Symmetrical Pattern Block Turkeys

This week we had a little fun with symmetry. To reinforce the concept, I had my cuties make these fun little pattern block turkeys. It was a great little assessment to see which of my kiddos were struggling with the concept :) I absolutely LOVE how different they all turned out! Can’t wait to do these again next year!

A Time For Turkeys

We have been busy this month!! We’ve been learning about a little bit of everything from turkeys, to pilgrims, to the Mayflower. Here are just a couple of little things we’ve been doing with turkeys…with LOTS more to come!!!

We were working on “long a” this week and our chunks were –ake, –ate, & –ave. So I made these fun little word family turkeys and had the kids write words to match each turkey on colorful little feathers! They LOVED it!!

I also included a set of turkeys with nothing typed in the bellies….just incase you’d want to program them yourself :)

We read the book, Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving…

…and followed up with this fun little activity! One of the teachers on our team had this fun little turkey template, so I had the kids make their own turkeys and then wrote a little “picket sign” for the turkeys to hold…Chick Fil A style ;) Each of their signs started with, “Eat more…” and they had to fill in the rest. You can’t see it too well, but this one says, “Eat more mackinchees!” {mac & cheese}. Then we hung them from the ceiling!

We’re also in the midst of preparing for our big Thanksgiving feast next week, so we had the kids do a little handwriting/art activity that will be laminated and used as their placemats for the feast. They turned out so dang cute!!

I love this time of year!!

The Thankful Tree

I really love the idea of kids reflecting on what they have to be thankful for. So, we read the book, “The Thanksgiving Bowl” by Virginia Kroll.

The beginning of the book talks about a sweet Grandma who sets aside a Thanksgiving bowl for her family to place strips of paper detailing what they’re thankful for, and then all the little papers are read aloud during Thanksgiving dinner. Love it! I thought it was the perfect intro to adding a Thankful Tree to our room :)

I have a stack of die cut leaves that sits in a little pumpkin close to my door. Every time one of my kiddos has something to be thankful for, they write it on a leaf and give it to me to put on the tree. It’s really sweet to see what they’re thankful for :) Just today I had one of my sweet boys write “veterans & soldiers” on his leaf. Precious.

Jack O’Lantern Addition/Subtraction Sorting

I bought these darling little jack o’lanterns at Wal-Mart YEARS ago when I first started teaching Kindergarten. I used to have the kids do a little one-to-one correspondence activity with them. Since my 1st graders are knee deep in addition & subtraction right now, I knew these little guys would come in handy for the perfect sorting activity!

I wrote a different number on each jack o’lantern {6-18}. Then I took popsicle sticks and wrote a different math fact on each….about 6 facts for each number…4 addition problems and 2 subtraction problems {subtraction is still pretty new to us}.

The kids sort the math facts into the corresponding jack o’lanterns and when they’re finished, they can record their sorts onto a little pumpkin! I die cut several little pumpkins and set these out in their math tub as well…they write a number on the stem and all the corresponding math facts in inside!

I also gave the kids some seasonal counters to use to help them solve the trickier addition/subtraction problems. We’re really working hard to remember to “count on”, so they’re mostly using the counters for the subtraction facts. {I got the little counters from the Dollar Tree!!}

If you have any other ideas for these little jack o’lanterns, let me know!!!

Candy Corn Math

This week I set out a little candy corn math activity for my kids to use in their stations. Because I have such a sweet tooth, I ate the whole bag of candy corn, so the kids had to settle on the laminated cardstock version instead ;)

Each candy corn is programmed with either an addition or subtraction problem. I cut off the bottom {yellow} portion of the candy corn and left the rest intact. The kids have to match the bottom {sum/difference} to the top {number sentence}. We’ve been working on vertical addition & subtraction, so this is a perfect reinforcement of this concept! The kids love it! They just wish it was the real deal :)

Spidey Writing

We started out our spider themed week reading a few non-fiction books and filling out a KWL. Not gonna lie…I learned A LOT of things about spiders this week! It was amazing to hear my kids recalling facts of everything they had learned, too! They were SO into it! I set up a labeling activity for the kids to visit during transition time or when they were finished with their other station activities. They also labeled a spider template I found on abcteach.com. This little labeling activity includes a lot more words to use for labeling…not sure what happened to them?!

At the end of the week, we talked about action words vs. descriptive words. While I don’t expect them to master the difference between adjectives and verbs right now, I did want them to know the difference! So I introduced verbs & adjectives and we used SPIDERS to brainstorm a list of both types of words…things that spiders can do vs. words that describe spiders. They LOVED this activity! They were talking about verbs and adjectives for the rest of the day!

After we created our list, I had the kids make a “Spider Sandwich” poem using 3 verbs and 3 adjectives that are “sandwiched” between the word SPIDER. After writing their poems, I painted their hands to make little handprint spiders. I LOVE handprint art!!! And I used reinforcement stickies for the eyes.