6 Fun Solar System Planet Activities To Do With Students

 Are your students excited about planets?  My first graders are intrigued by the Solar System! When I begin teaching about the solar system, I start with gravity! 

One of my favorite activities to teach with gravity is with balloons! Before you begin, give students a little background information about gravity.

1.  Make an anchor chart.  Draw a tree with an apple falling down.  Explain that Sir Isaac Newton was an English mathematician who discovered gravity when he saw a falling apple while thinking about the nature of physics.

2.  Explain what goes up must come down! Give each student a balloon with their name on it in case it bounces away you'll know who to return it to.  Allow them to bounce them up and watch them come down. While they are jumping around, make your way around the room repeating the idea that your students are experiencing gravity.

3.  Make it extra fun and put some fun music on. There are some really cute kid songs about gravity on YouTube.

4.  Set up a couple of sensory bins. Place laminated copies of planets in rice.  Have students look for them and then check them off on a checklist.  You can make these or find them here!

After I did this activity, I actually found some planet erasers at Oriental Trading.  I don't have an affiliate, just sharing I saw them.  There are also some on Amazon.  You could also make the planets by painting rocks.  Either way, your students will love searching for the planets. Can you tell I am excited? 

5.  Make a Solar System hat!! That's tons of fun to wear home!

6.  Color all the planets as you study them!

Thanks for hanging out with me and I hope you have the best time studying the planets! :)

🠊For more Solar System Activities, information, or to purchase, click here!

🠊Solar System Planets 

12 Easy Activities to Do With Plant Life Cycle

Prepare for your plant life cycle week with this activity packet!

Start your week investigating seeds.  Collect all kinds of seeds either with foods or packets.  Pass these seed out and make an anchor chart with them.  

Teach four things a seed or plant needs to grow with this teaching poster.  Students can color the black and white copy for their notes.  Follow up after or the next day with cut and glue.

This was so fun! I set up a sensory bin with rice.  Yes, I bought one of those $1 plastic shoe boxes, filled it with rice, and buried the laminated cards in the rice.  I gave students a check sheet for when they found each of these items.  If you have real objects to hide, that would be great.  For example, a silk flower, stem, and leaf, would be amazing to use too!

Print off a fun book to read aloud and have students read and color. 

These hats will also help students understand four things a seed needs and the parts of a plant!

Play a game of charades or call out these clues for students to act out.  For example, ask students to stand up on the rug and act out how they would feel if this happened. "How would you act if you were a tree in a gentle breeze?"  "How would you act if you were a leaf on a hot summer day?"

Have students close their eyes. Read the clues.  Ask students to write what the plant is with "What am I?"  After writing, illustrate your answer. 

Use these charts as references for your teaching or station work.

👉Click HERE or on the pictures for purchase or more information.

Teach Time to the Hour with 5 Easy Activities

It's that 'time' of the year! Haha! See what I did there? It's time to teach your students all about the analog clock to the hour. Half hour will be addressed in another post SOON.  I tried hard to put both hour and half hour here, but it just got too confusing.

Do you wonder where to start or how to begin teaching time? Do you fear that you won't be able to teach the analog clock? I have had the same worries. I have spent a long time teaching this concept only to realize that I didn't always get the concept across on assessment day. 

I have also rushed teaching hour and half hour together all in the same week.  After years of teaching this, I have discovered a few tricks and created activities to help me teach and assess this concept and hopefully these activities will help you, too!

Activity 1:  Teaching Analog Time to the Hour

It is essential to teach time using an actual analog clock in hand.  In elementary schools, many times they have the big yellow clocks.  But your classroom may not have a teaching clock or you may be a homeschool parent. No worries! Grab that analog clock off the wall or purchase one at the dollar store! You can do this!

Wind the clock around until the small hour hand is on any number.  For the sake of this post, I will say 10:00.  Wind the minute hand around to the 12.  Explain the small hand is the hour hand.  The large hand is the minute hand.  Interaction is key here.  Ask your students or child to come up and point to the hour hand.  Then ask another child to point to the minute hand.  Tell them for now we are only going to watch that little guy, the hour hand. We'll worry about the minute hand later! For now, he (the minute hand) will always stay on the 12.

