Life Cycle Part II: Mealworms and Frogs, New unit now on sale!!! :)

Hi everyone!!!
I am back with some more news and pictures!! My week has been slow and fast at the same time. Has it ever happened to you? We are trying to get these students ready for the STAAR, which will be in less than a month! We have been testing and practicing all of our skills on this week, which means I don't really have anything new for Math. However, I'm expecting to do more of small groups by next week, so I MIGHT come up with something small, quick, free for ya'll ;)

On a better note, we are having fun in Science this week! As I mentioned on my last post (click HERE to see my last post), we worked this past week on the life cycle of a ladybug.

On this same past week, we have been talking about meal worms and their cycle. The best of all is that we actually were able to get some meal worms to have in class and observe them! I am telling you all, they are so gross! and yet so cool!! :) My students can't stop looking at them and just observe them!
Here are some pictures I was able to take before I left on Friday:

What I really like about this life cycle is that it's very simple to maintain them. Meal-worms just eat decomposing fruit and we left some oats in there for them to keep on eating. They don't drink water because they get all the water from the fruit. 

I also found very cool videos on how these meal-worm "molt" (shed); they do shed several times during the larva stage.here I am being honest with you, they are kind of gross, but they are so cool at the same time. My students were so amazed by just looking at these videos, that I was able to just keep on looking... lol Here are the you tube videos I was able to find:

Well, like I mentioned this week has been more testing than anything else.. so our schedule got all crazy. So this is where we stopped today; basic knowledge of the life cycle of a darkling beetle. However, we will be looking into more details beginning of next week and adding the life cycle of a frog. For these reasons, I wanted to publish my second unit of life cycles! This time, this unit contains meal-worms and frogs! We will be using some activities from my unit and I'll be posting some pictures as soon as we get it done :)

Meanwhile, I wanted to show you what's in it. This unit has 76 slides and it will be ON SALE WITH A 40% OFF FOR THE FIRST WEEK  (Monday March 24th to Sunday March 30th)...
Click on the picture to take you to my TPT store :)

I will be working on the Spanish edition during this week, so hopefully I get to post that unit soon!

Thank you so much for stopping by my blog today. I hope your weekend has been relaxing and productive as well. Have a blessing week, and stay tuned!! :)

My Spring Break, Life Cycle of Ladybugs and Butterflies Unit & Giveaway!

Hey everyone! I hope your Spring Break has been as relaxing, fun, and too short like mine! ;)
I have been working really hard on planning ahead since I will be on maternity leave soon! I can't believe time has flew so fast and I'll be having a baby in less than two months! It is so exciting and scary!!!

On another note, I honestly don't have much of a hands-on activity that we have done the week before Spring Break. We were mostly reviewing concepts and testing... I wanted to blog about what was coming up during my Spring Break week, but time just flew! Soooo since I am finished with my new unit I wanted to share it with you before Friday. This is what we are studying and working on this week in Science.

We are working on the life cycle of a ladybug, so we created a sequence foldable with information of each stage. I could have given them sentences to cut and paste like what comes in my unit, but I wanted to encourage them to write as many details as possible, since we have learned many different facts. I asked them NOT to write just simple sentences such as "the eggs hatched and a larva was born". I asked them to write more details that they have learned for each stage.


We also have watched two videos, these are the videos I played during my lessons:

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE... BE AWARE THAT ON THIS COMING VIDEO, EXACTLY AT 2:50min, THE LADYBUGS APPEAR MATING. I STILL PLAYED THIS VIDEO TO MY STUDENTS BECAUSE IT WAS THE BEST VIDEO TO SHOW IN FAST MOTION THE WHOLE LIFE CYCLE; HOWEVER I WAS USED PRECAUTIONS AND I STOOD BY THE LAPTOP TO STOP THE VIDEO AT 2:49min. SO I COULD AVOID THE LAST IMAGE.

These following video is also good. It has a person talking in the background; but it's not a video like the previous one. It has really good pictures and some very short videos of the larva. I still used it because the images were AMAZING! :)

We also did a quick and fun craft. We cut and paste true and false statements on a sheet and did a ladybug craft. I think they turned out very cute and my students were really engaged during this activity.

These two activities are included in my new unit Life Cycle of a ladybug AND butterfly. This unit is great for 1-3 grades. I included lots of different activities!
If you would like to know more about my products, click on the picture and it will take you to my TPT store. I have created a unit for both English and Spanish.

This is the English version. For more details, click on the picture.

