Worm Farm!

Wow! It has been a week since my last post. I had great intentions...and life happened!

Today, I took my first graders to the Worm Farm! This is one of my absolute favorite field trips to take my students on.

This awesome resource is located in our community! We are so lucky!

This is Farmer Mark! He is a worm farmer!

We usually take the kids on this field trip at the beginning of the year during our "Green Team" unit when we learn about natural resources and the 4 Rs. We rearranged our units of study this year, for various reasons. At first I thought we might not be able to go on "my favorite field trip" and I couldn't have that! So, my teaching partners and I decided to view the worm farm from a different angle! The angle of community helpers! It worked perfectly.

We just began our community helpers unit and Farmer Mark definitely provides a service to not only our local community, but world wide! We interviewed Farmer Mark to find out how he is a community helper. Now that we have modeled the interview process for the kids, it will be their turn to interview community helpers!

Next week we are having our first ever, "Community Helper Interview Day". Many parents and local community members have volunteered to be interviewed about their jobs. The kids are very excited! The plan is to have the kids video the interview with the iPad so we can share these online with parents! We have some practicing to do this week to get or interview skills up to par!

I'm looking forward to the results!

Back to the worm farm....

What do you get when 3 classes of first graders see a huge pile of worm castings?

61 very happy and dirty first graders!

Also, since we are in the middle of our community unit now, I've put together a thematic literacy packet! It's posted on TpT and Teacher's Notebook. Check out the pictures below and at my stores! My kids have had fun practicing their silent e words with this game!