Thanksgiving Threw Up in My Classroom

OH.MY. Pretty much sums up how I feel when I walk into my classroom. I’m greeted by dangling turkeys, pilgrims galore, and kid work all over the place…and I LOVE IT. Y’all…this last month…3 weeks, I guess…have been a total whirlwind. I didn’t get a chance to do half the things I wanted to, but I’m okay with it because the kids got JUST what they needed! We’ve been furiously preparing ourselves for our annual Grandparent’s/VIP day tomorrow. It’s our biggest event of the year! The kids get to invite the special people in their lives to come watch them perform the most darling little musical routine. This year the theme is 50’s. LOVE. After the performance, all the families are invited back to the classrooms to browse around and take a look at all the fun things the kids are learning. We’ve been learning SO much and we’re so excited to show it off! Here’s a little peek at what our V.I.P’s will see tomorrow….

This past week we read the story, “I Know An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie”, by Allison Jackson. Of course, the kids loved it and there was SO much we could do with it!! We created a little reader’s response writing craftivity to go along with the story. LOVED the way these turned out!!!

Their writing prompt was, ‘If I were the old lady, I would swallow a…’. They had to write their choice of Thanksgiving fare :) I got pumpkin rolls, turkeys, yellow cake?!, green beans, mashed ‘butatoes’, rolls, etc. SO fun! After they wrote their sentence, they made a little old lady with googly eyes and a hand drawn picture of the food of their choice.

Last week we read “The Amazing Turkey Race!” and did this little craftivity for a readers response…

Loving the one that says, “Eat more loins.” Of course, it’s supposed to say “lions”. Makes me chuckle every time I walk in the room :)

Of course, we’ve also been talking a lot about being thankful and what that means. We created these little pilgrims to hold our ‘thankful writing’ {inspired by First Grade Blue Skies :)}. The kids were thankful for the funniest things…corn dogs, Christmas, biscuits?!…TOO cute!

I noticed that this poor little pilgrim lost his head :( Oooops!

We did our “How to Catch a Turkey” writing {printable from Deanna Jump’s Thanksgiving Math & Literacy Unit}. We read “Run, Turkey, Run!” before our writing and I LOVED the way the kids made the connection between this how-to and the how-to we wrote when we made root beer floats on the 50th day!

The kids get to take home their placemats tomorrow before they leave for the break. We had our Thanksgiving feast the other day and it was PRECIOUS. A whole buncha pilgrims and Indians just feastin’ away :)

SO…the room’s all ready for our VIPS…

And I’m SO excited for my kids to show off ALL their hard work!!!! It’s been a BUSY 3 weeks!!!

**I get lots of questions asking, “How do you fit EVERYTHING in?!?!?”. Ummm…LOTS of planning! HA! Seriously…most of the writing you see is either completed during our Writer’s Workshop block {followed by draft book} OR they complete it at the writing station during our Daily 5/literacy block. All the craftivities are pre-cut {BLESS my sweet student teacher!!!!}, so all the kids have to do is assemble the parts. This usually takes a total of maybe 10-12{ish} minutes. We can fit that in while they’re eating snack or when we get back in the room from lunch. It’s just a matter of planning it and making sure that it all fits with our objectives. We made our placemats during our Social Studies block of time because that took a lot longer!!!Hope that answers your questions!!**

Let's Give Thanks!

I'm CLEARLY technically challenged. After about 3-4 days of unsuccessfully trying to upload my latest unit to TpT, it's FINALLY added. Praise the Lord. My word. It was TOTALLY user error and I won't bother to mention what I was doing wrong because it was pretty lame....and *maybe* a little embarassing :) HA!

I know we only have a few days left before the break, but if you're interested, here's the latest...

Clipart courtesy of Scrappin Doodles and Jessica Weible Illustrations

This 120 page unit is filled with 10 activities {and recording sheets} for math tubs...plus 10 word problems...and 10 literacy center/station activities {and recording sheets}. You can check it out HERE.