Continue with this social story. Be sure to use your dramatic voice and play it up big time! This little hour hand is so bossy!  He always calls out the hour or first number we say! Wherever he is, that's what we have to say because he is soooo bossy!! (For now, let's just focus on the hour. I know the hour hand moves at half hour, but that is too much information to share right off the bat.) Ask what number that little bossy hour hand is on!  That's right, the 10! So the hour hand makes us say 'ten o'clock!'  See how bossy the small hour hand is? And the big minute hand just sits on the 12 for now. When the big minute hand is on the 12, we say O'CLOCK! 

Move the hour hand around to another number such as 2, and the minute hand to the 12.  Keep up your drama with the bossy hour hand.  Ask where is that bossy hour hand? That's right he is on the 2, so we say 2:00! I repeat this activity daily for a week at the math calendar station, having students guess the time to the hour for 3-4 examples until I am sure they understand time to the hour. Don't rush this part.  They need to have the hour concrete before moving to the half hour.  

Activity 2: Students Practice the Hour

It is important students get to practice with their own clock.  I am blessed to have a small yellow clock for each of my students to practice.  If you do not have little clocks, let students take turns practicing with your analog clock you grabbed off the wall, praising and correcting as you continue to teach individually.  

Call out a time to the hour and let them practice moving the hands around until they find the time you call out.  In whole group in my class, I call out 3-4 times.  They have to raise their clocks up to show me.  I can quickly scan the room to see who may need assistance.  I continue to call out times to keep others busy, checking them, and walk over to direct any students that are struggling with the concept. This can also be done in small groups.

Activity 3: Race to Find the Time

I think you see where this is going!  Haha! After they have practiced several times to the hour with their own clocks, call out a time and have them race to see who finds it first.  You must explain this is just a game and not everyone can find the time first.  Also after doing this for many years, there are some years I have students that are so competitive and cannot lose.  In this case, it would be best to do this in small groups so you can be close to quickly console and teach about winning and losing.  But for the most part, my students LOVE to play this game! This is the year of COVID, so for now we are doing most of everything whole class.

Activity 4: Color the Time

This is a FREE product that will help you teach time to the hour.  Make sure to stick to the hour for now.  Half hour is also included for future teaching. Students will need crayons and a copy of the coloring sheet.  Call on students to tell you the color for the time in the key.  Click here for this FREE product or on the picture below.

Activity 5: Practice Writing and Drawing the Time FREE

In this product, you can have students identify the time and write it digitally to the hour.  Half hour is also included but for now, stick to the hour.  I like to double side these.  We practice one side together, and they do the other side independently. This is a great way to see who may need remediation.  Click HERE to receive these practice pages! Or you may click on the picture below. For the full product, the links are provided below.

Click on the following links for more time activities in my Teachers Pay Teachers store!

**Need to teach time to the hour AND half hour before some of the following activities.**

👉Time to the Hour and Half Hour Scavenger Hunt 

👉Time to the Hour and Half Hour First Grade

If you have ANY questions or suggestions,  I would love to hear your feedback. Do you have a tip you would like to share? Post in the comment section below.  Have fun!!

Time to the Hour and Half Hour Scavenger Hunt

 A fun way to learn time! After you have taught the hour and half hour concept, this is a great review activity as a follow up! Included is time to the hour and half hour. It contains the term 'half past' and the digital time. Your students will be very engaged moving around to find the clocks and recording their answers on a response sheet.  Click HERE or on any of the following pictures to find out more or purchase!

 

Sentence Builder Activities

 Do you need activities to teach sentence building? These 4 activities will help students learn how to write sentences with guidance. There are also silly sentences for fun! Each sentence building activity has a way to build a sentence, a place to copy the sentence and illustrate for various ways to incorporate into your lessons. Teach sentence building, model, then guide your students to building sentences in small or whole group! Click HERE or on the video or picture for more information or to purchase!

