Been a long time...

It has been a ridiculously long time since I have had the chance to post  some "good" stuff!

My camera was stolen by one of my firsties the week prior to our spring break (which was the week of March 21...yeah, long time) and was returned to me last week, however life set it (I just finished my MASTER'S!!)

Here is what we've been up to the past month! :)

 We began at the end of March learning about plants.  {I love doing this unit with the kiddos}

 After learning all about sunflowers...and Van Gogh... we made these gorgeous paintings!

 I created this four week plant growth project that was set up much like Cara's Groudhog project.  

 We conducted several experiements with seeds and flowers prior to beginning this project and made predictions before we "planted" our seeds.  I just used a lima bean seed, cleaned them, and then wrapped them with a damp paper towel and placed them inside plastic ziploc "greenhouses."

 We observed and measured our seed daily and at the end of each week wrote about our observations.

 These are our cute little greenhouse where we grew our seeds!

On another note.... I usually give my kids morning work with they first come in (stuff to do while we wait for the tardy bell to ring, me to take attendence, and for our school news to be done).  I have used squiggle writing ever since I interned and LOVE the kids creativity.  I saw a freebie on someone's blog {sorry... I have forgotten who} that had a download of a TON of squiggle writing papers.  I, surprisingly, already had the same ones in my filling cabinet that were there when I took over the classroom three years ago!  I L-O-V-E these and so do my first graders.  Here are two samples of what two of my creative girls came up with when given a "squiggle" of a less than symbol!!!

Sorry for being MIA!!  Loving all of the creative ideas out there these past couple weeks.  This really is a network of AMAZING men and women!!!  Maybe we should show our blogs to some of those 'important' people who are lowering the bar for educators :(