Shades of Fall and A Freebie!

Here in Arizona we only have two seasons:
hot and hotter and oh, how I miss Fall!  Each year
I practically clean out the dollar store adding 

to my collection of strands of fall leaves.
Sometimes you have to create 

your own seasons!

We've been working with synonyms and
identifying the different levels of intensity or shades
of meaning that words with similar

meanings can have.

My class sorted the synonyms then arranged
them in order of strongest meaning.

To apply the skill, I had everybody work in pairs
with a thesaurus to look up synonyms for
familiar words and write them in order of intensity

in their notebooks.  Next, they wrote them on paint chips
die cut into leaf shapes.

For some added practice, I made this page and added

it to our literacy centers.  

You can grab a copy {HERE}

We've spent the better part of October learning about 

nocturnal animals and reading lots of informational books 

about bats and owls. My favorite book to begin
learning about bats is Stellaluna.
Teaching with Stellaluna is a teacher's dream for
so many ELA standards!

We researched and wrote our own informational books
about nocturnal animals.  This one is about Geckos
which are very common here in Arizona.

We also have over 28 different species of bats in Arizona!
I got thisincredible poster from the AZ
Dept. of Fish and Game and it's been

a really fun resource PLUS my kids think
it's about the coolest thing ever!

You can find this poster along with some great
classroom resources from the
Arizona Department of  Game and Fish   {HERE}

We've learned a lot about echolocation and wrote about how

bats use this adaptation to find food and fly in the dark.

Our hallway display is a big hit with our little 

Kinder friends across that hall!

Well that about wraps up October for us.
Plymouth Colony, here we come!