Kagu

The Kagu is a rare flightless bird that is also known as the Ghost of the Forest.  These birds live in the rain forests of New Caledonia and eat a variety of foods such as: larvae, spiders, centipedes, bugs, cockroaches, millipedes, beetles, snails, worms and lizards.  Kagus have skin flaps called corns, which cover the nostril and may keep dirt from entering the nose when the bird digs with it's bill.  They are the only bird that have this. This beautiful bird has white feathers and gray stripes that can only be seen when the feathers are outstretched.  The Kagu feathers were so prized by the makers of ladies' fancy hats that in the 1800's they almost became extinct.  

After learning about the Kagu the kids made their own Kagu out of a paper plate.

 

Happy Horned Toads

This week we talked about one of my favorite animals.  Ok, so maybe it is just my favorite because I went to TCU and it is their mascot.  The Horned Toad, or horned frog as TCU calls them.  The horned frog is not a frog at all it is actually a reptile.  This reptile has a flat body and can be quite fierce looking with all of it's horns.  The horned toad is found in open, rocky areas with little plants.  In fact, the horned toad requires warm temperatures to stimulate it's appetite and activity. They sometimes begin their day by exposing only their head to sunlight while keeping their body buried.  Later they will be seen in a flattened body posture sunning themselves in open areas.  They are not active at night or when temperatures fall below 75 degrees F.  They are seen mainly in the late spring through early fall and hibernate a few inches underground.
One special defense that the horned toad has it it's ability to spit blood at it's predators.  It can shoot blood from it's eyes up to six feet away.  This is not harmful to the animals, but it is distasteful and stuns the predators giving the horned toad time to escape.  See the cool video here:

A clever book that is a twist on the fairy tale The Frog Prince is called The Horned Toad Prince.  We read this book after we learned all about the horned toad.  I teach a combination of English and Spanish speakers and my Spanish speakers loved to help me with the Spanish words in the book.

  Afterwards, we made horned toad art and masks to wear.  

 

Platypus

Our next animal is a little unusual.  It has the bill like a duck, the tail like a beaver, the body like an otter, walks like a reptile, and lays eggs.  What is it you ask?  A Platypus.  Most of my students had heard of a platypus but were thrilled to learn more about these unusual creatures.  We learned what they eat and how they live and how they take care of their young.  Our favorite videos about the platypus we found on YouTube.  We found the platypus song addicting.  The kids kept asking me to play it again, and again, and AGAIN!  I'll be singing it for days! 

Our platypus art this week included making our own platypus with one fact they learned. 

Zebra

Our first and second graders are learning about unusual animals to prepare for their big research projects.  We started off with the zebra.  We compared the zebra stripes to our own fingerprints.  Each zebra has a unique set of stripes just like our fingerprints are unique to us.  We looked at the three types of fingerprints: the arch, the whorl and the loop, and classified our own prints. 

The kids tried to think of other animals that have unique coats like the zebra.  Can you think of any?


After we learned some fascinating facts about the zebra we read a clever book called "A is for Zebra".  The kids all had puzzled looks on their faces.  "Wait!  Z is for Zebra!"  Once we started reading our book they quickly learned why A is for Zebra.  This book uses the last letter of the word instead of the first.  We went through the whole alphabet and found many things in the pictures that ended with each letter. 

Our animal lesson wouldn't be complete without doing a fun art activity.  The kids cut out blank zebras (with no stripes).  We used marbles to paint the stripes on our zebras. What fun it is to roll the marbles around all over.  Some got more paint on the box than they got on the zebra, but that is part of the fun.  Here are our finished products.

Augmented reality

This has to be one of the coolest things I have ever seen.  The students color a picture and it magically comes to life with the app called ColAR Mix.  So you go from a picture like this:

To a picture like this: 

The kids can touch the screen and the zebra will move.  Touch different parts of the zebra and it will do different things.  AMAZING!  

How Santa Got His Job

Well, the semester is almost over.  What better way to wind down than to do a few Santa activities.  We read How Santa Got His Job.  We talked about what Santa learned at each job that made him more successful.  The student's jobs right now is to be the best student they can be.  We talked about what we wanted to be when we grow up and what we could do now to help in our success later on.  The kids were encouraged to remember that we attend school to learn how to be a better worker in the future.

