Sweet Treats for February: A Black History Month Freebie!

Hi guys! It's Lyssa from My Mommy Reads here to wrap up February! This month has gone by WAY too fast! As a mom and teacher, I'm looking for a way to slow time down!

I have an idea to share for Sweet Treats and it came straight from my students! 

February is technically Black History Month, but in my classroom, we celebrate important people from history all year! One of my favorite books to read early in the school year is this one, Wilma Unlimited, How Wilma Rudolph Became the World's Fastest Woman by Kathleen Krull and illustrated by David Diaz.

If you are not familiar with this amazing story, click below to hear it being read aloud. It is a treasure. Wilma's story is amazing and we can all learn from her strength and perseverance. I read it with my first graders as our extended text over a weeklong period. They hang on every word!

After several students asked to borrow the book to take home, I decided to create a little something for them to use to record their thinking. Click below to grab the Wilma Unlimited reflection entries. They are a forever FREEBIE and there are a couple of different versions.

Have a wonderful March friends and if you find a way to slow down time, please let me know! :)

For even more ideas from The Primary Peach, be sure to follow us on Instragram, Pinterest, and Facebook to catch the latest news and updates! 

March Sharing Sunday

We are so glad you have joined us for another Sharing Sunday!  We have TONS of goodies and resources to make March MAGICAL!

An InLinkz Link-up

Sweet Treats for February: Have a Hoppy Leap Day This Year!

Hey y'all!  It's Ashley from Just Reed.  I'm pretty stoked that it's Leap Year this year.  I love teaching my students the science behind WHY we have Leap Day every four years, and that's a tricky concept for firsties.  Jivey had a fabulous post a few days ago that is critical to explaining how the Earth revolves around the sun and rotates on its axis.  I loved her suggestion that you have students act this out!  I , too, love to make this  concept concrete for my little ones!

Give each student a paper model of the earth and the sun.  Have them color and cut these out.   Have students dramatize the revolution of the earth around the sun.

I like to explain Leap Day to my students like this:

I think some of us adults even get confused about Leap Day, so this is a very simple explanation!

For fun, students can make this frog and leap pad craft and then complete the written response.  This response page integrates lots of math and makes Leap Day relevant to them!

Guess what?  You can have ALL of these goodies for FREE! Simply go to my Teachers Pay Teachers shop to download them.  

Sweet Treats and a February Stationery FREEBIE!

Happy Thursday! Shannon here from over at Bryant's Brain Train. 

I hope you are enjoying all of the "sweet treats" that we've shared with you this month here at the Peach!

I love using a variety of papers to accentuate creative writing each month! Decorative papers can perk up writing centers, guided writing, student journals, letter writing, math scratch work, etc. 

So here's a sweet treat from me to use in your own classroom!

Click the picture above to download a February stationery FREEBIE from me, perfect for use this year and for the Februarys to come!

For more great ideas from The Primary Peach, be sure to follow us on Instagram, Pinterest or Facebook to catch all of the latest news, updates and freebies!

THANKS SO MUCH!

Sweet Treats: President's Day Journal Prompts

Hey all! It's Tara from and they all fall down with a freebie to help you finish February strong! Seriously - where has this month gone? And... How did I just finish a week off and it doesn't even feel like it? UGH! :) 

I am a HUGE fan of the Epic Rap Battles on youtube - they are not appropriate for use in the classroom, but they are always a good laugh when I am kid free. I wanted to create something to get my kids thinking about the differences in the Presidents.... the times they were in charge of our country.... things they never imagined dealing with....

This is a bit out of the box for my second graders, but it would be interesting for those of you that teach upper elementary and maybe eye-opening for us with our littles too!

SOOOOO.... here is the Epic Battle of Lincoln vs. Washington (in journal form) :) It even includes a ballot for you to hold a mock election in your classroom. Which President would win today? :)

Click on the picture and it will take you to my dropbox! :) Thank you for downloading! 

 If you enjoy these I have journal prompts for nearly every month of the school year....feel free to check those out too! :) 

                    

Sweet Treats: Black History Month Books & Freebie

Hey, y'all! It's Kristin from School and the City. Can you even believe that we are approaching the end of February?!

I hope you have enjoyed all of the treats from the other Primary Peaches so far this month. I've got some more fun for you!

As you know, February is black history month. This coincides perfectly with the civil rights unit that I am teaching right now! I love integrating social studies into my literacy block by finding kid lit that matches up with our social studies content. 

