MLK, Shadow Fun, and a Freebie!

Whoo-hoo, I have 7 followers! You cannot imagine how excited I was to have such big name bloggers, like Jennifer from First Grade Blue Skies, Christina from Mrs. Bainbridge's Class, and Heather from Heather's Heart as followers. It definitely put a smile on my face all day!!!

So, my team was really on the ball last week, and we celebrated MLK early, on the Friday before the long weekend. And then, of course, I found gobs more stuff over the past few days that I would have loved to do...sigh...guess I'll have a full agenda for next year! We read "Martin's Big Words," and a few others that I had. Yesterday I got wind that there was a video of this book...drats!!! I'm definitely going to try and carve out some time tomorrow to watch it. We also watched the Brain Pop Jr. video on MLK (raise your hand if you love, love, love Brain Pop!!!) Then we made these cute little MLK guys.

These were super easy, and we went step-by-step (definitely a great listening activity). I even let the students use my super special Sharpies to draw the faces. Of course they thought that was the coolest! The poem is a good one, but I think next year, I will have the students write with an "I have a dream..." prompt.

Our unit in science right now is light and shadows. Yesterday, we completed shadow centers and I became the best teacher ever. They LOVED these! We had 3 different centers: put on a shadow puppet show, read with a flashlight, and trace a silhoutte. I handed them lightblubs and off went the lights. I managed to snap a couple of pictures, but please disregard the quality....my Droid doesn't do so well in the dark :)



Reading with a flashlight




Tracing silhouettes




Shadow puppet shows

I have to admit, it was quite enchanting to have only small rays of light throughout the classroom, and the kids were so engaged. Score! After we finished, I gave the students crayons and let them add faces, hair, and clothes to their silhouettes. They were over the moon to have a poster sized portrait of themselves.

Tomorrow is our 100th day of school, so I will definitely be back with an update on how that goes. We have tons of fun activities planned and I am so excited! One thing we are going to try and do is read 100 books. Throughout the day, students will read as many books as they can. Each time they read a book, they will fill out a book slip and make a tally on our chart. Then when we reach 100 books, we will have a mini-celebration. Here is a copy of the book slips they will be filling out.......my first freebie! Click on the picture to get a copy.

Hope that works okay, it's my first time ever trying anything like this. Let me know if you have any issues :)