One of our favorite units involves learning about penguins and Antarctica. It is the coldest, driest, windiest place on the planet. An Emperor penguin is about the size of a First Grader. We measured ourselves against a penguin picture and recorded the information.
The students evaluated the differences in physical properties and painted their favorite species. Some of the species they chose: chinstrap, little blue fairy, macaroni, rockhopper, emperor, king, gentoo, and adelie. Aren't they magnificent?!!
We loved this book, The Snow Globe Family. We did a process writing piece about what we would do if we were stuck inside a snow globe.
A SNOWBALL FIGHT!
We made some cool compound word folders, and then it was time for Contraction Surgery. The "doctors" cut their words apart, and used bandaids to put the contractions together. Funny!
We've had a fun time learning about matter. Finding examples of solids, liquids, and gases in magazine pictures yielded a big anchor chart. We took a "Matter Walk" to find examples as well. We used balloons to represent gases, and had fun with fruit loops to represent molecules.