Life cycle of frogs and Mealworms - A Unit and some great videos! :)

Hi everyone!!!
I am back with some more news and pictures!! I would like to share with you my part II of life cycles. We had such a great time with my students when we learned about life cycles during our Science period. Last post was about butterflies and ladybugs (click HERE to see the last post), I would like to share with you about meal worms and frogs this time.

The best of meal worms is that is so new to them and they have never seen them before (they had more experience with butterflies or frogs). I am telling you all, they are so gross! and yet so cool!! :) My students couldn't stop looking at them and just observe them!
Here are some pictures I was able to take for the first days:

What I also 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. Now, I'll be 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:

These are some pictures of our mealworms that have already turned into pupae! We did not get to see the action, but we sure could see the skin out and those white-alien looking friends! My students are so excited about them that the first thing they do when they come in is to observe them!

These are the skin that we found all around them. I pull them out so students could see them better.

The pupae are all over, but I circled some of them so you could have a better view of it :)

This mealworm had just turned into a pupa, it really does look like a white alien!

you could still see the skin near by...

As soon as I walked into my classroom and went to check our friends, this is the one I found (purple circle). Apparently he had already turned into a beetle over the weekend because he was already getting the darken color. The other friends had already the legs turned darker, that meant they were ready to turned into a beetle as well :)

On this picture, you can see more of the pupae that had already the legs turned a little bit darker... some others are still on their "resting" stage...

Sadly, we were not able to see any pupae in action... but we were able to see the first stage of the beetle. That means, the beetle is out but with a white/cream color (blue circle)

By the end of the week, we had more friends! but they all liked to be under the oats!! Only two (purple circle) were brave enough to come out! Maybe it's because beetles are nocturnal and they were all trying to sleep while we were having class!! ;)

These were the last pictures I took of the beetles. As you can see most of them (if not all) have already that brown dark or black color. They were ready to be released. We had such a great time with these buddies!

Lastly, we learned about the life cycle of a frog. This is our friend "Froggy." I taught the lesson, but I didn't get to see Froggy grow. By the time we got him (after our meal worms), I was leaving for maternity leave back then. So this is the only picture I got of it.

We made foldables for both meal worms and frogs. My students took notes of each cycle as we were talking about them at the carpet and fill out their own foldable :)

Before I let you go, I would like to share with you my unit :) The foldables shown above are are part of this unit :)
This unit come in English and Spanish. If you would like to have more info on what comes in it, click on ENGLISH or SPANISH to take you to each product :) Here is a preview of what the unit contains. 

Thank you so much for stopping by my blog today. I hope you have a great weekend, make it a restful and relaxing! Have a blessing week, and stay tuned!! :)

Life Cycle of Butterfly and Ladybug!! A Unit for everyone and sharing some great videos!

Hi Y'all!
I hope your Spring Break is going well, a very relaxing and fun week! ;)
I have been working really hard on scheduling my upcoming blog posts since I'll be having another baby! I can't believe time has flew so fast and I'll be having a two-year old baby girl and a baby boy in less than two months! It is so exciting and scary!!! Yes, I know she is not a baby anymore, but she'll always be to me :)

I'll be sharing with you about the life cycle units I have in my store for the next couple posts. The first life cycle is the butterfly and lady bug.
I used these videos with my students. WE ALL LOVED LOVED to play them because they were excellent in focusing those little lady bugs!

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 USED PRECAUTIONS AND I STOOD BY THE LAPTOP TO STOP THE VIDEO AT 2:49min. SO I COULD AVOID THE LAST IMAGE.

This is the LINK 

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! :)

This is the LINK

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 HERE.

This is the Spanish version :) For more details click HERE.

Remember I am on BlogLovin' and if you would like to get my posts through email so you don't miss the fun, you can sign up on "follow me by email" (click HERE for instructions)!

Have a great and restful Spring Break my friends! I am posting in a couple days about my other life cycle unit, which includes mealworms and frogs! :)

Geometry Foldables & Symmetry activity ideas PLUS A NEW UNIT WITH A FREE SAMPLE YOU WOULDN'T LIKE TO MISS!

