Spring has sprung.

While visiting my husband's sister in the mountains this weekend I wore my winter coat one day and got a sunburn the next...spring has definitely hit the south!

We're talking a lot about spring in class, too.  Some fun to share:


We created a spring vocabulary chart as I tend to do with most {ok, all!} of our science and social studies units.  Instead of having the kids write in their journals this time, I hung our charts in the science center and they wrote sentences in flower booklets that are oh, so cute.

{I usually staple these to the wall above my counter but I moved my Word Wall back there this year so I had to improvise our garden area!}

Since our chicks will be hatching soon we made these presh crafts in anticipation...only 3 days left to go!!!  We talked about the fact that chicks don't really hatch from Easter eggs or come out with colorful feathers, but the fancy decorations did make for great detailed writing!!

"My egg is awesome and he has blue eyes and decorations on his shell.  He has a cool star on it's egg."

"My chick is named Sandra.  Her egg has polkadots and stars and swirlies and zigzags."

Besides having chicks hatching in the next few days, we also received a LARGE shipment of over 30 caterpillars!!  We read the recipe, measured the ingredients to make their food and put them in individual cups {with a few roommate pairs}.  As one student said "We better keep those worms away from our chicks so they don't think it's here for breakfast!"


After we were familiar with signs of spring, we used this sheet from The Teacher's Guide to organize what we'd learned.  I'll adapt it for next time because it only touched on four senses and we had to write "I taste" on the back.  You can get the sheet here until I get around to it.  ;)

Then the students picked their favorite sentences and wrote them on rain drops.  Recognize the rainbows??  I just replaced the pots of gold with raindrops and voila!  New work display.  :)

After reading an acrostic poem in our literacy unit the students wanted to do their own so we filled our windows {for a better view!} with our own acrostic poems of SPRING.  "Sunny day, Poppies of spring, Rainbow, Ice Melting, Nest, Grass growing."

One even got my most favorite spring phrase...Spring Break!  :)