O is for Ocean and Octopus

We just wrapped up or second week of summer school! :) During the summer, we don't have school on Fridays so I try and make Thursdays fun days! This week, all of our activities revolved around the letter  O. 

During literacy time, we made "pudding oceans" and wrote a numbered list of how to make them. The kids LOVED making these and they are soooooo EASY to do! All you need is vanilla pudding cups, food coloring, a spoon, and some sort of "gummy fish".

First, we added blue food coloring to our vanilla pudding cups.

Next, we stirred like crazy!

Then, we added our little fish!

Looks really appetizing doesn't it? ;)  

Here is one of my sweet little guys writing. 

1. Open Pudding 

2. Make it blue

3. Stir

4. Add fish

5. Eat 

I am so proud of them and how far they have come this year!

In math, we created Octopus Pattern Hats. I pre-cut 8 strips of construction paper and 1 octopus "head" for each student.  Using bingo dotters, students created 8 different patterns on their paper "tentacles" and I stapled them to a sentence strip. Anytime they can wear their product, they think it is amazing (and I think it is adorable)!

During science, we created Oceans in a Bottle. For this, we used bottles of water, glitter, vegetable oil, foam sea creature stickers, and these weird little plastic beans I found in the art closet. Obviously, you can put whatever you want in there! 

 I let students drink some of the water (to make room for the oil) and added glitter with a funnel.

Then, students added food coloring, sea creatures, and the little beans. Although many students wanted to squirt as much food coloring as possible into their bottles, I found that if you only squirt 1 drop you can see everything in the bottle much better. 

Next, we made predictions about what would happen when we added the vegetable oil to the water and tested out our hypothesis. 

Finally, it was time for the kids favorite part....

SHHHAAAAAAAAAKKKKKKE!

And watch everything dance and swirl around until it all settles back to the way it started. 

It was a fun week and I can't wait to start on all of our "W" activities tomorrow!

Calendar Time (Part 2)

Here is the rest of our calendar routine! If you missed part one, you can find it here :)

Next up, days in school!

A new student helper comes up and adds a stick to the one's place. (As you can see, my fabulous matching sticks that came with the calendar have slowly disappeared and are now replaced with popsicle sticks.) We all count the sticks to see how many days we have been in school (starting with 100) and then change the number at the bottom so that it matches our sticks.

While students are still working on number ID, I like to hand the student leading "days in school" several different numbers so they can show them to the class and the class can "help" him/her find the correct number. It sounds a little something like this:

Student: "Is this number 8?"

Class: "No! That is number 4!"

Student: "Is this number 8?"

Class: "No! That is number 9!"

Student: "Is this number 8?"

Class: "Yes! That is number 8!"

After days in school comes tally marks! The tally marks match how many days we have been in school.

I always start the year leading and modeling the calendar for my students and then gradually release one part of the calendar at a time over to the students for them to lead. You can probably look at the tally mark chart and guess when students began to take over that section. It's not perfect but it sure is authentic! ;)

The student who leads this section of the calendar first points to each group of tallies as we count the tally marks we already have by 5's. Then, the student says our "tally mark chant"and adds another tally to the chart.

To remember when to make a vertical line and when to cross the 4 vertical lines with a diagonal line (and yes, even the students use the words vertical and diagonal. Parents can't believe their 4 and 5 year olds actually know what those words mean but we start using the vocab in context on day 1!) we say this cute little poem and do hand motions to go with it.

One, Two, Three, Four, (move hands up and down vertically for each number)

Number Five Shuts the Door! (Move hands across the body diagonally)

Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, (move hands up and down vertically for each number)

Number Ten Draws a Line! (Move hands across the body diagonally)

I cannot begin to tell you how much I love this rhyme! It really has help my students draw tally marks.

If you would like to download a free printable of the chant for your own calendar, just click the picture below :)

Up until the 100th day of school, we add an apple to fill in our giant 100's chart. I have made enough numbers to take us through the last day of school because I used to use these little apples as one looooong number line, but this year I use them as a 100's chart. I created the apples so that all of the odd numbers are blue apples, the evens are green, the 5's have a purple circle, and the 10's have a pink background. This really helps the kids not only see number patterns but also count by 2's, 5's, and 10's!

 If you would like to snag these numbers for yourself, you can find them here.

For the weather, we use this cute freebie found here. (There are several other options for types of weather in the freebie but where we live, these 4 pretty much have us covered!)

And sing this weather song:

What is the weather, weather, weather?

What could the weather be today?

Is it sunny, sunny, sunny? (raise arms above head to make a big circle)

S-U-N-N-Y today!

Is it cloudy, cloudy, cloudy? (move hands like you're forming a big fluffy cloud)

C-L-O-U-D-Y today!

Is it rainy, rainy, rainy? (wiggle fingers down in front of you like rain falling)

R-A-I-N-Y today!