Hello everyone and welcome back!
I am sure at this point everyone is counting down the days for our Spring Break and looking forward to a nice, resting, and short week! We all know that as soon as you blink, that week is over! Nevertheless, it is nice to have it off, we all need it! :)

Today, I am about to show you a bunch of pictures of different anchor charts and foldables I had made in my classroom to help my kiddos remember those geometric vocabulary words! whewwwww!!! I'm telling y'all there are so many that I really wanted kids to be able to see these not only in their journal, so I'm planning on laminating these and post them on the wall for the rest of the school year :)

We also did about three foldables to identify: lines and angles (sorry I don't have pictures), quadrilaterals, and 3-D shapes.

A week after those 2D and 3D shape vocabulary, we were talking about Congruent figures.
The following foldable is what we did when looking into congruent 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 first. After the video, we wrote a 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 :)

 

 

 

Last, but definitely not least! I wanted to show you my new unit!! The title is "Welcome to Texas and the Wild West Y'all!" for a very specific reason!
I live in Texas, so one of our Social Studies TEKS are to teach about the symbols and our State. So I wanted to have a small Social Studies unit. However, I also know that not all grade levels go in depth for some of these activities and that the Rodeo is a BIG DEAL here in Texas. Soooo I decided to combine Social Studies, ELA/SLAR, and Math in a whole unit! :) That means, if you are not from Texas, but you would love to have a fun and interactive theme unit about the Wild West, this unit is also for you!!! As usual, the unit comes in English and Spanish.
Here is a preview of what the English and Spanish versions look like! Just remember that both version are exactly the same! The only difference is the language used :)

Click on ENGL or SPAN to read more details on the product

To give you a little peek of the unit, I created a FREE SAMPLE. On this Sample I included BOTH the English and Spanish versions :) On this sample, I included a mini booklet to use after a Rodeo field trip and a colored puzzle for the Texas Pledge. Both Social Studies and Wild West theme included!
Here is a preview of what this freebie looks like!

Click HERE to download your FREE SAMPLE

Well my friends, that's all I got for you! I hope my post has been useful to you and that you can try any or all of these activities with your class!

Anchor Chart for Math, Temperature, and a Science Unit About the Sun

Hello everyone and welcome back!
Today I want to share with you a unit and some activities I was doing with my kiddos around this time when I taught 3rd grade. This is an anchor chart for Math and a unit for Science that you could do at any grade, so stay with me :)
I only had the chance to take a picture of the anchor chart I prepared for a rotation (we started boot camps for STAAR) that had to do with patterns on a table. At 3rd grade we look more than just addition, but my students were used to just look on the side. So I created this anchor chart to show them and remind them (for the 40th time, sounds familiar?) to always look both ways when finding a pattern on the table.

During instruction time, we got a chance to talk about temperature. We did a quick foldable which contained a thermometer and the importance of finding the scale. We only did thermometer three days because we also had to review for our unit test. 

In Science, we had different activities and important facts to learn about the Sun.

The first day I showed several videos and we did a short/simple booklet containing facts about the Sun. This is a very simple booklet that you can use at any grade level. I used them for 3rd grade, but I had a teacher in 1st grade who also used it and she was really happy with this unit :)

         

 

The second and third day we did a model of how the earth rotates around the Sun, and the Moon around the Earth. We also did an experiment to represent the Solar Flares. Very simple demo and the kids LOVED IT!

I apologize for my loud voice and my accent! ;) lol

We have been watching videos and seeing presentations about the Sun. So the last days we did a small craft about the Sun. My students created this cute craft and had to cut the different Sun's rays. There were about 12 rays that were mixed up with TRUE and FALSE facts about the Sun. They had to glue only the TRUE facts on the Sun and discard the FALSE facts. I also included blank sun's rays in case for those younger grades that are not at that level yet :)

If you would like to check out my unit, please click on my Fun in the Sun activity Mini Unit. This unit contains all activities in Spanish and English. It contains the booklet, the experiment sheet with instructions on how to do it, and the Sun craft (including blank rays in case you just want the craft itself AND the rays that contain the TRUE and FALSE facts).

Thank you for stopping by my blog today! I am busy, busy, busy working on a new unit, so I hope I get to blog next weekend, at least a couple paragraphs!
Have an awesome week and see ya next time! :)