Author: smartchickteacher

One of my absolute favorite things to do every year is to hatch chicken eggs with my students!  They love to watch the eggs in the incubator and wait those 21 long days for these sweet babies to hatch!  They are so stinkin’ cute!  We keep them in the classroom for a few weeks and then off to the farm they go!  Luckily, these get to go to a farm I know where they can be happy, free range chickens!

Here are some great resources for chicken hatching!  Try it!

This is a FREE powerpoint that shows and tells what is developing inside the egg on each of the 21 days!  It is AMAZING to see when various body systems, features, etc. form!

Here is another PowerPoint about the life cycle of a chicken.  It goes over the four main stages with information and some interactive questioning!  

This is a chicken life cycle sort packet!  A great way to build background knowledge or to check for understanding!

Love the 21 days we spend working on life cycles and chickens!  It is so memorable for students and something that they talk about for years!

Enjoy!

Using the information from the website, www.enchantedlearning.com, we researched and wrote short summaries about many of the different constellations in the sky.  Once the writing was complete, students were able to make the constellation using white chalk on black construction paper and with mini-marshmallows to represent the stars.  This is an old activity, but we gave it a new spin by adding a great book, The Zoo in the Sky, by Jacqueline Mitton!  This book is absolutely gorgeous!  Click on the cover image for the Amazon link!

We added some gorgeous pictures using glitter glue and colored chalks of the different constellations based on the illustrations in the book!  The kids had such a great time creating these!  They turned out fabulous!

I created a packet of materials to use with this amazing book, if you are interested, click this link!

Enjoy!

For our turn at the school showcase, we decided to make one one cryptids!  They had such a great time researching, writing, painting, and modeling the various components of the project!  Who doesn’t like cryptids?  With the new Bigfoot show on TV, the kids have been super curious about this topic and it was a lot of fun to be able to actually do a project based on it!

How great did these turn out?  I love these posters!  My students had a great time creating these, AND they got in some fantastic research skills, note taking, paragraph writing, etc.  I love it when I can connect all of the standards into a fun and eye-catching project!  The quality of my students’ writing is always better when the project is exciting and interesting!

You can easily recreate this yourself with a couple of sheets of white copy paper, Crayola model magic (one of my favorite things), a sheet of 12 x 18 construction paper and some books and/or websites about insects!

OR– If you want pre-designed layouts and more detailed directions, you can click here for the packet in my TPT store!

Enjoy!

Well, it is time for currently April… Thanks so much to Meghan Farley at Oh’ Boy 4th Grade for hosting these wonderful “Currently” postings each month!

I have recently rediscovered the music of Bruno Mars and my 5 year old and I love dancing around the house to all of his music!  It is so much fun!

We just started our Spring Break and of course the weather here is so cold!  I cannot wait for the warm-up!  It is APRIL!  It should be much warmer here!  All right, rant over… I am still so thankful for the rest!

I will be presenting three different workshops at the NSTA (National Science Teachers Association) in San Antonio, Texas next week and I am not ready!  I am excited to go to San Antonio, I have never been there before!  Anyone have any must-see suggestions?

I so need more time in the day, or a better way to prioritize all that I want to get done!  HELP!

I need to spend some quality time with my three kids!  After writing this post, I will be on my way up to snuggle and watch movies!  YEAH!

Advice –>  You can’t do everything!  I am going to take my own advice and just do the most important stuff–like spending more time with my kids!

See ya!

This science lab was so much fun! I ordered plastic insects from US Toy and Rhode Island Novelty and we completed these activities in class! Here is what we did:

1) Every student got the SAME plastic insect and a sheet of 81/2 x 14 white copy paper. We drew a circle in the center of the paper and then labelled four sections:

What I Can Observe…
What I Can Compare…
What I Can Predict…
What I Can Infer….

We completed the four sections in this order as a class together. As we did each section, we talked about and shared ideas with one another. Everyone was engaged and focused! It was amazing!

2) Next, I gave each table group five different insects (one per student).  The students then did the same mat with the same four sections for this new insect.  They discussed ideas with one another, but since they all had different insects at the table, they needed to do the work on their own.

Once they were done, they regrouped with the other students in the classroom that had the SAME insect (but were sitting at the different tables), and shared their graphic organizers.  Once they had shared their ideas, they had to make a large chart of the insect on a sheet of white bulletin board paper.  They turned out great!

Looking for this FREE activity?  You can click here!

We created craters using three different substances: corn starch, flour, and sugar.  The kids had a blast making hypotheses about which substance would yield the largest, widest, and deepest craters!  We completed this lab as part of a study of the moon.  It made a little bit of a mess, but they learned a lot and they had a lot of fun in the process!

The link to the Crater Lab Pack can be found by clicking here!

Hello! I have been Booking Across the USA and I am so excited to bring you some books and activities for the great state of OHIO! Did you know the state of Ohio is known for not only its many presidents, but also for its astronauts?

With astronauts in mind, I decided to focus my project ideas on the moon and Neil Armstrong.

I love the book, “Neil Armstrong is My Uncle and Other Lies Muscle Man McGinty Told Me”, by Nan Marino. It is a great read aloud or whole class novel to use! One of my favorite aspects of the book is that the protagonist is actually a bully, which gives the students a lot to think and talk about as they are reading the book!  The author has a wonderful website!  Click here to visit the site!

Here is the link to a FREE literature guide for this amazing book!

We created a phases of the moon picture using OREO cookies!  It was so yummy and fun! Click here for the free page!  We loved this book!

I will post some additional pics tomorrow!  We made phases of the moon displays with Crayola model magic and they turned out great!

Click here for the links to the other 49 states!  There are some AMAZING ideas out there!

Enjoy!

Click here for a great GIVEAWAY!  It will take you to the fabulous Growing Book by Book Blog!

Now this is a great idea for a linky party!  I am a total clip art junkie!  Thanks to Primary Polka Dots for hosting this one!

Here are some of my favs…

Wow!  Now that I see that much clip art, it makes me want to add more to my collection!   Be sure to visit the other blogs that are taking part in the linky to see even more clip art that you cannot live without!

Well, this is my first Five for Friday Linky!  So let me start by saying a thank you to Doodle Bugs Teaching!  I am so excited!  This one is a lot of fun!

So here goes…

1. I have been super busy trying to read a bunch of books from the stack on my bed and most of them were really good.  I finished this one today!  It is probably my favorite of the group!

2. My wonderfully sweet kindergarten daughter is beginning to make me crazy!  This stay at home stuff is not for me!   I cannot wait to get back to school to my 30 (yes, 30) 5th graders!  I think she is ready to be back to school as well!  😉

3. I have a ton of grading to get done this weekend, but to encourage myself I went on a Scentos Marker Spending Spree today at Michaels!  They have a TON of them there!  Super cute Valentine’s ones as well as an entire endcap of other colors and scents.  I was in heaven!  If you have not tried them, you should!  They are so much fun to write with and I love the smells!

4. I will be starting a unit on Geometry once we get back to school.  I am beginning to try to find and create resources for this unit.  If you know of any good ideas, let me know!  🙂  I have already made up a couple of fun ones!

5. I found a ton of amazing clip art on this wonderful site.  Just go to: http://www.mycutegraphics.com!  They are super cute and really easy to download and use.  If you are using them, you just need to provide a link back to the site!  I am a clip art junkie and this site is fantastic!

Hope everyone has a fabulous Friday!  I hope to be blogging a lot more in 2013, so stay tuned for some freebies, pictures of ideas, and links to great sites!

Wishing everyone an amazing 2013!