National Teacher Day is always celebrated on the Tuesday of the first full week in May. And the week surrounding this special day is Teacher Appreciation Week! This is the perfect time to say “thank you” to educators everywhere. Thank you for the countless hours you spend writing lesson plans, creating bulletin boards, preparing learning centers, and finding creative ways to teach and reach every student in your class.
Earth Day began on April 22, 1970. It is a day set aside to reflect on our planet, our environment, and what we can do to keep them healthy.
Encourage your students to use their creativity to discover ways to reduce waste in our environment. Collect some items that would normally be thrown away (empty shoe boxes, yogurt cups, egg cartons, milk and juice cartons, etc.). Then, brainstorm ways to turn this “trash” into reusable “treasures.”
Visit www.earthday.org/2012 for more information about the history of Earth Day. And check out www.planetpals.com for some fun teaching ideas.
D.E.A.R stands for Drop Everything and Read! This special day reminds us how important reading is in our lives and reminds us to take time to enjoy reading every day.
Brainstorm with your students a list of reasons we read. Your list might include: to keep up with what our friends are doing (text messages, letters, notes, e-mails), to understand directions (maps, recipes, activity directions), to gain new information (non-fiction), and just to enjoy a good story!
Ask students to discuss their favorite kinds of stories. Create a class graph to show what types of stories are most popular in your class and then interpret the results.
Easter is here! Set up a fun math learning center inviting children to sort colorfully decorated Easter eggs by attributes. Don’t want to bother with messy eggs and egg dye? How about using photos of Easter eggs. We have prepared the perfect center set-up for you. Easter Eggs Sort, Pattern, Graph includes photos of Easter eggs, sorting task cards, and graphing and patterning materials. Task cards direct children to sort eggs by a single attribute (such as color) and then record their sort by making a bar graph. Children can visit this center again and again (sorting by a different attribute each time) and you will have a record of their work (bar graphs). The perfect way to build math skills with a fun spring theme! Happy Easter!
Spring is the perfect time to plant a flower or vegetable garden! Review plant parts and the plant life cycle with your students before beginning your garden adventure.
Plants have many parts. Most plants have seeds. A new seed can grow into a new plant. Seeds grow roots to hold plants in the ground. Roots also take in water. From the roots, a stem breaks through the ground. Leaves grow out of the stem. The leaves help the plant make food. Most plants grow flowers. This is where the seeds begin. Seeds travel by wind, by birds, and sometimes by animal fur. Then the plant cycle begins all over again.
For some fun spring activities, check out Spring Flowers Sort, Pattern, Graph and Read & Write Science. (This Plant Parts activity is included in Read & Write Science along with lots of colorful photos printed on sturdy card stock and ready to use for sorting and sentence building.)
