Five for Friday: Wild about Learning

As we inch closer to the end of the school year... the kids get a little...well... WILD and CRAZY! Why fight it? I say - Go With It! We learned about WILD animals and visited the zoo this week.

I'm linking up with Kacey at Doodle Bugs Teaching with five highlights from this week.

It rained every day this week except the day of our zoo field trip. Answer to prayer! It was a little chilly, but the animals were active. Everyone had a good time!

My kids brought quarters to feed the petting zoo animals. The petting zoo only had two goats the day we were there. They ate about $5 worth of food. It was a good day to be a goat!

 The peacocks are always my favorite. Simply beautiful.

My kids were intrigued (and slightly terrified) by the dear antlers and skulls adorning the wolf exhibit (even though they were on the outside of the fence).

When we came back from the zoo we sang the following chant to share what our favorite animal was before writing about it.

"peacock, peacock",

I said at the zoo,

"peacock, peacock

I like you!"

 

 

How sweet is this? The second graders invited grandmas and moms with culinary passion to help them make lefse as part of their social studies cultures unit. They blessed all of the teachers with a piece of deliciousness. (I've learned to "pour" the sugar out of the lefse before eating it. Evidently there can never be "too much" sugar according to second graders.)

With our wealth of critter knowledge from the last two weeks we wrote animal riddles for each other to solve. I let each child pick a different animal to write about. Can you guess?

I have a confession.... I secretly adore pandas. I couldn't resist throwing in a mini unit.
I have another confession. I am sick of "can, have, are" charts. We've done them for ladybugs, frogs, spiders, polar bears, penguins. Ugh.

To change it up, I decided to introduce the concept of "fact and opinion" with the panda topic. It's a big concept for kindergarteners, but I think they understood the general idea.

First we sorted statements such as "pink is the best color" (opinion), "bananas have a peel" (fact). It got a little dicey with the statement "My teacher is the best teacher in the whole world!" (opinion). They all shouted out "FACT!"  I wanted to say "correct!" ... but that would have jeopardized the lesson.

Each day we read a chapter about pandas. Here was our final product:

"I would like if they had mustaches!"

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5...4! Four days left of school and four more surprises to reveal. Our favorite so far? POPsicles!