This is the Spanish version :) For more details click on the picture

I have a new unit, so let's do a giveaway!!! Simple and quick :) Just must post a comment, including your name, email, and your choice of unit (English or Spanish). I will be giving away one unit in English and one unit in Spanish!!

Thank you so much for stopping by my blog! I'll be posting within the week with more news, so stay tuned!! :)

P.S.
Before I let you go, I wanted to share with you a selfie :) I took this picture of myself on my baby shower... I am obsessed with nails, so I try to get them done as they match special outfits... lol

This following picture is a gift that my really good friend brought for me :) If you are in love with the paint behind the diaper cake as much as I am, click HERE and like her Facebook store, she's amazing!!!

Real Short post.. probability and Inherited Traits...

Hi everyone!
I really mean when I say this post will be very short... My friends at home are throwing me a baby shower!! So I have to get lots of things done before that...

I just want to share with y'all the foldable we created to remember academic vocabulary in Math. We have been talking about more/most likely, less/least likely, and equally likely.

I don't have any picture of the front cover of the foldable, but "most likely", "least likely", and "equally likely" are the phrases we have in the front. My students wrote the meaning of each inside and gave their own example for each on the left side. I took picture of some of the examples they wrote and the pictorials they did to represent each. Some of them were really cute, especially the alien example.

     

 

We also worked on differentiate between inherited traits and learned behaviors.  We also did a foldable with examples inside of each window. We created the foldable, and discuss a couple of statements to decide if it was an inherited trait or learned behavior. Then I left the rest of the statements on my projector and my students decided in partners whether it was an inherited trait or learned behavior and write them in the correct spot of the foldable.

Here is a picture of my copy:

 

If you would like to grab the labels and the list in English or Spanish, click HERE for the free document on Google Docs.

That is it for tonight everyone! I will be on Spring Break this week!! (whoooppp!!) So I'll be working on Maternity Leave lesson plans and other units :) I should have something new pretty soon!

Have a great night and weekend! Thank you for stopping by my blog and stay tuned!!! :)

Keep on studying Geometry, a little bit of of Planets, and a New March Unit Giveaway!

Hello everyone!
How was your week? Did you get to catch some good deals on TPT? Oh boy I sure did! every time TPT has a big sale like this I get so excited and I'm just like a kid on Christmas!!!
Nevertheless, I wanted to share with you what we have been up to this last week.

In Math we have been talking about Congruent figures.
The following foldable is what we did when looking into congruent figures. We did this foldable so we can remember our vocabulary words and compare congruent figures with Similar figures.

  

Then, we started talking about symmetry and that's when all the fun started! I showed my students a quick video online about lines of symmetry and I am not sure what it was about that video, but they got so engaged and excited about the whole concept!

After the video, we wrote really quick the concept of symmetry and did two simple illustrations to represent it.

After that quick journal post, we did a hands on activity. We used white cardstock, we folded it in half and write our name on the crease side. Then we trace a line around the letters to give it a shape and cut it around making sure we followed the line we had traced.

When we opened the cardstock we had to think about what figure we can create, making sure it represents a vertical line of symmetry.

I was so happy with my students' work, they all came up with GREAT ideas! Here are some pictures I was able to take :)

 

 

 

We finally finished our planets! :) During lab time, students have been working in groups to create their paper Mache planets. In case you have never done this, it's really simple. Just mix water with flour in a bowl and cut newspaper pieces. I inflated some balloons with different sizes (depending what planet they were working on) and students glued those newspaper pieces onto the balloon with the mix of water and flour.

My students then painted their planet and wrote 3 facts on a flash card. So then I picked one fact and wrote it on a flash card and staple it onto a yarn and hang it. These are the planets they created and we hang on our hallway :)

Last but not least. I wanted to do a quick giveaway with my new Happy Birthday Dr Unit! It took me longer than I thought, so I hope you guys can still be on time to use it this coming week (1st week of March). As I mentioned before, I won't be using this unit this year (since they don't make a big deal of Dr. Seuss in 3rd grade Math and Science); however, I was determined to finish this unit due to the fact that  ithas been on my "to do list" since last year! lol

Anyhow, here are the preview pictures for BOTH versions: English and Spanish :)

Click on each picture to take you to the TPT product for grade level and for more information on what comes in this unit...

If you would like to get one of these units for FREE, please leave a comment on this post. I will send this unit to the first three people that leave a comment.

The only things I require for you to do in order to win this product is to be one of the first three people to comment, to make sure you include your choice of unit, and email address. 

Thank you for stopping by my blog today! :) Have an awesome week and I will see you next week with more news and pictures!