Oceans of Fun!

Sorry for my absence!  I don't have a good excuse for you.  Better late than never though!  I know you have been dying to see what else we're working on :)  We have been having oceans of fun!

The last biome that we learned about this year was the ocean.  I happened to have a plethora of ocean books, so I didn't check anything out from the library this time.  The kiddos really enjoyed reading about ocean animals in their free time.  I love to see them excited about books!!

I found some ocean themed centers for them to enjoy.  They practiced putting ocean animals in ABC order in the pocket chart center.  Thanks to Live Laugh I Love Kindergarten for this freebie!

This little animal sort came from Amy Lowes.  The kiddos flew through this one.

I drew, colored, and laminated a few little fish.  The kids used them to show greater than or less than.  I find that if you teach them to think of the symbols as little fish or alligator mouths it helps them remember which way they go.  Fishies always each the bigger number because they're hungry!

They listened to Clark the Shark at the listening center this week.

They practiced building words using the letters in "ocean animals."  I found this freebie from Brittani Black.  I added the letters at the top and bottom so the kiddos could cut them out and actually build the words.  This helped to differentiate the activity for those who needed the manipulatives.

I have no idea where this paper came from.  It was in my trusty files.  We brainstormed "sh" words and then they tried sounding them out independently.  They did a wonderful job!

We used this sorting activity to distinguish words that begin with "sh" from those that end with "sh."   This freebie is from Megan Mitchell.

I found this cute shark book and had the kiddos highlight the word wall words.  They tried reading it on their own, and then we read it as a class.  The last page asks what they found the most interesting.  The most popular answer referenced the fact that there are almost 400 kinds of sharks.

"I am surprised that sharks eat squid."

 It also came with a nice true or false follow-up paper.  I read the statements and they marked their answers.

 My favorite ocean activity this week was at the writing center.  My students LOVE stickers!  I had a variety of ocean animals stickers that I thought they would enjoy, so I put them in a basket and they created sticker stories.  They could choose if they wanted to write a fiction or nonfiction piece to go with their sticker picture.  They turned out really cute.  Some of them got a little sticker happy and went overboard, but at least they knew to call it a school of fish!

"The school of fish was going to be eaten by a shark but pufferfish used his spikes to prick the shark."

"Seahorses lay their eggs in the father's belly.  Fish sometimes go to sea anenomes to protect theirselves from them selves."

I am not sure why the fish are protecting themselves from themselves, but she gets the general idea :)  

To wrap up our study of animals I assigned an Animal Research Project.  Come back soon to check out their projects!