More Anchors!

The end of the school year is flying by!  We have been busy little bees in K17.  Here are a few more anchor charts we've used to build discussions, increase vocabulary, and for writing. 

This one was for Mother's Day.  It was really fun to listen to the kids partner talk about their moms and share out their ideas! 

The kids wrote a little paragraph for their moms to go with their Mother's Day gifts (which I forgot to take pictures of!):

And today we started a unit on Ocean and learned a lot about sharks.  I want the kids to try different sentence starters and we went with plural this time:

The kids' vocabulary development is just amazing!  And my artwork is not half-bad, if I do say so myself! 

Only ten days left with this class....sigh....it's been a good year.  It's always so hard to let them go when they can do so much, knowing that in a few short months I will be starting all over with crying and pants-wetting, and never-held-a-pencil newbies!  But I will get them here too!!!  Somehow, some way. 

Oh, and I just have to share the most adorable teacher appreciation gift ever:

I just love it, don't you? 

Rainforest: Monkeying Around

This week we are studying the Rainforest.  The kids are already getting good at remembering the various layers and some of the animals that inhabit each layer.  Yesterday and today we focused on the canopy and two of the animals you might find there:  toucans and monkeys. 

We read Jan Brett's The Umbrella and The Great Kapok Tree  by Lynne Cherry.  We cut out pictures of rainforest animals and glued them in the layer of the rainforest they live in.  Then, we wrote in our journals about the toucan using a has/can/is anchor chart: 

Today we began a more involved writing activity about monkeys using the same type of chart.  These are some examples of what we have so far:

                                                   

Tomorrow we will add some monkey "embellishments"! 

I found the cute extras here:  http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Writing-Prompt-Craftivities-Jungle-Animals 
You can purchase as a unit or just buy the materials for individual animals. 

Here's the finished bulletin board:

It says, "We love to monkey around in K17!" 

My students are really getting inspired to begin their at-home Rainforest Animal Reports and projects for Open House!  I can't wait to see what they come up with!