Chicks! Maps! Ducks!

The past week has been a blur! Benchmark testing... report cards... CHICKS HATCHING! We have been celebrating Chick Success in our life cycle studies! Seven of our eleven Rhode Island Red chicken eggs hatched! The children (and their teacher) are beyond excited! Unfortunately, the children didn't get to experience the hatching live, but thanks to technology, I was able to capture one of the chicks hatching. I tossed the footage into Movie Maker and had a video to share with the kiddos and their families. Expect to see duckling footage in about six days! That is, if Mother Nature favors us with precious, baby ducks!

Take a look:

I took advantage of Chick Fever to create a resource to use in math. Great Chirping Chickens focuses on CCSS NBT standards -- numbers to 1000, and comparing numbers. These will go into action tomorrow. I also wrapped up a skip counting kit that focuses on NBT skip counting to 1000 by 5's, 10's and 100's. You can take a look at them here:

Finally, we've begun our study of maps. I love/hate teaching map skills. I love it because children are so into maps. I hate it because it seems there are never enough grade-appropriate resources to teach skills like scale and grid coordinates. So, as I have said many times recently, necessity is the mother of invention! I put together a set of map materials to use to teach map skills this week and next. I am looking forward to using this one! More on this one later!

It's bedtime! Have a great Thursday. I like to think of Thursday as the new Friday. :)

Susan