Here's a little freebie for all you Thanksgiving lovin' people who need a little something extra :) Just click on the pic for the download.

I'll give this WHOLE unit away to the first 3 people who comment :) Just PLEASE remember to leave your email!!!!

Happy Friday, y'all!!!!

The Littlest Pilgrim, Symmetrical Turkeys, and Scarecrows…OH MY!

You guys *might* remember these little guys from last year…

We made a whole new set of symmetrical turkeys today and the kids were SO intense! We talked a TON about the concept of symmetry and then I sent the kids off to make their own symmetrical patterns {for turkey feathers}. LOVE how different each one turned out!

I forgot to mention that we did our fun little pumpkin adjective/simile activity last week. It went along perfectly with Abby’s recent pumpkin activities!

{The purple words describe the OUTSIDE of the pumpkin and the green words describe the INSIDE.}

There’s nothin’ cuter than scarecrows this time of year and we made the CUTEST scarecrows to hang in the halls. This cute little craftivity was the brain child of my team leader. LOVE. First, we read this book…

We talked about character/setting/problem/solution and then I had the kids write about each story element on a large piece of construction paper. When they were finished writing, they turned their paper over and turned it into “The Little Scarecrow Boy”!!!! Too stinkin’ cute!

One of our literacy/reading objectives this week is to describe characters in a story. First, we read this book…

And then we filled a little character chart with words describing the main character, Mini.

It was a little challenging to get the kids to think about words to describe her…they immediately wanted to talk about how she looked {brown hair, peach skin, girl, she wore a bonnet, etc.} After talking to them about WHO she was and now HOW she looked, they were able to come up with some really great descriptions!!! Once we filled out our little character chart, I had the kids make a little pilgrim peekover and write three complete sentences describing Mini {the main character}. They turned out so cute!! The kids did a GREAT job on this little writing project!

Now we’re busy getting ready for our 1st grade Thanksgiving feast next week!! If you need some fun Thanksgiving activities, check out what we did last year…HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE. You *might* find something you can use!

And if you’re in need of some Thanksgiving themed math tub & literacy center activities, I’ve got a unit ready to go! However, my dang computer is throwing all kinds of hissy fits right now and I CAN’T UPLOAD it to TpT!!!! Darnit! It contains 10 math tub activities, word problems, and 10 literacy center activities & writing prompts. I’m *hoping* to have it up by tomorrow if I can get things to start working!!!

Happy Thanksgiving, Y’all!

Celebrating Thanksgiving with my first graders has been, by far, my favorite thing yet! As a culminating activity to our Thanksgiving unit, we had a giant Thanksgiving feast to celebrate the season. We made pilgrim hats & bibs and Indian headbands & vests to wear for the occasion. Well…actually…because there was SO dang much to do these last couple of weeks {Veteran’s Day, VIP Day, Thanksgiving Feast, etc."}, my class didn’t exactly get around to the Indian vests. That also has something to do with the fact that I couldn’t cut one the right way to save my life!! The fun feast was catered by one of my favorites…Dickey’s!!!!…and the kids dined on turkey, ham, mac & cheese, green beans, rolls, and homemade cookies {one of the sweet first grade moms made peanut free chocolate chip cookies for the WHOLE grade level…and they were GOOD!} It was such a fun experience for both the kids and their parents…us too!! Can’t wait to celebrate Thanksgiving with my littles again next year!

We read a story about the first Thanksgiving before heading out to the feast. It was fun to hear the kids throw in little facts here and there remembering what we’ve learned these last couple of weeks!

My sweet class…the dang cutest pilgrims I’ve ever seen!

The “tables” & placemats were set up in the first grade hallway so we could ALL eat together :)

The kids were served by our sweet moms and they just thought it was the coolest thing ever!!

Such a fun way to tie up everything we’ve learned!!

