Owl Week

Wanna see something gross?  Yes, please!

I love focusing on owls during the month of October.  We have a full week of everything owls - we read the mentor text Owl Moon, do a paired owl passage, and then complete Owl Pellets.  This year my class was fortunate to have Donors Choose donors fund this project for us.  We were given a class set of pellets, forceps, owl posters, gloves, and a nonfiction owl book as part of our project.  

Once again it was a hit. The kids got down and dirty, and some wonderful parents were there to help the kids.  Some parents spritzed the pellets with spray bottles, some parents offered encouragement.  I always do this project outside - 2 huge pieces of butcher paper create a "table" for the kids.  Each partner group has a styrofoam plate (because of all the water that is used to break up the pellet a paper plate just won't do).  Each student also received a little bathroom cup to collect their bones and a pair of those blue forceps.  I used to use metal tweezers, but these blue ones do not get lost as easily.  I switched this year to the little bathroom cups since with big bowls they never clean the gunk off as well.  When done, they dump their little batch of bones into a snack size ziplock bag and then head inside to sort and label their bones using the information sheet from Ideas by Jivey... Who am I kidding?  I use a lot from Ideas by Jivey during this owl week of learning!  

        

Hope this helped!

Five for Friday - Owl Pellets, Spiderwebs, and the Pumpkin Patch

5 random things about my week...  Let's see...

Today we tackled Owl Pellets in class - well, really outside...  

The weather was marvelous.  Same type of set up as last year - each group had a plate (I chose foam since adults were spraying water on them), a bone bowl, gloves, tweezers (Big Lots has a 2 pack for $1), toothpick, and this year I brought wooden skewers from home.  I put down butcher paper, and the kids wanted to sit boys vs. girls.  When they were completely done, they got a snack size plastic bag and separated out the bone bowl with their partner.  Then they headed inside to fill in Jivey's Owl Pellet Dissection worksheet.  It was so cool and gross at the same time!   

 This week we had our parent art docent come in and present a lesson about art in nature.  She had a powerpoint that she shared with the class with different pictures of spiderwebs.  Some had snow on them, some had rain, they all had different designs.  Then she walked them through creating their own webs.  It totally ties into reading Charlotte's Web and Halloween...  

The kids each got a square of card stock, and she had them take a ruler to draw perpendicular lines with a sharpie.  Then she had them go through the intersecting point and draw 2 additional lines.  The next step had them drawing "valleys" starting at the outside of the square making connectors between the main straight lines of the web.  From there, once the web was complete, she had them take 2 colors and create an AB pattern going around.  The last step was optional, but if they wanted to they could draw a small spider on the web and add googley eyes.  The kids loved the project!    

Number 3 is easy... my preschooler had his first official field trip to the pumpkin patch today.  Since I was up to my eyeballs in owl pellets my husband got to chaperone.  

Lucky him!  His shirt is so cute - he actually made it in class with his teacher.  They tie dyed the candy corn shirts specifically for this field trip.  S is so proud of it!  

What else?  Today was a minimum day to work on report cards and I actually FINISHED!  We always have the afternoon to get it done, but I never actually get it done on time during the day... it usually takes me into the next week.  Somehow miraculously I did this year.  Yay!  It being the end of the trimester - I will completely enjoy this random weekend with no grading!!  :)  In other classroom news - I totally fell today.  Tripped over a backpack during prep and went down.  OUCH!  Got a beautiful bruise that has formed...  

Last up I wanted to give a shout out to Fifth in the Middle.  That girl is now celebrating 1,000 followers over on TPT.  Make sure to go enter!   

Well, I'm linking all of this up to Doodlebugs.  I hope you had a great week too!