Animal House!

Hello All! I've had so much fun exploring animals this year with my third graders! I've already shared some of our activities HERE.  Beware, these is a huge photo dump in this post.  I just loved everything we did and just have to share all of the cuteness! 

First up is the fabulous informational text, What if You Had Animal Teeth.  Short bursts of information and easy to read fast facts make this book and it's partner What if You Had Animal Hair favorites in my classroom.  I love how the book appeals to the natural inquisitiveness that my students possess...we've all heard the, "What if...." questions in our classroom! 

I placed a few students in charge of documenting information from the text onto sticky-notes for our chart. 

We then used these charts to help inspire our opinionated writing on what type of animal teeth we would like to have and why.  It's a proud teacher moment to see those kiddos of mine walking up to the chart and using their resources! 

We then made these adorable little faces of ourselves my partner found on TPT...so cute!

I loved how they all turned out! It makes for one silly looking bulletin board outside our classroom! 

The next idea came from Pinterest.  After reading Who Eats What we created our own food chains puzzles.

Each student got three to four styrofoam cups and a handful of permanent markers.

They then had to come up with their own food chain...I am always amazed by their creativity. 

After each student had a chance to finish their food chain we then played rotated around the room, trying to stack one another's food chains in the appropriate order.

As a culminating activity we created habitat murals in groups.   I let my kids create the classroom rubric for the project, which really helped with the buy-in.   I loved hearing their conversations relating to things we've learned throughout our animal chapter on animal needs and behaviors! 

They also had free reign of my extra craft supplies...which was a BIG deal.  This group was creating the coral reef and had declared the sparkly purple poms make the perfect sea urchins! 

The rainforest habitat group found some use for my leftover tissue paper squares.  

Check out the artwork! I love this jaguar scaling the tree! 

At the beginning of the year I made these flip charts for my Open House...I learned how from Kelly HERE! I loved how the flip chart allowed me to share important information at a glance..well, I thought  my students might like these for the same reason! 

I wish I had a template to share with you, but I made this the old fashioned way by cutting and pasting. I'll add it to my summer To Do list ;) 

My third graders loved to use the free WB Animals app for their research! 

To help keep track of students' research...and for me to keep track of their work habits, we used Doctopus through Google Drive.  This is my first time using Doctopus and I'm loving it so far! I can't wait to share more with it! 

Well...if you're still with me you earn a gold star in my book! We've got 17 days left of school...not that I'm counting down or anything ;) 

XOXO