Anchor Chart Addict....and dinosaurs! :)

Hello friends! 

My name is Jennifer and I'm an anchor chart addict. :)

Honestly, I need an intervention. It all started when my BFF introduced me to the smelly markers. Oh em gee, I'm in love and so are the munchkins!  

Let me tell you first, this is not a paid advertisement but I would be more than willing should they offer! Haha :). These colors are vivid, they smell fantastic, and they make writing incredibly fun! The munchkins can't wait to share the marker when we write interactively.

These great writing tools can be found at local stores, but their website www.scentos.com shows the variety of tools they have! Bubbles, too!

So....we spent two weeks on dinosaurs and we had so much fun! We learned how to use a variety of sources for researching our favorite topics, measured our height against the height of a few different Dinos using standard and non-standard units of measure, and found TONS of fun ipad apps to play & learn from.

Don't judge my illustrations... I'm more Picasso than Degas! I made a little measurement page to go with their Dino creations both above and below. They are very simple but combine art, measurement, and adjectives, writing, research, and more. Using the one above they had to compare their dinosaur with a buddy's and then write the equation that describes the difference. It was challenging, but they got it!

The cat skeleton is my Dominosaurus that I created while modeling expectations and walking the munchkins through the process.

Here we go measuring each other using string and a yard stick. Kiddos were excited that they got to lay on top of the tables! It's the little things, right?!

Here's a screenshot of the munchkin's dinosaur folder on the iPad. They had such fun! Now, since the iPad is my own personal iPad of Happiness, we use it together a lot of the time. However, the iPad of Happiness station is definitely the favorite! They know that the last page is theirs and I stock it full of appropriate apps that coincide with our topics. This is the one thing that has changed my teaching the most. I can only image how a small group set, or dare I dream of a class set, would impact learning!

Their favorite folder is Stickman. Have you tried it? It's brilliant!!

Next week is oceans week! I can only imagine how many more charts we will create together! I'm gonna need some more markers. ;)

With happiness from the iPad,
Jen :)