Earth Day Unit-{Day #3: Getting Digital & a FREEBIE!}

Holy cow! Today has got to be one of my absolute favorite days we have had this year because my students seriously blew me away with their abilities. I'll get to that in a moment, but first...

Happy Earth Day from Miss Law's Kinders!

We began our third day of our Earth Day unit by completing a super fun and adorable Earth Day craftivity. This craft has three hearts attached to the earth, each one with one of the three Rs on it: reduce, reuse, and recycle. We reviewed ways we can do all three in order to take care of our Earth, and then students wrote one way on each heart.

These made a great addition to our Earth Day hallway display. If you would like to grab this Earth Day Craftivity FREEBIE for your class, click here. 

After getting our arts and crafts on, we decided to go digital and write our own Earth Day books using the Book Creator app on our iPads. Now, this is where my socks were knocked off by my students. I told my class that I wanted each of us to create our own book on Earth Day and we orally brainstormed some ideas of what our books could be about. Since we have been spending quite a bit of time discussing the three Rs, it wasn't really any surprise when several of them said, "We can write about ways we can do the three Rs." They took that idea, and ran with it. I literally gave them all creative rights in making this book. They titled it Earth Day and decided that the most appropriate image to go on the front cover was the earth. 

After we typed and added our title and names to the front cover, we switched apps to our Kidrex app. What is the Kidrex app you ask? It is a kid-friendly search engine that you can feel good about your kiddos exploring in. My students typed in Earth in the search bar, clicked on one of the links, found an image of Earth, and saved it to their camera roll. They then returned to their book cover and added the Earth image. 

I then allowed them to play around with changing the colors of their text and page backgrounds, which they LOVED!

We followed our cover page with an introduction page into what we really wanted to write about (the three Rs). This part needed a little scaffolding and I had to lend some serious ideas to get them to understand we needed to set the reader up for what they were going to read on the following pages. I made sure to use words that my students would be able to write type on their own, and with a few reminders of the silent e rule, they produced a great sentence. They then went back to Kidrex and typed in "the three rs" in the search bar and looked for a picture that would fit with our sentence. Every single student ended up with some sort of version of the recycle sign after exploring the links that Kidrex produced. They added it to their page, changed their colors around, and voila! Now on to the part they were itching to get to... the three Rs!

We paired up and took pictures of our partner showing examples of ways we can reduce, reuse, and recycle.

{Reducing our use of energy by turning off lights when we leave a room.}

{Reducing our water usage by turning off the water when brushing our teeth.}

 {Reducing energy by turning off the television when we leave a room or go to bed.}

 {Reusing plastic bags from the grocery store.}

 {Reusing other items for other uses. In this specific example, we use laundry baskets to keep our toys categorized for indoor recess.}

{Reusing old books by giving them to others or taking them to Goodwill.}

 {Recycle items such as glass or paper.}

Students then went back and made a page for reduce, reuse, and recycle and added their pictures to each page.

Check out this finished book by a sweet girl in my class. 

Was that not amazing?! 

Tomorrow we will be trying to learn iMovie to make a public service announcement on the three Rs. I'm hoping it goes as well as this did; however, it'll be our first time working in iMovie, so we shall see. If it goes well, you'll surely read all about it tomorrow. 

After working so hard on our Earth Day books, we went back to some crafting time and made Earth Day headbands, thanks to Danielle Mastandrea from Krazee 4 Kindergarten.

Thanks for stopping by!

Five for Friday- {Spring Break & a FREEBIE!}

Can you believe it? This is the third Friday this month that I am linking up with Kacey at Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday!

This week has been spring break for me, and I have been thoroughly enjoying it! I have been working a lot on my wedding checklist this week since I have had the extra time and have tackled a few crafty projects that I've been putting off. This is just one of my many projects I was able to complete. I was given two chalkboard picture frames by a friend who used it at her rustic wedding. A coat of metallic gold paint, some mod podge, gold glitter, and chalkboard spray paint later, and voila! Isn't it a beaut? I'm undecided on what I will write on both of them, but I'm super excited just the same!

