Mother's Day Bath Salts & More

1. Happy Mother's Day! This year we decided to honor our moms, or other special lady, with a spa themed gift. The craft seen here is from Fluttering Through First Grade. Isn't this just the most adorable craft you've ever seen? It makes me smile just looking at it!

We also made the coupon book that is included in the packet. Click on the link above and it will take you to the E-SPA-cially for Mom Craft Giftivity. Put it on your wish list for next year.

2. Next we made bath salts for our moms using Epsom Salt, baking soda, soap dye, and lavendar oil. I ordered the soap dye and lavendar oil from Amazon. The kiddos got to choose from one of three colors: peach, lilac, or sea foam green. The craft was fun, but making the salts was the best part! 

While the class worked on the craft, I call one child at a time to the teacher table to scoop and measure the dry ingredients. Then, he/she squeezed four drops of soap dye onto the mixture. I added a drop of lavendar oil and the kiddo stirred until the salts were mixed to his/her satisfaction. My room smelled great too!

3. Are you familar with this web site? If not, you should be. It's free to access many popular fiction and nonfiction books for your class. My student teacher used it in one of her lessons...that's how I learned about it. 

It's where I found this book for science class...

...which was perfect because we are incubating chicken eggs in the science lab and learning about the life cycle of a chicken.

4. I designed this life cycle craft using a paper plate, brad, construction paper, and a life cycle worksheet. I just free handed some wing tracers for the kids to trace on yellow construction paper. I die cut yellow circles for the head and orange hexagons for the beak. I used a paper cutter to cut strips of orange paper for the legs and I just free cut stacks of chicken feet with a large pair of scissors. It was the perfect craftivity for the kids during the last hour of the day after Super Kids Day (field day). I saw a similar style life cycle craft of a lady bug on the second grade hallway that inspired this craft. 

5. And, last...we've been learning how to be researchers. Can you believe the school library had this many grade appropriate books about dogs?

We started with a KWL chart.

Then the children worked in pairs to investigate the breed of dog that they wanted to learn more about. 

Finally, we decided to display what we learned on manila paper. This is my example. I forgot to take pics of the kids' work. 

And that's pretty much what we've been up to lately. 

Less than four weeks to go!!!!!!!