Halloween Goodies

Well this is the official weekend before Halloween and I am getting last minute goodies ready for my class.

My colleague made the cutest mosaic pumpkins this week and I just had to do it with my class.  But I changed it up a bit and had them use different colors.  I think they came out really cute.


  On Halloween we  have our parade first thing and then we get on with the day.  I have some fun reading activities planned and then a group writing activity.  For math I plan to have a graphing activity with these fun little rice crackers I found.  Do you have these on the mainland or is this a Hawaiian/Japanese item?? 


There are pumpkins, bats, bones and ghosts in the package.  It will be fun to see their results.
After lunch we are going to be making fun little pudding cups.


Ours will have some worms and a gravestone out of a graham cracker as well:)



I also plan to give them a Halloween pencil, but I will spice it up a bit with these cute tags I made.




Just click on the pic and you can grab them in Google Docs if you want them:)

Classroom Freebies Manic Monday

Halloween is a crazy day especially on a Wednesday, but I really enjoy it. The kids are so excited and it's nice to take a break from your regular curriculum.  

This year I plan to be Medusa.  I found a simple black dress at Goodwill and I made a headband with pipe cleaner snakes.  My daughters costumes are their own creations this year, I didn't really have to do much. I'm a little sad because I have always made their costumes since they were babies.  It's one of my favorite things to do.  Here are a few pics of our costumes over the years.


Last year I wanted to be the Mermaid Family, but my oldest wouldn't go for it she wanted to be a jellyfish!! We got so many compliments on her costume I couldn't believe it!!

Do you dress up for Halloween at your school??  I would love to know what you plan to be this year!
My friend Sarah over at Kindergarten Korner is having a fun costume linky. Head over and link up:)



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Where Do You Get Your Clipart??

Aloha Friends!  Hope the week is going well for you. Can you believe it is Wednesday!! I have parent teacher conferences this week, and they are going very well, but it is so hot here still, that it is just stifling in my classroom! Today I finished at 3:00 and headed straight to the beach:)  I think some of you know that I always have my surfboard in my van ready to go.
If you lived in our little town you would recognize my car easily...



The Odyssey emblem fell off about two years ago and I replaced it  with this:)

My surfmobile is always ready to go at a moments notice.  It was a perfect overcast muggy afternoon, that makes getting in the ocean a must.  I love being out in the water  and hearing "Hi Ms. Gandara!!"
Several of my students were out  in the water as well, and I always paddle over and try to catch a few waves with them:)


Which brings us back to our topic, "Where Do You Get Your Graphics Linky??" Casey  over at Second Grade Math Maniac is having a linky.  



 I had to join up, because  this has been another little obsession of mine lately.  I started digital scrapbooking years ago, so I had piles of clip art freebies and background papers that I had downloaded from many different sites.  Once I started creating my own products I had to find more kid friendly items.  These are some of my faves:










 
surfin' Through Second


And I also dabble a little in my own clip art.   I have been making my own background papers lots of which are free in my TpT store:)
I also had to draw a few items for my last creation.




Not the greatest, but it worked for me!!

What is your favorite clip art?? Go link up with Casey and share some great artwork:))




 


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Night Creatures

Can you believe it is October 20th??? How did this happen? The year is flying by and this week was a doozy!

Well we went on our first field trip on Tuesday to the Moli'i Fish Pond on Kualoa Ranch.  If you are familiar with the show Lost, or these movies 50 First Dates or Jurrassic Park then you have seen Kualoa Ranch.

Kualoa Ranch is a private ranch that was established in 1850. It is a 4,000 acre cattle ranch that is family owned.  The picture above is from Lost.

This picture is from our Field Trip!! Crazy that I got the same exact view!!  This is actually a huge fish pond that the ancient Hawaiians fished and helped to take care of their community.  It is part of a system called an Apuhua'a.  Basically  the run off from the rain collected here before it reached the ocean.  The pond is filled with lots of different critters that help keep the system in balance.

I thought this would be a great field trip to start off our study of Habitats and Interdependence among plants and animals.

 
We started off the trip with a boat ride around the pond.  I forgot to take a picture of the boat since I was herding kids and hoping no one would fall in.


Our guide showed us the ancient rock wall that has lasted hundreds of years.


These are gates that are used to let in more fish when the pond is running low.





Our guide also told us that poachers sneak into the pond quite a bit and rig up lines on the gates to steal fish.

After our boat tour we got to look at some creatures from the pond and surrounding waters.


Can you guess what this is??



They are jellyfish!  I have never seen one so close or so big!  I had to really watch to make sure no little hands went in that tub!!


They did get to put their hands in this seaweed and hunt for little fish hiding in there.  After 30 hands grabbing and finding these little guys, I hope they survived to see another day!

We took a tour of the surrounding orchards which included mangoes, papayas, avocadoes, breadfruit and bananas.


The pond and surrounding areas were absolutely beautiful!  We ended our trip with
some quiet contemplation around the edge of the pond.


The kids had a great time and we were all exhausted when we got back!

In class the day before we had talked about Pond Life and created some webs to help us focus more on our trip. 



It was a great way to start off our Habitat study with a twist.  I decided this year to focus on Nocturnal Animals in all of the different habitats.  I thought it would be fun since Halloween is upon us and kids love learning about night creatures.









We plan to cover one habitat a week and learn all about the nocturnal creatures in each one.  I hope we have enough time to get through it!  The culminating activity will be to let my students choose their favorite creature and write a research report. 

All of my ideas for this are in my latest creation.




 It is jam packed full of ideas and activities that you can use to teach habitats.


If you are interested just click on the pic to check it out.  I love my faithful readers so I will send it to the first 3 people who leave me a comment and their email.

Hope you made it through this long post!! I plan to post more of our fun ideas as we continue our night creature study.


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