We also read Santa's New Suit and completed several of the writing activities included.  

TPT Santa's New Suit.  Their homework was to use their imagination and create a new suit for Santa.  

I think the kids thought the Santa Slime was their favorite though.  I found the recipe on Pinterest.  Here is the recipe we used: Santa Slime Recipe.  I had made oobleck before using white school glue but never with clear glue, or glitter glue.  

Snowmen at Night

What's more fun than watching Frozen? Reading about what snowmen do at night.  Who knew that the reason my snowman was always disheveled every morning is because he was out on the town every night?? Not only does this book have fun pictures of what the snowmen do, but on each page there are several hidden pictures.  My kids were so fascinated by the hidden pictures that I was not allowed to turn the page until we found them all!   

After reading this fun book, I let the kids watch a youtube of a funny snowman trapped in a snowglobe from Pixar.  

Trapped in a Snowglobe Snowman Video

My students also painted fun pictures of what they thought the snowmen did at night only using a Qtip.  I found this idea on pinterest.  

Once we were done, the students created borax snowflakes.  See video here: 

Borax snowflakes

Fun with Flags!

Secret codes, flags, and sailing the seven seas.  What do they have in common you ask?  Well, they are all part of our next lesson on nautical flags.  The kids discovered that sailors used to communicate, before the technology we have today, by using flags.  Some flags were universal and could be understood in any language.  We used the nautical flag alphabet and created a banner with our names. This is the alphabet we used from Design Sponge.

It was helpful to have the squares precut before the kids arrived.  I helped the kids with hard letters like A & B that needed cuts made, and ones with lots of squares like the letter N. 

 

I am UNIQUE!

Three books I love reading with the kids and teaching about individuality are Miss Hunnicutt's Hat by Jeff Brunbeau and Gail deMarcken, Odd Velvet by Mary E. Whitcomb  and Three Hens and a Peacock by Lester Laminack.  Each book is unique but the message is the same.  It is ok to be yourself.  It is ok to be unique and different.  Since my kids are gifted and talented, some of them feel very different compared to their peers.  They think different, they have those quirky GT qualities that makes them so very special.  We talk about how it is ok to be themselves.

Odd Velvet is a strange little girl with unique interests.  When the rest of the girls in her class bring dolls for show and tell, Velvet brings a milkweed plant.  One day at school the kids were having a drawing contest.  Everyone knew that because Velvet only had 8 crayons, she could never win.  But little did they know how very talented Velvet really was.  Velvet also had a vivid imagination.  When Velvet invited everyone from class to her house for her birthday party they pretended to fight dragons, jump over the moat and had a she even taught them how to draw like she did.  Suddenly, Odd Velvet wasn't so odd after all.  

For our activity, the kids were given a folded piece of paper to look like a gift.  We discussed that we have many gifts and talents.  Inside the folded paper, the kids were to draw a picture of themselves and draw four pictures of things they were good at, or their gifts.  

Miss Hunnicutt is also a unique individual that wears a live chicken on her hat.  The town is preparing for the Queen's annual drive from her country cottage to her city castle.  They notice Miss Hunnicutt's hat and are embarrassed!  No one wants her to wear it but Miss Hunnicutt insists. When the Queen  drives by she notices Miss Hunnicutt's hat and stops.  She too has a hat like Miss Hunnicutt but instead of a chicken, she has a turkey!  Because of their similar tastes in fashion, the Queen invites Miss Hunnicutt to her castle for a party.  The other townspeople are jealous and even those that made fun of Miss Hunnicutt have decided to follow her fashion and wear live animals on their heads.  

After reading this book the kids made their own hats and put fun animals on them.  We paraded around the school with them for all to see.  

The last book about uniqueness that we use in my class is Three Hens and a Peacock.  This funny book demonstrates that it is ok to have your own special talents even if they aren't like everyone else.  The Peacock and the Hens learned the hard way when each tried to trade jobs for the day.  For this activity the kids used washable markers on coffee filters.  They colored them completely not to leave any white.  Once they were done I sprayed them with a squirt bottle of water to blend the colors.  Once they dried we added the features of the peacock.

