Yikes!

Yikes!  I've been gone for WAY too long!  This month has been CAH-RAZY!  I'll be back this week with some updates- PROMISE!  :)

Pumpkins and Spiders and Habitats, Oh My!

Haha.  Sorry, I made myself giggle.  My kids think I'm SO cheesy.  Who am I kidding, I am SO cheesy!

First:  Habitats!

So this week we started a unit on Habitats.  Super fun, I love teaching about animals and their habitats and their life cycles.  I think my kids really enjoyed this week too.  We started with reading about each habitat in our books (which was SUPER boring, but necessary to get our background info).  Then we made a graphic organizer about them!

Our awesome Graphic Organizer!  With my yucky chalk board in the background!

Day 2  we worked with our table buddies and each table was assigned a habitat to illustrate.  They did a great job!  Unfortunately I dropped the ball and didn't get any pictures.  :(

Day 3 we made Habitat books.  I've included the template- I printed it single sided so that on one side they could write the words about the habitat and on the other they could include an illustration.

Here is the Habitat Book.

I forgot to rotate this before uploading it and I'm feeling lazy at the moment, so it's sideways.

 I also sent home packets for them to complete for an end of unit Habitat Project.  I'll post that next week after I have some pictures.

Next up:  Spiders!

The awesome second grade teacher who "lives" across the hall from me put some super cute spider projects up in the hallway....so of course I had to steal borrow her idea!  I adjusted it a bit - instead of it being a math project ours was rhyming!  We made word webs with rhyming words, then glued them in the middle of our spiders!  I think they came out pretty cute.  I didn't get any close-ups, but you can see them later in this post on my wall.

Last but not least:  Pumpkins!

I'm so excited.  Like squeal like a small child excited....Next week.  On Friday.  We are going to the Pumpkin Farm!  I've never been to a pumpkin farm!  They don't exist in SW Florida.  But here in Illinois- there are tons!  I'm a pumpkin nut.  Pumpkin muffins, pumpkin pie, pumpkin bars, pumpkin cupcakes....I hoard cans of pumpkin this time of year.  So needless to say I'm VERY excited for this field trip.

In order to prepare we've started reading about pumpkins and including pumpkin stories in our curriculum.

The first story we read was The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin by Joe Troiana.  I love this story, it's a great "it's good to be different" story.  We then made our own Spookley pumpkins and then wrote about them!

Some were square

Some were round.

And some are triangles!

Some even had hats and feet!

Here is one along with it's writing Project.

 The kiddos really enjoyed this!

The next Pumpkin story we read was Sixteen Runaway Pumpkins by Diane Ochiltree.

I used one of the math pages from this Halloween Unit by Rachelle over at What The Teacher Wants.  Her Halloween unit ROCKS definitely check out her TPT store.

Here is our finished products all posted in the hallway!

Our rhyming web spiders and some of our runaway pumpkin math problems.

Our Spookley pumpkins and more of our runaway pumpkin math!

It was a really fun week!  I'm excited that next week is a 4 day week and one of those days is our Field Trip!!

And just a quick photo update on Dexter!  He's getting big, and just shed for the first time!  His colors are really pretty.

The Little Guy and Scheduling

So we chose a name for the little dude!  His name is Dexter!  Which means I can still call him LD for short,  (Little Dexter, or Lizard Dexter).  We are getting into a routine, and I think he's pretty happy!  I'll never get used to dealing with the crickets- Yuck!, but other than that he's a pretty easy going pet!

I guess he had a long day while I was at school, because after his bath and dinner he fell asleep standing up on my hand!

Such a cutie!

Now on to Scheduling- Christina over at Mrs. Bainbridge's Class is overhauling her schedule and started a Linky to get ideas of everyone else's schedules.

My schedule this year is strange- it's VERY different from previous schedules, but it actually works out REALLY well.  I like it alot so far.

8:30-9:15- Science/Social Studies
9:15-9:55- Specials
9:55-10:05- Clean up desks from Sci/SS and get reading books out
10:05-10:10- Bathroom Break
10:10-11:15- Reading
11:15-11:45- Lunch
11:45-12:00- Recess
12:00-12:30- Language Arts, Handwriting, Writing
12:30-12:35- Bathroom Break
12:35-2:00- Math
2:00-2:20- Drop Everything And Read
2:20-2:30- Pack-up and Dismissal

At first I was very hesitant about having Science/Social Studies first thing in the morning, but it's worked out well.  It's nice because in the past Sci/SS always got pushed when something else came up, and most days we never even got to it.  By having it first thing in the morning it never gets skipped or overlooked.

Math gets a little rough at the very end of the day, but as long as I keep them moving and use lots of manipulatives they do pretty well.

What is your schedule like?  Link up at Mrs. B's class and share!