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!!**

Inventors & Inventions

This past week we started wrapping up our study on Inventors & Inventions in Science/Social Studies. I guess I underestimated the interest my kids would have in the subject because they were SO into it!! We started by learning about a few very important inventors…Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, and The Wright Brothers. We made a little anchor chart for the kids to refer to throughout our little unit of study.

After we learned about each inventor, I had the kids add to their “Inventors and their Inventions” notebook.

{click the pic to download}

I forgot to take pics, but after we studied Alexander Graham Bell, we made tin can phones. We asked parents for clean can donations. The kids got to experiment with the phones to see if they really worked…and they did!! They LOVED this activity!!

When we learned about Thomas Edison, we talked about what life would be like if there were no light. I had the kids do some creative writing using the prompt, “If there were no light…”. The responses were hilarious!! I had them add their writing to their science notebooks.

After we learned about the Wright Brothers, the kids made paper airplanes and tested them out to see which flew the furthest, fastest, longest, etc. It didn’t surprise me that they loved that the most!

The kids were so interested in inventors and inventions that they wanted to research a lot of inventions that we’re using today…toilets, cars, pianos, microwaves, etc. We brainstormed a HUGE list of things that we wanted to learn more about and we talked about SMART researching on the Internet…always research with a parent!!!! I had to STOP dead in my tracks when we were researching more info about the toilet. In BIG bold letters, one of the sites said that Thomas CRAPPER was the inventor of the toilet. Now, while this is sorta true, I didn’t think the parents would really enjoy the idea of me using the word “Crapper” in my classroom. Anyhow, we added these inventors and their inventions to our anchor chart so that we could use the info when we learn about timelines this week.

Finally, as our culminating activity, I had the kids make up their own inventions. Their job was to invent something that would make life easier. They had to draw their inventions and write about them and then present them to the class. I was SO super impressed!!!

Now it’s on to past, present, future and TIMELINES!! Woo hoo!!

In other news, I just added a new unit to TpT. The Great Coin Collection!! An 88 page coin-based unit filled with 20 games and hands-on activities. It’s on sale for $6 through Groundhog Day and then it’ll go back up to it’s original price ($9).

Click on the pic for your freebie and head on over to TpT to grab 18 more games & hands-on activities :)