  

The kids used solo cups with hole in the bottom and a string threaded through.  When you wet your fingers and rub them down the string, it makes the sound of a hen.  The kids all laughed the first time they heard the chicken sounds.  

Screaming Chicken Youtube

Why is Blue Dog Blue?

Another wonderful book by yet another great artist is "Why is Blue Dog Blue?" by George Rodrigue.  This book looks like a book for younger children but it uses higher order thinking to challenge the kids about the names of different colors.  For instance, what color is blue dog when eating a hot dog?  MUSTARD!  The kids have fun guessing what the colors are.  After reading the book we looked at George Rodrigue's art work.  Here are just a few of my favorites.

The kids were inspired and created their own blue dogs in all sorts of colors.  I have to admit, I had fun painting too.  (I am certainly no artist though.)  Here are my examples: 

Here are the kids pictures: 

Little Mouse's Painting

A fun book to read with my first and second graders is Little Mouse's Painting by Diane Wolkstein.  This book has beautiful artwork with an even better story.  Little Mouse loves spending time with his friends but on this day he wanted to go out on his own.  Little Mouse decides he wants to paint a beautiful landscape.  Each of mouse's friends stumbles upon Little Mouse and when they see his painting, they each see themselves in the painting even though Little Mouse was persistent that it was just a landscape.  During the reading of this book I talked with the students on perspective.  We took a brief walk outside to look at the clouds.  I asked the kids what objects they saw in the cloud.  Several were looking at the same cloud but saw different pictures, just like Little Mouse's friends!  When we came back in, I gave each student a squiggly like and asked them to turn that into something.  I got everything from mustaches, to roller coasters, to a snake lying in the grass. Everyone had a different idea of what that line was.  Not one person was right, not one person was wrong- just different.
During this lesson we also talked about optical illusions and how it makes our eyes see things differently.  The kids had fun making their own optical illusions.

For homework that night, the students were given a bag of circles of all different colors.  Some were whole circles, some were half, quarter and so on.  They were to use these pieces to create their own picture.  We used the books below for examples.  

The Toughest Cowboy

One of my favorite books to read with the kids is The Toughest Cowboy by John Frank.  This is the tale of Grizz Brickbottom and his cowboy friends out on the trail.  These weren’t just any cowboys.  These were the roughest and toughest cowboys you ever saw.  Grizz decides one day to he wants a companion.  He decides to get a dog.  The cowboys were amazed when Grizz brings back a poodle named Foofy.  Foofy only ate French food, needed a bath and her hair brushed (something the cowboys rarely did), and loved when someone sang her to sleep.  The cowboys were reluctant at first but soon came to love Foofy.

The kids loved learning all about these cowboys and of the real life cowboys that rode on the Chisholm Trail.  We talked about rules for branding and the kids each designed their own brands.  We even made our brands out of pipe cleaners.  After that, we got to see how good their roping skills were with a hula hoop and a classroom cow.  For homework the kids each made their own wanted posters and made up their own cowboy names.

The Name Jar

With my first and second grade group we read a lot of literature that fits our theme for that year.  This year our theme is Community of Thinkers.  To start the year off we read a book called “The Name Jar” by Yangsook Choi.  This is an excellent book about a girl who starts school in not only a new city but a new country.  Unhei is from Korea.  She is not sure if the American kids in her class will be able to pronounce her name so she wants to come up with a more American name for herself.  She takes suggestions from the class but ultimately she decides to keep her Korean name.

When we were done reading, I typed each student’s name in bubble letters and let them decorate their name.  Each letter should represent something they like or tell about themselves.  We hung the pictures with the cute poem I found on Pinterest.

Everybody Has a Name

Everybody has a name

Some are different,

some are the same,

Some are short, some are long.

All are right, none are wrong.

I like my name,

it’s special to me,

It’s exactly who I want to be.

For homework that night the kids were to talk with their parents about how they got their name and if it had any special meaning.  We discussed their findings the next day in class.

I found a great resource on teacherspayteachers.com for some in class activities about “The Name Jar” including how to write Hello in Korean.  The kids loved trying to make each character.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/The-Name-Jar-Unit-a-companion-to-the-book-by-Yangsook-Choi-1373836

Another fun activity to do with the kids is The Story of My Name.  http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Story-of-My-Name-Writing-and-Craftivity-265034