to label spiders using Cara's labeling page.

 

 

We will also tally, graph and interpret data using my "Are You Afraid of Spiders?" graph. I modified mine a bit, but the idea is all Cara's!

 

Here is a copy of my graphing page {I needed a bigger bar graph for 45 kiddos!!} Click on the pic for your free copy. {If you snag a copy I just ask that you please follow my blog}

 

 

We will also work on repeated addition using spider legs! Kids will roll a dice, draw that many spiders {8 legs and all!} and figure out how many legs there are in all! That and the graphing activity come together. But you can also click the picture below :)

 

 

Have you checked out all the cute spider stuff Amy Lemons has been posting? Oh my word!! Can you say adorable?! She has saved me :)

 

We will be doing her Fact and Opinion Activities.

 

We will also be doing her adorable poem/craftivity {click picture for her awesome freebies!}

 

 

Oh, and we will be making a chart similar to this:

 

 

 

At the end of the week, we will do some spider fact writing :)

 

Huge thanks to Amy and Cara for all of their amazing ideas!! :) Our students are very excited for a spider unit, and you've helped me tremendously!!