Is it windy, windy, windy? (move arms like your hula dancing)

W-I-N-D-Y today!

What could the weather, weather, weather,

What could the weather be today?

We also discuss how a thermometer measures temperature. When the temperature is warmer, the red liquid inside the thermometer goes up and when it is cooler the temperature goes down. As the year progresses I also show them a real thermometer and we begin to check it for degrees fahrenheit.

Finally we work on positional words! Since we are the Amazing Ants, naturally we practice this with an ant and a picnic basket ;)

The ant is thumbtacked to the board and we move it all around the picnic basket practicing our positional words. For example, I may move it above the picnic basket, far from the picnic basket, inside the picnic basket, etc. This is also useful when we are talking about antonyms or opposites. For example, "The ant is inside the picnic basket. What would be the opposite of inside?" I also teach them synonyms for positional words like under or below, beside or next to.

By the 2nd semester I have pretty much phased this part of the calendar routine out because the students all have a good understanding of positional words. Every now and then I will throw it back into our routine for review though.

I hope my calendar routine breakdown has been helpful! :)

Calendar Time! (part 1)

When I have visitors in my classroom, I usually get several questions about our calendar routine so I wanted to do a little break down of my routine and share it with all of you! 

During calendar time, we cover MANY different skills. So many that when I started to type the entire routine, it made for one loooooooong post! Because of this, I broke it up into two different posts. So without further ado, here is part one of two of our calendar routine.

Here is a look at our "calendar area"

It may seem like a lot, but once we get into the routine, calendar time seriously only takes about 10 minutes and is completely student lead! 

First we begin with the days of the week.

A student comes up and points to each day of the week as we sing "The Days of the Week Song" to the tune of the Adams Family. 

Then we practice the skill of passing time by identifying yesterday, today, and tomorrow. We sing a song about yesterday, today, and tomorrow to the tune of Frere Jacques that goes like this:

Today is (insert day)

Today is (insert day)

All day long 

All day long 

Yesterday was (insert day)

Yesterday was (insert day)

Tomorrow will be (insert day)

Tomorrow will be (insert day)

Let's have fun!

Let's have fun!

After I have taught alliteration, we usually practice the skill by having 2 or 3 students come up with a word that has the same beginning sound as the day of the week. (Friday, fish, football)

Next, we move on to the months of the year. I have my months on these little cupcakes. 

I usually have paper candles with students' names and the date of their birthday on the cupcake with their birth month. Then, I take down their candle and add it to the calendar in the pocket with their birthday. Somehow I totally forgot about the candles until around December this year (whoops) so we just added birthdays to the calendar as they came!

Aaaanyway, back to the calendar routine! Another students comes up and points to the months of the year as we all stand up and do the "Months of the Year Macarena"  

We then name the month that we are in and practice counting how many syllables are in the name of the month.

After that, another student volunteer comes up and leads the class by identifying the pattern on the calendar and extending the pattern to find today's date.


I usually try to find or make calendar pieces that go along with our theme. I also start the school year with a simple AB pattern and then make the patterns increasingly more difficult as the year goes.

The students will identify the pattern by shape (UFO, astronaut, astronaut, rocket), Letter (ABBC), and then number (starting at 1 and ending at the date). Using that information, they extend the pattern by predicting what comes next and adding that piece to the calendar.

After we have our date, another student comes up and updates the 10 frames so that they match our date.


As the year progresses, we use the 10 frame to practice different skills such as subitizing, counting by 10's, and figuring out how many more days until 10, 20, or 30.

If you are interested, here is a link to some free printables I created that you can include in your own calendar routine. Just click on the picture below :)


We also count days in school, practice place value, number ID, tally marks, counting by 2's, 5's, 10's, weather, and positional words! Want to see more? Click here for part 2!

Oceans of fun!

I cannot believe that summer school is almost over already - I feel like it just started! Noooooot that I am complaining though ;) 

Here is a little rap up of what he have been up to:

In math we made these little "jelly fish" with numbered tentacles to practice making sets, number ID, counting, and number order   

My original plan was to only make them with the students who really needed practice in those areas but after the other kids saw them, they begged me to make them too! I put them in a workstation for those who could complete them independently. It cracks me up how some opted not to decorate them, some drew "jelly fish" faces, and others just drew pictures on them like rainbows or their family:

We also have been practicing patterning everyday in math. As a cute little way to show off our new pattern making skills, the kiddos made these "octopus hats."  They love them because, well, they love making ANY kind of hat and I love them because they get lots of practice creating 8 different patterns (not to mention they look adorable on!)

Science is usually one of my favorite parts of the day! I love teaching the kids about some of the amazing creatures that live in the ocean! To kick things off, we did a very simple sort of creatures that live in the ocean and ones that do not:

Then, we started narrowing in on some of our favorites. We have focused in on sharks, fish, and octopus so far. I haven't taken very many pictures but I did manage to snap a few of our octopus "experiment". I got the idea here and it was a huge hit with the kids :)

First, we made little "octopuses" using pony beads and pipe cleaners. The kids each got their own water bottle and dropped their octopus in. We made observations about how we could easily see them through the clear water. 

