Take Me Out to The OCEAN!

We couldn't wait for May to get here so we could start our Beach unit!!  The first week is all about sun, sand, waves, and sandcastles!  The students bring in beach towels so that we can go outside to read.  They each get a bucket of sand (paper cup) and are rewarded with shells throughout the theme. When you get caught being good you get a shell in your bucket. This packet gets us started, then we get into our Ocean Creatures unit. 

This 42 page beach themed packet will get your kids excited about going to the beach, whether it is in person, or in your classroom. Plus, we included many printables that may be used for review, assessments, or centers, and some fun stuff too. It provides practice for skills taught in first grade in May! Check it out. 

You can get it here!

The following weeks, we dive in and learn about the creatures of the sea!  Each day we discover a new ocean animal!  Our whole day is centered around one animal.  We read all kinds of books, fiction and non-fiction.  We watch clips on the internet giving us a peek into the animals habitat and showing us how the animal moves.  We do all kinds of activities throughout the day with a focus on this animal! At the end of the day, we create the animal!!  And they write what they have learned about the animals in their booklet.

You can get it here!

Here is a freebie from our Ocean Creatures packet!  It is very generic and can be used for researching any ocean animals you choose. Just pick an animal, do the research, or hunt it down on a great internet site like National Geographic for Kids, or Sea World. Then print as many pages as you want your students to have. Give them a cover page and back page. Now they have instant information they will love to collect, read, and reread to a friend. This is a great way to practice researching and writing to create their own informational text. 

Click here for the FREEBIE

Beach

It's that time of year again!!  I love ending the year with a beach theme, filled with lots of review!!  Of course a trip to the beach always helps get me in the mood!!   We always bring back a bag full of shells for incentives!!   When I see good behavior, I send them to the "sand" to pick out a shell!  They love it!!  You'd think I'd brought back gold!!  Here's a little picture of what my world was like for 4 days!!  I hope it helps to get YOU in the mood too!

I have a complete Beach/Ocean Animal Unit available on TPT.  If you are interested in the 93-page unit, you can click HERE to get it!  A snapshot of the preview is below!!  It is full of ideas to keep your kids engaged the entire month of May!!

We started our day off brainstorming things we already know about FISH!

Then it's time to read Swimmy!  The kids love the story and it teaches them a valuable lesson too.  We painted a huge Swimmy and his friends for the hallway!!  The rest of the day will be spent reading and learning about many different kinds of fish!!

We even had time for paper-plate fish!

Time to log into our "Under The Sea" booklet.  At the end of the day the "underwater experts" write a few facts about the ocean animal we studied.  It's interesting to see which facts stuck in their minds!!