Here are some of my absolute FAVORITE children's books to use during black history month:

Ruby Bridges... I just love her and her story. I love the class The Story of Ruby Bridges, but I also love Through My Eyes which was, of course, written by Ruby herself. 

Martin's Big Words is my favorite MLK book. I love reading it on BookFlix, because the reader has such a deep, booming voice that keeps the kids completely engaged.

The Daring Escape of Ellen Craft is one of my favorite books that I use to teach the underground railroad. It's about slaves that disguise themselves to travel north to freedom.

Of course, you can't forget about the Who Was... (or Who Is...) books!

But my favorite of all is...

HENRY'S FREEDOM BOX

I ADORE this book. It's about Henry "Box" Brown, who was a slave that MAILED HIMSELF to Pennsylvania, a free state!!!! It's a true story! We talked about how desperate Henry must have been to put himself in a box for 27 hours in order to escape his current situation.

I brought in a box for kids to test out, and even wrote the address (from the book) on the outside. Each student took a turn sitting in the box and tried to get comfortable for a few minutes. Afterwards, they reflected and wrote about the experience and what Henry's experience may have been like.

Just for you... an exclusive freebie to supplement Henry's Freedom Box. 

For more fun ideas to use during Black History Month or while teaching the underground railroad, please visit my blog by clicking the image below!

Enjoy the rest of your February, and come back tomorrow for another Sweet treat!

For even more ideas from The Primary Peach, be sure to follow us on Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook to catch all the latest news and updates!

Sweet Treats for Leap Year (Earth's Revolution and Rotation) {Ideas and a Freebie!}

I hope you've been enjoying all of the February Sweet Treats we've been bringing you this month! 

Today's ideas and freebie are perfect for this year because it's a LEAP YEAR! But if you teach about rotation and revolution of the Earth, this will be great any time of year.

We have leap year because a solar year is 365.242 days, or 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds. We add an extra day to the year every four years to make up for that almost quarter of a day. But did you know... we DON'T have a leap year if the year ends in double zeroes but isn't divisible by 400? In other words, in the year 2100, there will not be a leap year. Not in the years 2200 or 2300 either! We probably didn't realize this rule since we were all alive in 2000 when we DID have a leap year! It's part of the Gregorian Calendar "rules" that helps to make up for those extra thousandths of a day- if we didn't skip a leap day every now and then, we'd end up with a surplus of days!

For students to understand why we have a leap year, they first must learn that our Earth revolves around the Sun. And if you're teaching Earth's revolution and seasons, you are going to also be teaching about Earth's rotation, too!

Any time you can have students "act out" science terms, you should totally do it. Not only will it help them remember the vocabulary, but it also helps them to "see" things that can be really abstract. For example... rotate and revolve... these two terms get confused the most in your classroom, I bet! 

Have students stand up and spin in one place, or ROTATE. Remind them they have to spin on their AXIS so they can't rotate into their friends. ;-)

Then, stand in the center of the room and have students move around you around the edge of the room, or REVOLVE around you. 

And if you are really daring and not afraid of chaos, you can have the students simulate the Earth's rotation AND revolution by having them spin as they move around the outside of the room!

It's so important to let students explore for the same reasons you should simulate! There are a few great ways you can let students explore and experiment with a globe and a flashlight. The easiest way for students to "see" night and day is to darken the room, turn on a flashlight and shine it at your globe, then have students walk around the globe to see the side facing the "Sun" is having day, while the other side is dark and having night. 

To explore how the seasons occur, it's great if you can collect multiple globes from the classrooms around you to allow the students to work in smaller groups. Students should notice right away that the globe is tilted, just like the Earth. Have students move the globe to the top, left side, bottom, and right side of the table, keeping the axis pointed in the same direction each time. They should be able to see the seasons happening because of the tilt- have them decide which places on the table would be our "summer" and "winter." If there is time, they could also experiment with what would happen if there was no tilt- would we have seasons? Have students hold the globe so that the axis is straight up and down and move to each of the 4 spots around the table. 

All of those exploration ideas might work best after using this freebie! Students will read about how the Earth revolves, and why we have seasons and leap years. They will read about how the Earth rotates, and why we have day and night. Then they will answer questions that require knowledge from both passages, as well as a written constructed response!

If you love using paired texts in your classroom, you might also be interested in these high-interest, engaging paired texts from my store!

You can also follow my Pinterest board all about Paired Texts!

Follow Ideas By Jivey's board Paired Texts / Paired Passages on Pinterest.

For even more ideas from The Primary Peach, be sure to follow us on Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook to catch all the latest news and updates!