Happy Monday! Here are some of our Earth Day activities from last week. I would've posted them sooner, but my sweet hubby just opened his latest show (her is an actor and director) and needs the camera and my little lap top for the shows. So here is Earth Day fun from my little buzzing room!
We started out with a schema chart.
We started out the week by learning that the Earth is sick and we can help it. We read this book to help us understand more about Earth and what's happening to it.
After reading we learned more about reduce, reuse, and recycle. I taught them a Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle song.
The next day we started putting our knowledge of the three r's to use by making art work from reusable trash. I had sent home a note the weekend before for families to send reusable trash to school. We pulled out some of the trash materials and decided what pieces we could use to make trees. It was completely up to them to pick what they wanted to use. I got this idea from Michelle at Apples and ABC's.
We also reused a lot of the materials to create monsters, robots, puppets, etc.
We also learned to recycle. I found this random "recycle machine" at Walmart on clearnace several years ago and use it every year for Earth Day. My cuties had to tear or cut old paper and then we placed it in the machine. We took turns spinning it.
After we finished spinning, we pushed the gooey paper into a mold to shape it like a star. While it was drying, we did some interactive writing about the steps to make the recycled paper.
We also learned to reduce. We read this book
which talks about 10 things we can do to help the Earth. Then we drew and wrote we could do to reduce the amount of energy we use.
We also read this book
and created this chart
which helped us make these
We also turned our plant pots into The Lorax.
On a side note, I just had to share that I met Natalie Grant last Friday! If you don't know who she is, check out the video below. She is a contemporary Christian music singer and is my FAVORITE! I was blessed to meet her because she was in town for a conference called Dare to Be. I was asked to be at the conference as a volunteer for World Vision. (My hubby and I sponsor a child so I was asked to volunteer and try to get more kiddos sponsored - anything for the cuties!) After the AMAZING conference was complete, she came out to say "thank you" to the World Vision volunteers! Here she is singing one of my favorites:
...and we got 34 kiddos sponsored! Sprinkles to Jesus!
Cute activities...and I love Natalie Grant!
ReplyDeleteVickie
What great ways to create fun filled activities... Love it! Thanks fr sharing... I am your newest follower! Come by and visit me @ kinderkiddies1.blogspot.com
ReplyDeleteI love all of the books you used for Earth Day! I will have to add these to my wish list!
ReplyDeleteHow fun Erica!! Love all of your ideas!
ReplyDeleteNicole
Rowdy in Room 300
Looks like y'all had a great day!
ReplyDeletelearnplayandhavefun.blogspot.com
I am so adding those Earth/Heart Mobiles to my list for next year. Thanks for sharing! Stop in for a little visit if you can find a moment (easier said than done this time of year).
ReplyDeleteKelley "Following You" Dolling
Teacher Idea Factory
Discover a Surefire Method to Teach Your Child to Read
ReplyDeleteThere are many different methods and opinions on how to teach a child to read - while all are well-intentioned, some methods could actually lead to reading difficulties in children. Learning to read is a critical step towards future academic success and later on success in life. If you cannot read, you cannot succeed. There is an amazingly simple method - actually, a combination of two methods - that can teach anyone to read, even children as young as 2 and 3 years old.
The combination of these two methods has been used in the Children Learning Reading program to successfully teach thousands of young children to read. So what are these methods?
It is the combination of synthetic phonics and phonemic awareness. Most have probably heard of phonics, but phonemic awareness is a concept less well known and ?it's not something you hear about often. Certainly, phonics is absolutely necessary to develop fluent reading skills; however, there are different types of phonics including embedded, analogy, analytical, and synthetic phonics. While using some type of phonics is better than not including any phonics instructions at all, you will achieve FAR BETTER results by employing synthetic phonics, which is by far the most easy and effective method for teaching reading. Multiple studies support this.
In a 7 year study conducted by the Scottish Education Department, 300 students were taught using either analytic phonics or synthetic phonics. The results found that the synthetic phonics group were reading 7 months ahead and spelling 8 to 9 months ahead of the other phonics groups. At the end of the 7 year study, the children were reading 3.5 years ahead of their chronological age.
Very impressive!
Through their amazing reading program, the creators (Jim & Elena - parents of 4 children and reading teachers) have taught all of their children to read phonetically by 3 years old and have helped thousands of parents to successfully teach their children to read as well! Some are small 2 or 3 year old toddlers, others are young 4 or 5 year old preschoolers, and still others at ages 6, 7, 8 or even older.
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The Children Learning Reading program works so well that many children will achieve reading ages far ahead of their chronological age.
Take Jim & Elena's children as an example: their oldest child, Raine, was reading phonetically at 2 years 11 months old, and by the time she entered kindergarten at 5 years old, she was reading at a grade 5 level with a reading age of 11.9 years - almost 7 years ahead of her chronological age. Their second child, Ethan, learned to read phonetically by 2 years 9 months, and at age 3, he was reading at a grade 2 level with a reading age of 7.2 years - progressing at a similarly quick pace as his older sister. Find that hard to believe? You can watch the videos posted here.
There are many different phonics programs out there, but rarely do you ever hear a mention of phonemic awareness (PA), and PA is absolutely an equally critical component to developing reading skills in children. What makes the Children Learning Reading program so unique and amazingly effective at teaching young children is that it seamlessly combines the teaching of synthetic phonics along with phonemic awareness to enable children to develop superb reading skills.
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