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!!**

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!!!!

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.

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!!

Turkey Math

We are learning about traditions and customs & I swear I’m LOVING all this Thanksgiving talk!! I know you’re probably all planned out for the next couple of weeks, but just incase you aren’t, here are a few math tub activities you might like to incorporate :)

This is a little addition & subtraction activity where the kids have to solve the problem on the turkey’s belly and add the number of feathers to show the sum/difference. They kids LOVE the feathers :)

This is a little fact family activity that the kids are loving!

And this is just a little skip counting reinforcement activity. I found this in a Mailbox Magazine several years ago :) Email me if you’d like me to send this one to ya!