Monday, March 21, 2016

Easter Fun

It is hard to believe it is been almost a month since my last post.  I feel like the last month has flown by!  I am enjoying my first day of my first Spring Break in 11 years sitting and waiting for my car to get an oil change.  I want to share a few things we did last week for a little bit of Easter fun.  I purchased Peeps on major clearance last year saved them for this year.  I knew we wouldn't be eating them, but they'd be great to do something with.

My student teacher and I split the kids into 2 groups: one of us did science and the other did math/writing then we switched.  If I didn't have a student teacher, these activities would have been doable full group or in stations.

The math activity we did was a true/false math equation activity.  It was a TpT freebie with 2 levels of problems.  I had my students work in partners.  One partner solved the left side and the other solved the right side.  They compared their answers: if they had the same answer on both sides, it was true; if their answers were different, the problem went on the false side.  This is the first time we've really looked at True and False, but they did really well with it presented this way.


After completing the math activity, we moved on to writing.  I found a writing freebie with bunny Peeps clipart.  It included a cover page, writing paper and a back cover.  The lines were very close together compared to what my students were familiar with, but they ate this activity right up!  They loved writing about a little Peep's adventure.


We also did some Peep science activities.  I found a freebie packet of Peeps experiments and a little informational text about Peeps.  I took these activities and modified it to what we could complete in the time we had and rewrote the text about Peeps so it was at my students' level.  First we read a little bit about Peeps, then we did some experiments.  We wrote predictions, did an experiment then drew and wrote what actually happened.  Experiments we did included: sink/float, Peeps with baking soda and vinegar, color mixing with Peeps and Peeps in the microwave.
Writing a prediction prior to an experiment.
We loved Peeps in the microwave!
While my kiddos were at lunch, my students teacher and I stuffed baskets for them.  I tend to be a "good deal hoarder" meaning that if it is cheap and there is a large quantity they will probably receive it as a gift at some point!  Well, I unloaded some of the hoard on Easter this year.

I found these last month 90% off in the Dollar Spot.  All of my kiddos got a red striped "basket".

Each child received: chapstick, 2 Scholastic books, a notebook, pencils, stickers, Math Spot It, and the girls got fingernail tattoos.
I hope you got an idea or two that you can use this week or save for next year!  Do you have any other ideas you can share with us?