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Our school held it’s annual Grandparent’s/VIP Day on Friday. This is a day that all the kids, one class at a time, perform songs for their V.I.P’s. {coordinated by our music teacher} This is a HUGE event at our school. After the performance, the parents/grandparents/family members come back to the kids’ classrooms to see all their work and then the kids can leave with their guests for an off campus lunch…and then stay gone for the rest of the day {if they want}. Needless to say, I LOVE this day! A lot goes into getting ready for this special day. My kids wrote about their favorite memory with their VIP and illustrated their writing and we made sure to display all their hard work around the classroom. My favorite was the way we set up their desks. Since we loved those Mayflowers so much, we decided to let them “sail” on their desks…

It was a HUGE hit with our VIP’s!!! We’ll definitely do this again next year!! Loved it!

There’s Still Time!

If you haven’t bought Deanna Jump’s Thanksgiving Unit, you’re in luck!! There’s still time!! Here’s a little sneak peek into our turkey fun…

We completed a fun little pie graph and interpreted the data…

I gave a little mini-lesson on writing a three-step how to using an example of making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Using a fun little idea in Deanna’s unit, we wrote a three-step how-to about catching a turkey! Then I had the kids make their own cute little coffee filter turkeys :)

Head on over to Teachers Pay Teachers and get your own copy of Deanna Jump’s Thanksgiving Unit…there’s still time!!!!

If You Sailed On The Mayflower…

Today we celebrated “Mayflower Day”!! Okay…so I made that up…but I thought that sounded pretty fitting for our day today :) We started by reading a non-fiction book about the Mayflower. I can’t remember which one, but I checked it out from our school library and it was really good!! It was a great book to review Table of Contents also :) Each “chapter” was only a page or two long. After each page, we stopped to jot. During our stop to jot time, the kids gave me a few facts they learned from that chapter.

We learned a lot of really cool facts!! Did you know that the water was so unsafe to drink that everyone on the Mayflower…children included…drank beer?!?! Ummmm…yeah. That interesting tidbit of info was definitely in the book and you should’ve heard the conversations that transpired after reading that fun little fact :) Wow.

After brainstorming, I had the kids choose 5 facts to write about for their Mayflower books. Y’all. These books are DARLING. A few of the girls on our team have been making these “bag boats” for a few years and I LOVE them!!! They’re PERFECT for a little Mayflower fun!!

We compiled all their facts into this little book…

I used pencils to hold up the sails…just incase you’re wondering :)

There were a couple of extra “pages” left in the book, so we filled them in with a thinking map & a survey/graph. We made a Mayflower brace map to show the parts of the whole…

And I also had the kids survey their classmates asking them whether or not they would have liked to travel on the Mayflower if they were pilgrims. Not surprisingly, they all said NO!!!! The kids graphed their classmates responses and wrote about their data as well.

You can download the Mayflower brace map & graph HERE.

Next up….TURKEY FUN!!!

A Few More Math Ideas Before The Holidays

Here are a couple more ideas for you to *squeeze in* {HA!!!} before Thanksgiving break :)

How funky is your turkey?! Here’s a little fact family activity your kids will love! Each kiddo gets a half circle {turkey body} and a triangle {turkey head}. The kids take two dice and roll. Let’s say they roll a 4 & 2. They have to add the numbers together to get the sum {third #}. They write these numbers in each corner of the turkey head with the sum sitting in the beak. Then the kiddos take 4 different feathers and write a different number sentence on each to match the fact family in the turkey head :) They’ll assemble the turkey and make as many as they can in the time they have for math tubs :) I don’t have a template for this…I just traced a paper plate cut out lots of circles, and then cut those in half. Then I cut triangles to fit, beaks to fit on the triangles, and then feathers. The kids will cut and assemble their own legs & feet.

If you’re ready for a little estimation practice, then this little activity would be perfect! Set out a few little cups filled with corn kernels. The kids have to use the kernels to estimate the amount it would take to fill four different workspaces…then they have to count and record the actual number. This little activity comes with the workspaces & a recording sheet.