This was posted on the Teachers Pay Teachers Instagram account this week, and I found it completely worth sharing, just in case you hadn't seen it yet. This quote epitomizes my reasoning for joining the teacher blogging world and why I look forward to the Spring Teacher Blogger Meet-Up every year. I love surrounding myself with the best of the best, and I can honestly say that I have several wonderful educators in my district that I am surrounded by, and I am obviously surrounded by outstanding educators in the blogging world. 

Tomorrow kicks off our Spring Teacher Blogger Meet-Up Weekend in Review blog posts. Everyone who attended this year's meet-up has been anxiously waiting to share all the details of the fun weekend with all of our blog followers, and we finally will be letting you in on everything tomorrow! Come back to my blog tomorrow to see how I spent my time at the meet-up, and see how much fun other bloggers got into as well!

Next week when I return to school, we will be celebrating Easter all week long. We will be using literacy and math centers from my Easter Literacy & Math Pack, and completing several craftivities.

One of the craftivities we will be completing is my Easter Bunny Writing Craftivity. You can grab this craftivity for yourself and your class right now by clicking on the picture below. Enjoy this FREEBIE, and have a great week. :) 

P.S. Check out my Teachers Pay Teachers store for more Easter activities and three more Easter FREEBIES!

Scare & Share Blog Hop

Thanks for stopping by for the Indiana Teacher Blogger's Scare & Share blog hop. My name is Lindsey Law from Miss Law's Kinders, and I have the perfect freebie and $1 items just for you primary teachers. 

Let's start out with my freebie. This time of year, Kinders are just beginning to recognize the letters of the alphabet and their sounds. I have created a fun, simple matching game for your kiddos to practice their first sound fluency, letters, and sounds all in one! Perfect for Kinders and great review for First Graders. 

Not exactly what you need or you aren't a primary teacher? No worries! I created this product using my own Split Candy Corn clipart. Grab this extra clipart freebie, and create your own activity to meet your needs!

Now, on to my $1 items! 

Do your students love craftivities as much as mine do? I love craftivities, but only the ones that are made with the teacher in mind, and not just the students. What does that mean? Ever bought a product and it was in a bunch of pieces when it could have been more simplified so that there aren't so many pieces floating around for your kiddos to keep track of? All the time, right?! I always try to create crafts that have the least amount of pieces possible, I put all pieces that need to be copied in the same color on the same page so there is no confusion, and I make the directions quick and simple. My newest product is perfect for Halloween and is most definitely teacher/student friendly! 

Check out my Haunted House Glyph. Students will answer three simple questions on a recording sheet and will construct their haunted house based on their answers. Grab this just in time for Halloween and get it up on your walls! :) 

I realize that Fire Prevention Week was this past week, but my Fire Safety Literacy, Math, & Activities Pack is loaded down with literacy center activities, math center activities, an original Fire Safety book, three color by color words coloring sheets, and two fire related crafts. This pack is typically $4.50, but for you blog hoppers, it is $1 for these three days. Grab it now, use it later. 

Who doesn't love Pete the Cat, right? We do a Pete the Cat unit towards the beginning of the school year in my kindergarten classroom, and I created this activity to supplement the Pete the Cat story, 

I Love My White Shoes. We read the story and then brainstormed ideas of things we could step in that could turn our shoes different colors. We then did our writing of what we stepped in and what color it turned our shoes, colored the shoes the color from our writing, and then put the craft together. Talk about adorable... and SIMPLE! Remember what I said about making things teacher friendly? Here ya go again. :) Also, this is great for teaching cause and effect. I didn't go in depth with a cause and effect lesson with my Kinders, but you most certainly could with first or second grade. 

We always do a unit over healthy foods every year, so I created this math and literacy pack to supplement our unit. This pack is loaded down with center activities for both math and literacy. 

Now, continue on through our blog hop with Kinder Doodles to see what other goodies we all have in store for you. 

An InLinkz Link-up