A Picture Palooza of Animal Homes & Life Cycles

Happy Wednesday everyone and congratulations on making it halfway!  I have been meaning to post this for awhile, but it has been crazy busy.  Today though I had a GREAT day.  Seriously, today was the best Wednesday ever.  My kiddos were great (and hilarious... I just love overhearing their conversations!  Today my favorite was when one of my kids told her group, "Last night my armpit farted."  The rest of the kids were all so astonished and wanted to know how!)  and I got done with half my Bracken tests (on which everyone so far has made great growth), so I'm feeling pretty motivated and awesome.  :)

These last two weeks have flown by, so be prepared for a lot of pictures!  We've been learning about animal homes and then life cycles.  Back in September we learned about animals around the world; so this time the theme was more "close to home."  We studied animals and their homes underground, by water, and in the forest; we also learned about the life cycle of a frog, butterfly, chick and plant.  Here we go (hang in there for freebies in store!)

Art:

Fork Painting Hedgehog

Tear Art Paper Plate Turtles

Painting with Nature Brushes

Do you know how hard it is to find twigs when everything is buried under a foot of snow?  It's IMPOSSIBLE!  So I had to attach the bush/pine needles to pencils instead.  Still worked great though!

TP Roll Chicks

Coffee Filter Butterflies

These were great!  The kiddos used watercolors to paint a coffee filter.  After dry, I folded them accordion style and stuck a clothespin the in the middle.  Cute!

Paper Plate/Egg Carton Frogs

Aren't these so cute?!  The kiddos painted a paper plate and two egg carton cups green.  After dry, we folded the plate in half and glued a tongue in between, attached the eyes and added eye stickers.  

Hand Print Flowers

I love how these turned out!  They are now adorning our "Have a Hoppy Spring" bulletin board along with the frogs.  :)

Literacy:

Animal Homes Shared Writing/Anchor Chart

ABC Turtle Beginning Sound Game

We played this great game from Julie at Make, Take and Teach!  If you don't know her, she is fabulous.  This game was also a FREEBIE, which you can grab by clicking here.

Frog Leap & Write the Room

My kiddos LOVED this activity.  I bought the headbands at Target and the lily pads at Dollar Tree and laminated them so my kiddos could go on a variety of letter hunts throughout the week (circles/no circles, capital/lowercase, tails/no tails).  

If you like this, you can check out my cute new product: Pond Pals Leap N' Write the Room!  Check it out at my store by clicking on the picture below.

Math:

Introduction to Measurement

This week I spent a lot of time gradually introducing my kiddos to measurement.  We talked about different ways to measure things (with eyes, cubes, a tape measure) and why we would want to measure (when we want to find how exactly how tall/long/short something is).  We started to explore the relationship between length and height.  First I had the kiddos build "trees" with cubes, then we figured out how tall they were.  After a few days of visually building and comparing height, we chopped down the trees and saw that they were just as long as they were tall.

Frogs on a Log

I had this fun number recognition practice going on while introducing measurement in small group.  The kiddos turned over a log, then had to put the number of frogs on their log(s).  It was also great fine motor and one-to-one correspondence practice!

Caterpillar Body Stamp Book

Making Learning Fun has a fun free printable of this book with number words; grab it by clicking here.

Science/Sensory

Woodland Homes Sensory Table

Science was actually my favorite place in the room this week!  There was just so much cool stuff going on.  This was a great sensory table for some free exploration and it was great to watch the kiddos try and use the materials to build animal homes.  Here's what's in the table...

The jasmine potpourri was GREAT for a calming effect.  The brown paper shreds were great for filling out the table, and the moss filler added a nice effect (it was just so darn expensive!)  And yes, that brown stuff you saw in the table was PLAY-DOH.  :)  I also added some acorns, wood chips and twigs.

Frogs in the Bog Sensory Table

This was such an awesome table!  My kiddos loved the water art deco beads.  I grabbed mine from Hobby Lobby, but Dollar Tree sells the clear ones.  They sorted the frogs by color, then recorded their findings...

If you don't have frog counters or if you just want this super cute recording sheet, check out the activity in detail with my FIRST FREEBIE: Frogs in the Bog Sensory Table!

Animal Track Detectives

The kiddos examined different pictures of real-life animal tracks with magnifying glasses, then picked their favorite one and drew a picture of which animal they thought made it.

Animal Home Sort

Yay for fine motor/glue stick/scissor practice and science rolled into one!  :)  The kiddos cut and colored different animals, then glued them into which environment they live in (forest, underground, or in/near water).

Life Cycle Sequencing Pages

My kiddos worked on a variety of life cycle sequencing sheets, which I grabbed for FREE from Sparklebox- click here to see all their great life cycle activities!

Manipulatives

Animal Habitat Lacing Cards

These are great!  The kids have to find the animal card, match it to its' habitat, then lace them together.  I got these on clearance at Mardel a few months ago and I'm so glad I did!

Check out some (okay, a lot) of the GREAT books we've been reading:

And now for my last freebie: a new song for helping your kiddos remember animal homes and habitats.

Lastly, don't forget to enter my giveaway, which I have extended to run until NEXT WEDNESDAY (because everyone needs good news on a Wednesday!)  Good luck!  :)