Sentence Building and Silly Sentences include:

• Cover
• Terms
• Standards
• Teacher Suggestions

1. Silly Sentences (10 pages)

Students pick a word from each category

to create a silly sentence. Write the

sentence and illustrate.

2.Spin a Sentence (3 pages)

Using a paper clip and pencil, student spin

to get a subject from the green spin wheel.

They repeat to get a predicate from the

blue spin wheel. They write these two

phrases to create a sentence.

3. Build a Sentence (10 pages)

Students cut out the parts of the sentence

at the bottom of the page and put them in

order. Glue them correctly at the top. Write

the sentence correctly and illustrate.

4.Spot the Sentence (10 pages)

Students identify the sentence, write and

illustrate the sentence.

Fractions Halves and Fourths Scavenger Hunt

Fractions Halves and Fourths or Quarters Scavenger Hunt is a fun way to teach or review fractions in circles or rectangles with your first grade. There are fraction teaching posters, halves and rectangles, and a coloring sheet to celebrate at the end. Your students will be engaged finding these appropriate fractions for primary. 

Fractions Halves and Fourth Scavenger Hunt includes:

• Cover
• Terms
• Standards
• Directions for the fraction scavenger hunt
• Four fraction teaching posters
• 10 Fraction scavenger hunt posters divided two ways
• Coloring sheet to celebrate the end of the fraction hunt
• 10 fraction scavenger hunt posters in black and white

Are you Ready for First Grade?

Get your graduating kindergartners ready for first grade with this packet of 71 pages of math and literacy practice. This packet targets literacy and math strategies and skills appropriate so you will be able to meet the needs of your child or students at the beginning of first grade.

There are standards based activities for both math and language that give students opportunities to apply skills and strategies needed for first grade.

This is available in a bundle for %30 discount! Save $$$

Get Ready for K, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd

Teachers, this is a great tool to send home with students to maintain kindergarten skills and start learning first grade skills over the summer! This is a fun, interactive summer skills packet that will help them maintain all they have learned in kindergarten and get them ready for first grade! To see what is included, go down below pictures or click on pictures to go straight to product.

Included in Get Ready for First Grade Summer Skills Packet

Math:

*Cover

*Terms of Use

*Suggested Use

*Number recognition 1-3

*Number recognition 4-6

*Number recognition 7-9

*Number recognition 10-12

*Number recognition 13-15

*Number recognition 16-18

*Number recognition 19-21

*Number recognition 10, 20, 30

*Hundred Number Chart for reference

*Hundred Number Chart to 200

*Hundred Chart Fill in Missing Numbers

*Hundred Chart to 200 Fill in the Missing Numbers

*Write to 100

*Write to 200

*Count up, start with number given 2 pages

*Count down, start with number given 2 pages

*Shapes

*Greater than/Less than

*One More, One Less Given Number

*One More, One Less with dice

*Write the digits given the number word

*Count by 5s

*Count by 10s

*Number Patterns 2 pages

*Single Digit Addition

*Single Digit Subtraction

*Measuring inches (3 pages)

Language Arts: First Grade

*Letter recognition, lower case

*Letter sounds, lower case

*Letter recognition, upper case

*Letter sounds, upper case

*Letter recognition, matching 2 pages*

*What comes before and after the letter upper case

*What comes before and after the letter lower case

*Write the missing letter 2 pages

*Alphabet order, 6 words

*What do you hear at the beginning, picture

*What do you hear at the beginning, word

*What do you hear in the middle, word

*What do you hear at the end, word

*Short a practice

*Short e practice

*Short I practice

*Short o practice

*Short u practice

*Long a practice

*Long e practice

*Long I practice

*Long o practice

*Long u practice

*R Blends practice

*L Blends practice

*S Blends practice

*Digraph Blends Ch, Sh, Wh, Th

*Unscramble the Sentences (2 pages)

*Sight Word "First" practice

*Sight Word "Grade" practice

*Sight Word "With" practice

*Sight Word "This" practice