End of Apples and Beginnign of Spiders

Last week we ended apples and now this week we have begun spiders. So let's back track a little and look at the end of apples. On pinterest I found a cute apple activity where you made a book with an apple cut out and it inspired me! I used the ELA and math activities we had for apples to use with it and viola! Here is it...

 

  

I know some are messier than others but my philosophy is that it's the kids' art not mine so it needs to be finished completely by them. My first year teaching I took over in January for a class that the teacher retired from. She did not like "ugly" art so she did most of the cutting and gluing herself. So when I began the kids didn't know how to cut and glue! They sat there staring at me waiting for me to do it for them! UGH!

So now onto spiders. Monday's writing began with a story. A few weeks early when we were lining up to go home and right by our backpacks was a HUGE spider. I quickly shooed the kids away and we walked up to the front of the school and told my teacher friends about it. They then became curious so they went to see this spider with my own children but after a few minutes of hunting decided it was gone. Wellll.....it wasn't! It traveled across the concrete to the building beside me and introduced itself to the curious teacher. Our computer guy came to her rescue and stepped on it. Guess what...it was so big because it had babies all over its back!! Babies went EVERYWHERE! They ended up having to fumigate her room. So that's how we got started with spiders.

Now we made our opinions on whether or not we are scared of spiders.

  

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Spiders-Writing-Informative-Opinion-Narrative-CCSS-1473288 

We brainstormed why we would and wouldn't be scared and then everyone picked their opinions. Tuesday we did our final writing. I don't know if you can see the picture on the right...the little girl's mouth is screaming because she is so scared. The one on the right is a shoe getting ready to step on the spider! LOVE IT!

Now onto our CLOSE book. We read the book without any pre-vocabulary feeding. Then we went back and the kids told me what words they didn't know. We talked about the meanings and I even pulled up some YouTube videos to actually show the kiddos a close-up of spinnerets. That freaked them out because they realized it was on the spider's butt! 1st graders and the word butt equals laughing for at least 5 full minutes. 

 

 

  http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Spiders-Nonfiction-CLOSE-Reading-Book-1464225

Then we did our reading comprehension and got to COLOR! Who doesn't love to color!

On a side note...I don't know why I am sharing this...buuuuutttt....one of Youtube videos of a spider had instrumental music in the background and it took a few minutes for me to realize it was Metallica's One! I love that song! LOL