Earth Day & Trees

What a busy week!  Our theme was Earth Day and Trees this week.  Students are making me so proud I could cry!

On Earth Day, we watched the Lorax and talked about why we need to save the
trees and our Earth.  We did a Lorax themed project in which students emphasized the importance of taking care of the Earth with the "Unless" quote from the book:

There were two versions of the project this week.  Some students did more writing than others, but all did a great job!

We then talked about the three R's = Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.  Students were very concerned we still cut down trees to make things (to have them the first time before we recycle).  We then went into Reforestation as well.  I drew some illustrations on the board to help them understand the repetition and a cycle.

In my "illustration" we have Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.  We also have You use it at your house (top in green), you put it in the recycling (green), it goes to the recycle factory (green) and then they make it new and it goes back to your house.

We have for every tree they cut down (top left) the put two more trees up=reforestation.

To emphasize the point of a cycle, we did life cycle yoga as well.

Seeds

sprouts--slowly growing tall

starting with buds (fists) that slowly open into flowers (open hands) that play in the sun  until the fall winds shake them, and they throw their seeds to the ground (flicking fingers/wrists).

 Once their seeds are out, the cycle repeats.  We did this 3-4 times around to emphasize it is the same each time.  :)

After an "in school field trip" to visit all the classrooms and collect their scrap
paper buckets, we took them to our room to recycle them.  Students turned the paper into pulp with water and a blender (and repeatedly used the word pulp--YAY!).  They then dried it on a screen, pressed teh water out, and put it out to dry!  They will be taking it home this week!

Students also worked on sorting out their recycling   They worked as a team to sort the recycling into the right recycling bins and then they graphed the results.  They then analyzed their graphing results.  Great math skills!

The recycling sort was created by Kara @ http://spedventures.blogspot.com/ , Thanks Kara!

We also started working on subtraction math!  Students had alive trees, but then some died.  How many alive trees are left?  (Found in my plant pack, Please take a look at my plant unit in my  my TpT site.  Click HERE for a direct link!) They did great with this paper!  We also got some good 1 on 1 practice with number skills and how to write the numbers. MY LITTLE 4K FRIEND ARE SUBTRACTING--AND DOING GREAT AT IT! Ahh, so proud!