Then comes the fun part :) The kids took pipets and practiced squirting "ink" (aka food coloring) into the water until it became difficult to see the octopus. We discussed how many different types of octopuses use this as a way to escape from predators. 

During literacy this week we have been hitting rhyming HARD! Rhyming seems to be such a tricky thing for kids to fully understand. It always seems after hearing it/saying it/doing it 891749837932 times and not really getting it -

one day they wake up and they've got it! So here is to time 891749837933...

I try to incorporate as much rhyming stories/songs/text as possible. The more they hear it, the easier it is for them to understand. I taught them this little song and we circled the rhyming words with Wikistix. It's an oldie but a goodie :)

Then I gathered a few objects that were fairly easy to rhyme with (a shell, cat, ball, dog, fish, block, mug, man, and pig) and loaded them up into my "rhyming basket" 

Then, we passed around the rhyming basket as we said this adorable little chant form Grown Kinders: 

And the kids took turns picking an object and producing a word that rhymes with it.

We have also been watching this video on youtube EVERY.SINGLE.DAY!

I showed it to the kids the third day of summer school and they LOVED it! They ask if they can watch it every day (over and over and over again if I would let them)!

Next week we are focusing on alliteration. Only 7 more days with kids! 

Diving into Summer School!

While many people were celebrating their last day of school this week, our summer school session has already begun! 

After looking over my new group of students' end of year assessments, it seemed like the main areas students needed extra practice in were rhyming and letter ID in literacy and counting and patterns in math. Here is a little peak at some of our "Ocean Themed" workstation we have been working on this week:

For this letter ID workstation, I wrote letters with permanent marker on dollar store shells and buried them in a tub of sand. The kids love "digging them out" with those cute little shovels and matching them to the ABC mat.

In my "rice table" I have plastic store bought shells that have letters and numbers on them along with a few sea creatures. Students use the tweezers to pluck the letters from the rice and match them to an ABC mat during literacy or match the numbers to a number line during math. They can also pull out the sea creatures and sort them by shape or by color.

Here is a cute little freebie by Lovely Literacy and More that you can find here on teachers pay teachers. First, I have students put together an alphabet train puzzle (not pictured) to practice ABC order, then I have them line these little guys up underneath an fill in the missing letter using magnetic letters. 

In this workstation, students first line up their ocean alphabet cards (found here) in ABC order, then go fishing for letters and match them to the letter line they created. I think that those magnetic letters and fishing pole both came in a set from Lakeshore. 

This workstation is a student favorite! They pick a letter seashell (that I made), then find the Fridge Phonics letter that matches it. While the Fridge Phonics song is playing, students sing along with the letter song while they write the letter in the sand. I put a piece of scrapbook paper in the bottom of the pencil box so that students could see the letter that they wrote better. I just used what I had in the classroom but I want to swap it out for a brighter piece that really stands out through the sand! 

For my students that don't need as much practice identifying letters, I have some vocabulary, word builder, rhyming, syllable, and sentence writing workstations for them. 

Here, students use magnetic letters to build the ocean words.

At this workstation, students use ocean stamps to either find the words that represent the stamp in this "Sea Life" book and write the word next to the picture or write the sentence "I see a ______." and fill in the ocean animal that they stamped (depending on their level). 

 In math, students can....

Use ocean stamps to make a pattern. I love doing the patterns on sentence strips because then you can staple the strip into a loop to make a hat. My students proudly wear their patterns on their head all day and then beg me to make another one the next day! 

Here, students place the numbered seahorse in numerical order, then match the correct number of "bubbles" to the number beside the seahorse. I found the seahorse number cards for free on teachers pay teachers here. For the bubbles, I just broke apart a string of blue beads in sets from 1 all the way to 20. 

In this "treasure hunting" workstation, students first match the different jewel shapes to the treasure chest, then graph which shapes they used on this graphing tray.

They can either graph by color or by shape.

In this workstation, I provided students with plastic sea creatures in several different colors. Student can sort the sea creatures by shape or by color. (I promise I actually do know my colors and the top two sections in the picture on the right are different colors! They just look the same in the picture.)

This last one I am going to show is another student favorite. I printed the shells off of Sparklebox here and got a bag of small mixed shells from the dollar store. Students put the numbers in numerical order and count out the correct number real shells for each paper shell. *If you have never checked out Sparklebox before, I highly recommend it! They have resources for basically every theme imaginable and almost everything is FREE!*

This first week was a bit of an adjustment for both the students and myself but I am hoping now that we have established a routine, we can dive into more learning this coming week! Dive, get it? See what I did there? ;)