Illustrated Alphabet Polka Dot Printable Word Wall Decor

Are you required to have a Word Wall in your classroom? If you are, I have created a cute polka dot word wall that uses an illustrated alphabet. It's SO cute! Even if you aren't required to have a word wall, I highly suggest one too! They are useful teaching resources--- and great for classroom decor too.

 Alphabet Classroom Decor Word Wall Fun: Create an A to Z Word Wall with these polka dot, illustrated Word Wall Headers. 

 This set includes full size alphabet decor posters from A to Z and smaller word wall labels using an illustrated theme from A to Z.

If you're interested, you can purchase this set from my teaching resources store {HERE}.

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3-D Sunflower Craft: Life Cyle of a Sunflower Craftivity for Plant Units

It's spring and planting time and if your little ones have planted any sunflower seeds during your plant units this season, I have the perfect sunflower craft for you. I created this 3-D sunflower life cycle craft where students color the the printable sunflower life cycle sequencing cards. Then they paste them on the sunflower template in order.

It's super cute and you hang it from the ceiling in your classroom or homeschool room. You'll be able to use it for reinforcing the life cycle of plants too. Simply turn the sunflower life cycle craft around and don't stop at the last step. The continual turning illustrates that the cycle is a process that repeats itself.  This craft is perfect to reinforce the topics taught during this science lesson and it works well as a science center too.

Plus, I've made this craft extra special for ELL ESL and Spanish Immersion teachers. The graphics don't include labels so the kiddos will add their own. Then, I created a sunflower life cycle printable poster in English and I have a printable water cycle poster in Spanish too.

If you're interested, hop on over to my teaching resource store {HERE}. The 3-D Sunflower Life Cycle Craftivity includes directions, patterns, sunflower life cycle sequencing cards, a black and white sunflower life cycle poster, and a color sunflower life cycle poster.

Ladybugs in the Classroom

Today we learned about ladybugs in school. Ladybugs in the classroom are a great way to integrate fun and lots of other subjects too. First, we labeled the parts of a ladybug. Then we worked on a ladybug glyph. A glyph is a great learning tool that lets students learn ways to visually represent data. This is a shapes ladybug glyph, so each question on the glyph asked the kiddos to add another shape like an oval or circle for the ladybug head to the ladybug. 

We sorted through lots of old buttons--which was fun--and used these for our ladybug eyes.

 I think the ladybug glyphs turned out cute as a button.

Student ladybug glyph

Teacher ladybug glyph example

Then we used some web resources to learn even more. I liked seeing how the humane society used ladybugs for a good purpose. Here are the online ladybug resources we used.

Life Cycle of a Ladybug Video

Humane Society Ladybug Solution

Everything about Ladybugs

Ladybug Resources

Then we integrated some writing. I chose to use a draw and write writing prompt where the kiddos draw about what they've read and then they write about it.

Ladybug writing prompt

 We cut and pasted the life cycle pictures to paper plates. This is such a good way to make a nice learning display.

Life cycle of a ladybug plate craft

We even got a bit creative and made a ladybug headband hat. Just take two sentence strips and tape them together. Then tape the ladybug glyph to the front and the life cycle of a ladybug illustrations on the side.

Ladybug fun

Ladybug headband craft

We planted butterfly bushes to attract butterflies a couple of year ago. Each plant was less than five dollars. In no time, they are taller than I am, and they are a wonderful habitat for our insect studies. We took the camera with us and looked under the leaves to see if we could find any ladybug eggs.  Guess what..?...

Student picture of a ladybug larva

We found something even better. We found a ladybug larva. They are ugly little things. Forget the ugly duckling. What about the ugly ladybug?

Ladybug larva

The world is our classroom and learning is fun. We enjoyed our ladybug exploration, and there's even more fun things to come.  We're working with graphing our ladybug glyph data tomorrow.

The ideas in this post came from my teacher-created resource title Ladybugs! {Shape Glyph, Writing Prompts, Graphs, and Life Cycle}. Click {HERE} for more information about this ladybug learning resource.

Here's a parts of a ladybug printable freebie that's part of my Ladybugs! set free for you too. Click {HERE} to get your free printable ladybug activity.

Free Printable Ladybug Activity

Enjoy!

Robin @ Sweet Tea Classroom

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Teacher-Created St. Patrick's Day Activities and Education Bloggers To Follow

One thing I love about teaching is the talent other teachers bring to the classroom. I have to admit that teachers are a creative group. I'd like to introduce you to a group of creative, talented teacher bloggers. Please take a moment to visit their blogs listed below.

• Sweet Tea Classroom
• Simply Skilled in Second
• Teach 123
• My (Not So) Elementary Life
• Journey of a Substitute Teacher
• Peace, Love, and First Grade
• My Life as a Third Grade Teacher
• Flying Into First
• Fabulously First
• 2nd Grade Surprise
• Fluttering Through First Grade
• Fern Smith's Classroom Ideas
 

Here's a great collection of teacher-created St. Patrick's Day Activities too. Please click the links below to check them out.

St. Patrick's Day Story Starters: Common Core Narrative Writing Prompts for St. Patrick's Fun

Here's some super writing fun for St. Patrick's Day! Bring the fun of leprechauns, rainbows, magic, and gold coins into the classroom with these fun and creative St. Patrick's writing prompts. These St. Patrick's Day story starters encourage students to be creative and come up with creative stories with their story starters. Plus, they are perfect for your writing centers.

A story starter is a great tool to get students writing using creative ideas. A story starter provides a prompt that creates a scenario that, well, starts the story. Then students have a free license to finish the story any way they wish. Plus, they help you meet your Common Core narrative writing goals.

I took my story starters, added great glittery rainbow graphics, put them on pencils, and added them to a canister that I got from the dollar store. They can choose their own story starter and even use their new St. Patrick's Day pencil and write away through the season.

You can purchase my St. Patrick's Day Story Starters {HERE}.

Cowboy Glyph and Reading Street 2

If you're working your way through Scott Foresman's 2nd Grade Reading Street, and are reading Cowboys or your students are learning about cowboys, this post is for you.

First, we read the Cowboys reading selection, talked about the pictures, worked with the new words, and talked about what it would be like to be a cowboy--or cowgirl too of course.

Then we worked through my Cowboy or Cowgirl Glyph. We started out with the glyph questions and patterns. If you're not familiar with glyphs, they are a visual way to represent data. For this glyph, depending on how you answered questions about cowboys, you colored the hat, boots, bandanna, and gloves a certain color. You could also use the same items printed on colored construction paper.

Then we worked on some writing. The prompt was simple... "If I were a cowboy ...."  and "If I were a Cowgirl...". This writing prompt was part of each cowboy and cowgirl craft.

Next, we looked at all the glyphs and worked a bit with data analysis and graphed the results from our cowboys. Check out the results! The kiddos even named their cowboys and cowgirls.

If you can read the writing prompts above, it looks like the line from Cowboys in Reading Street 2 about what cowboys eat made a lasting impression. They wanted to eat cowboy food! But I didn't add that to the plan--maybe next time.

You can purchase my Cowboy and Cowgirl Glyph HERE at my Teachers Pay Teachers Store.
Enjoy!
Robin Sellers

Win a Nook Color HD at Top Teachers Blog

 

Hi, I just wanted to drop a little to note to let you all know that Tips for Top Teachers: A Smorgasboard of Teaching Resources blog, a blog that I also write for, is having a giveaway for a Nook Color HD. (Go ahead and follow me know before you leave.)


Head on over there and register to win a Nook! Just click {HERE}!


Robin