Just so you know…my room is filled with 18 Seuss lovin’ kiddos! They would honestly LOVE IT if we came back ready for week 2 of Seuss! However, testing is next week and so we must get our game faces on and brush up on all things essential this week! I must admit…I loved it just as much as they did! Here is a look at all of the crazy Seuss inspired learning that we did last week!
We began the week with some figurative language study to truly appreciate the work of Dr. Seuss. We discussed alliteration {the kiddos fave} and several other types of figurative language to better our descriptive writing. Thanks to Cara, Jodi, and A Teacher’s Treasure for some great ideas to practice this skill!
In social studies, we have been studying communities. It was a perfect fit for us to discuss the community of Whoville. After reading Horton Hears a Who, the kiddos created their own version of a Whoville community. After they designed their town, the students wrote a descriptive paragraph which had to include, alliteration, similes, metaphors and personification to describe their visualization of the Who’s town.
Here is my student teacher’s example:
Here are a few of the kid’s designs and writings:
I loved seeing all of their Who businesses and factories! Next week, our students will be creating their own business and corporation that they think will be a perfect fit in our school community! I can’t wait to see what they come up with!
Along with our sneak peek inside Whoville activity, I bought the Gylph Girls Horton Hears a Who Glyph and look at these cuties that we made!
The next morning, the glyphs were in the hallway. The students were so excited to interpret each glyph and collect their data! So super fun!
Another class favorite of the week: The Lorax. Could this have anything to do with the new movie premiere??? I think so!!! :)
Since we will be doing lots of activities that correlate with this book on Earth Day, I wanted to focus on the actual story itself. After we read the story together, the students completed a story elements truffula tree and wrote about what they would do if they were given the very last truffula seed.
But…my favorite writing of the week had to be our Oh The Places I’ll Go writings. These went right along with our time capsule that I posted about earlier in the week. Just in case you missed it…here is the finished project!
On Friday, we ended our Seuss week with the our Reader’s Theater presentations that they had been practicing all week! We saw a performance of The Lorax, Green Eggs and Ham, and Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss. They really got into their scripts and we had some super cute performances.
We had a wonderful time reflecting on all of the wonderful themes that Dr. Seuss included in his work! As much as the littles enjoyed all of our writing and reading projects, I would have to say that our science integration was a favorite across the board! On Friday, we read The Butter Battle Book and Bartholomew and the Oobleck. Both books were perfect introductions to some messy hands-on experiments.
After reading The Butter Battle Book {which is too cute for words}, we wanted to graph whether the students were butter-side up or butter-side down kind of peeps. Well, in order to do this…we needed…BUTTER! I just so happened to have some heavy whipping cream and glass jars in the classroom. :) After discussing how butter was created long ago, the students made a hypothesis about how they could create butter out of the materials they were given. Of course they all decided that they would shake their jar to see if it would turn the liquid into a solid. {Sidenote: I usually try to experiment with a project ahead of time, but with all of the craziness of this week, it just didn’t happen! I was a hopin’ and a prayin’ that this would work…and y’all it was AMAZING…almost like magic…it worked perfectly! You’ve just GOT to do this with your kids!
shake, shake, shake….shake, shake, shake….SHAKE YOUR BUTTER!
The finished product…is this not amazing?!?
After our butter was made, the students confirmed their hypothesis, decided whether they preferred butter-side up or down, and we graphed the results!
Our last big experiment of the week was of course…Oobleck! Since we already made Oobleck for Halloween, we took our experiment a step further to see which objects would sink and which objects would float in this sometimes a liquid and sometimes a solid creation! We used this wonderful little mini designed by Vickie Plant to guide our experiment! Is completely FREE and full of awesomeness. Check it out HERE!
So…here is what I was left with after a fun-filled week and Seuss-tastic celebration on Friday! And that is just in the sink! :)
Looking back at all of these pictures, I can’t help but ask myself…did all of this really go down in just one week?!? Thank the good Lawd there are two of us in my classroom! Can’t wait for Seuss 2013!
Happy Sunday, bloggy friends!
