It’s that time again! Schedulin Sunday! Ya know, on Sunday mornings I wake up and have that feeling of dread..lesson plans…and then I sit down and start planning and I get more and more motivated and excited. Something about planning awesome lessons and activities that I know will get my ‘staches excited about learning really gets me excited. And once my teacher brains starts, it just takes off. Not that it really turns off…no, I mean it’s always on. At dinner..in the shower…in the car…when I’m sleeping…always on. I even keep a notebook by my bed so when I wake up with an idea I can write it down! Who else does that??!
Click the picture to download my weekly plans. All Common Core aligned of course!
My lesson plan template is from A Teacher’s Plan! It’s called THE GREG! Click the link to check it out. (PS It’s her birthday, everyone go wish her a happy birthday!)
This week shall be known as Franken-Pumpkin Week! We’re learning about pumpkins and having fun with Frankenstein and becoming mad scientists!
Monday
We kick off our week with a great story about pumpkins! We will read Pumpkin Town and complete a story map for our comprehension skill
This week our letter is O. We will create our circle map of words that start with o. Mr. Greg will draw the pictures that the ‘staches come up with. They will clap at his every pathetic picture. He will feel like Picasso.
We will practice writing the letter o. And of course, we make a silly hat! This week is an octopus hat!
Thanks to Simply Kinder for these amazing hats!
We will do our word study with a new sort. This week we are starting our beginning sounds picture sorts. I model how to quickly cut apart the pictures and then we sort the pictures whole group. This is another week of whole group practice to get the ‘staches used to our procedures and expectations for word study.
In math, we are learning to count on. We do a super fun and hands on activity to practice counting on. We call it Monster Counting On. Each child creates a number line (or number path) to 10 (or uses a pre-made template….I do differentiate this to save time. Students who can do this on their own make their own. Students who might struggle and be frustrated get a pre-number line or number path!).
Each child get s a monster counter. Mr. Greg says a number. They place their monster on the number. Mr. Greg says count on to a number. The count and mover their monster to that number and stop.
(Tomorrow’s blog post will give you all the details on this lesson and some freebies! Stay tuned)
What I love about this lesson is that it touches so many standards and skills. Counting on, number recognition, one to one counting and is a great building block for addition!
And now it’s time to rock the ‘staches worlds and blow their minds! It’s time for our first science experiments!
We start off with a KWL chart about pumpkins! After the KWL chart about pumpkins, we move onto our Mad Scientist Science Experiment!
Are ya ready?!?1 MONSTER EYES! We’re going to make regular eggs transform into MONSTER EYES!
This is a two day experiment. Day one is disolving an egg shell in vinegar. We will make predictions and set up the experiment.
We end our day with a pasta pumpkin craft! The staches use noodles that are orange to create a pumpkin!
Tuesday
We read the story The Biggest Pumpkin ever and create a flow map to re-tell the story.
We review our o words on our circle map. We spell the words. The staches spell the first sound o and I spell the rest of the word by writing and saying each letter.
We review the letter o and the o sound.
In writing we will create a tree map about pumpkins. We will write about what pumpkins have, what they are and what they can do or be used for.
We will do our word study whole group.
In math, we continue counting on. Today is independent practice. The staches will roll a dice and write the number in the circle. Then they write the next 3 numbers in the pumpkins. I will also differentiate this lesson: the students who have a mastery of this skill will use 2 dice. My students who are making progress will use 1 dice and my students who need some extra help will work at my table and we will do this as a small group! I will also let them use colored ink pens to make it super fun! Who doesn’t love ink pens in fun colors?! I mean…I might be slightly obsessed!
You can click the picture to download this recording page!
(Graphics: Creative Clips and Whimsy Workshop)
We will continue with our Mad Scientist experiment! We will review our predictions from yesterday. We will remove our eggs from the “potion” and discuss what happened to them. And then we get to start stage 2 of our experiment to make Monster Eyes! We will put the eggs into a cup and cover them in corn syrup and add green food coloring. They will sit for 24 hours.
After our science experiment, we will create a tree map about our friend, Frankenstein and we will make this adorable Frankenstein from our friends A Cupcake For The Teacher!
Wednesday
We will read The Legend of Spookley The Square Pumpkin and discuss being different and tolerant and accepting others!
We will use our can-have-are tree map to write three sentences about pumpkins:
Pumpkins have…
Pumpkins are….
Pumpkins can….
We will review the O sound and do a differentiated picture sort (students who have mastered the o sound will blend words and match words to pictures…students who need more practice will do a beginning sound picture sort).
In math, we will switch to measurement! We will measure how many pumpkins tall we are!
We first estimate how many pumpkins tall we think we are. Then we take turns measuring ourselves. I take a picture of each stache and we make a class book with the pictures. We record our estimate and actually measurement on a class chart!
Our transformations into mad scientists continue with the reveal of our monster eyes experiment. We will pull the monster eyes from their potion and see what has become of them. We will discuss and document our findings!
Next, we will predict whether pumpkins will float or sink. We will record our prediction. then we conduct our experiment! We will record our observations on our recording sheet.
And finally we will get to mix up our own fizzy potion using vinegar, soap, food coloring and baking soda!
Thursday
We hit the road for our field trip to the pumpkin patch. ALLEGEDLY! Right now there is a good chance of rain…so, yeah! Good thing I have severely over-planned this week! We actually went to the pumpkin patch last year with a chance of rain and got WET! So….here’s to a good weather day.
When we return from our trip we have our pumpkin celebration! This has been a tradition in all of my classrooms for the 8th year! We cut open the pumpkins and gut them! There’s nothing better than 5 year olds squealing from cleaning our the pumpkins! We will them with dirt and plant a pansy in the pumpkin!
And FRIDAY is parent teacher conference day!
This week we will also practice sight words, work in blending CVC words and segmenting words. We are also practicing our new favorite phonemic awareness activity where we change our names to the sound for the day of the week (blog post coming soon!) AND…I’m super excited about this…we’re incorporating science into our morning meeting! Stay tuned for that post, too!
See all of the great blog posts coming up! Don’t miss them!
And we will read some of my fave Halloween books!
Skeleton Hiccups is GREAT for problem/solution!! F
If you would like directions for any of the mad scientist experiments, you can download this fun freebie that includes directions, materials and chart labels to create class charts!
All of our pumpkin activities, recording sheets and anchor charts come from my Giant Pumpkin Common Core Creation!
I also put four of my fall/Halloween creations on sale for 50% off!
