The Great Out Doors and Surf City

Its been too long since my last post.  School was a little over whelming with DRA testing, report cards, crazy highly motivated students, and packing up the room.  In fact I spent too many hours packing up the room.  Next year I will have to do some things differently! 

May was a lot of fun trying out a camping theme and I absolutely loved every minute of it.  Next year will be even better!  All the centers, stories we read, and writing projects were all about camping.
Thanks to units from The First Grade Parade (Camping unit is Good and Cara's classroom examples really helped!) and First Grade Fever (Woodland Animal unit).   It was a real success thanks to these marvelous women and their amazing ideas they share!

I didn't have time to get too fancy so the students and I cut some pine trees and made owls from First Grade Fever's Woodland animal unit and did owl reports too.

Of course we had to find out who has or has not gone camping before.

Then we wrote about what we would love to do if we went camping. Carson Dellosa had a bulletin board sets and animal cut outs to write spelling words on to add to the fun.

This friend can't wait to roast weenies over an open fire.  LOL!

We also pretendend we went on the hunt with some jars to catch something in the woods.  So much fun to to use our imaginations.  This also became a great writing prompt  "How To Catch A ____"  They caught every thing from frogs, lizzards, butterflies, dragonflies to snakes and snails. 

Of course we concluded are unit with a good old campout day in the classroom.  The kids brought in their sleeping bags and we even had lunch in the classroom.  The chef -that's me - made hotdogs, baked beans and I brought in a variety of chips.  Yes, it was a challenge to serve the children baked beans and let's just say the rhyme is true.  "Beans, beans, the more you eat, the more you ....."  You get what I'm trying to say saying. The afternoon was all about rooting and tooting. 

Then by the end of the day we went on a long hike to the teacher's room (around the corner) and baked up some extra large marshmallows in the oven.  They were the best I had ever made and enjoyed some delicious s'mores.

This was the first time my friend here ever had a s'more.  He was delighted with it!

Then suddenly June was here and for the last two weeks we surfed through the rest of the school year.  We did all things beach and ocean related.  The coolest project we did by far was with a surf board I stole borrowed from my hubby.  I took the student's pictures standing on it in the hallway on two crates.  Then I very carefully cut each kid and surfboard out.  Then we drew a rip curl and beach scene and then glued them on it.  It was such a great writing activity.  "Surfing into Second Grade"

I wish everyone a relaxing and super summer.  Enjoy!