Monthly Calendar

Every month, my students make a calendar of their very own to go home.  This is an example of the one we did for January 2013.  In the classroom, it provides monthly practice for number writing, pattern, as well as a fun seasonal art project.  This activity is also a great way to reinforce concepts of number and time as students refer to it at home.   Some children count down the days to favorite holidays and review days of the week.  By the end of the year, all students are writing numbers to 30 independently.  Yahoo!!  Lots of teachers do this activity because it is such a winner!

Update:  I made a product with all the months of the year to do this project in your classroom.  It is updated every school year.  Each month has three different versions to meet the needs of all your students.  You can get it at Teachers Pay Teachers.  Just click on the link or image
below:
Calendars-for-Number-Writing

Happy Teaching!

Yucky Germs! (A science experiment for kids)

This is a fun little science experiment to do with your class when you are teaching them about germs.  We used a bread with NO preservatives in it.  The "clean" piece of bread was put into the bag using tongs and did not touch any human hands.  The "dirty" piece of bread was touched by every student in my 1st grade science class with dirty hands.  Our hands  had been coughed on and rubbed on noses purposely so we would have lots of germs on them.  We washed hands after passing the bread, of course.  The kids did an observation with drawing and writing that included a prediction about what would happen.  Then we did a follow up observation after 4 weeks when there still was not much on the dirty bread.  We just did our third and final observation last week with a result that was very much like our original predictions.  This experiment came from a helpful book that has lots of ideas and templates for science.  It is called Science Through the Year  by Teacher Created Resources.  This book is listed for grades 1-2.  It has many of the important first grade concepts included.  Many of the ideas and worksheets are appropriate for Kindergarten as well.  This experiment took about 6-8 weeks for the mold to finally show up.  In the book it suggests to leave it for two weeks, ours took much longer.  But, wow, what a result, and the clean bread still does not have a speck of mold on it!  To get the book just click on the link below.