Veterans Day

I am a day late, but thank you to all of the Veterans out there who fight for our freedom and sacrifice so much for our country. I am especially thankful to my dad and my little brother.

Last week and Monday of this week was spent learning about American symbols and our Veterans. We used our Scholastic News and my Veterans Day Freebie to read about Veterans.

 

 

We wrote Veterans Can, Have and Are. We also talked about character traits of a Veteran. The kids came up with some great character traits--responsible, loyal, self-disciplined, good citizens, tenacious, patriotic... LOVE IT!

Then we used the freebie from A Cupcake for the Teacher and wrote letters to our student's mother who currently deployed. The kids were so into this, and our little guy was really happy and excited that his mom will be getting some very special mail :) I loved tying the character traits activity to this letter.

 

This little guy's mom is currently deployed.
I am sure she will cry when she reads this :)

 



 

This one continues onto the back...
"You make me happy and safe and proud to be American."

 

That is really all I have for now. I am going to take a nice, hot bath on this cold November night!  



A Veterans Day Freebie for You!

Is it really only Hump Day?! I feel like it is Friday because I. AM. BEAT. But, we have had fun celebrating being drug free during Red Ribbon Week, and the kids are also having a blast learning about spiders! I will post more about our spider unit later this week when we have completed it :)

Next week we are going to learn about patriotic symbols and learn about our Veterans. We have a student whose mother is deployed right now, so this year will be extra special I think :) I made a quick little freebie of some things we will add to our mini unit, and I wanted to share it with you! Click on the picture below to download your free copy.

 

There is an information page for your students to read {may be a good fluency passage!}, ABC Order, Character Traits of a Veteran, and Veterans Can/Have/Are.

 

We will also be using A Cupcake for the Teacher's freebie to write letters to our heroes! Click on the picture below to check out her freebie, too!

 

 

How do you plan to celebrate Veterans Day this year??

Veteran's Day & GIVEAWAY!

Hi friends! I have been pretty lazy lately about updating this ol' blog with photos of what we've been up to!! I apologize! And honestly, I will not be doing much better today :) But stay tuned because at the end I have a giveaway for some of my new Christmas items! :)

 

We have been working on patriotic symbols the past week or so, and today we focused on Veterans Day.

Bulletin board idea from Cara Carroll!

 

We had a really nice assembly in our gym this morning to honor the Veterans in our school community. We discussed the character traits of Veterans and why they are so important to our country. The kids got really into our discussion. Then we had our kids write letters to our military... Have you heard of the website http://www.amillionthanks.org/? It is awesome! Anyone is able to write letters of thanks to our military and they will make sure the letters find their way to someone currently serving! How cool is that? Our kids were very excited to write their words of thanks and appreciation. And the kids are even more excited because the website says that most military will write back to you! So we included our school address on their pictures.

 BTW, these two girls sit nowhere near each other,
so it's interesting that they drew almost the same picture!

Tomorrow we are beginning our Turkey/Thanksgiving unit and I am sooooo excited! We will start by reading A Turkey for Thanksgiving and doing lots of fun turkey related writing and craftivities!

Now, onto the giveaway!!!

I have THREE new Christmas themed packets on TpT right now.... Would you like to win ALL THREE?!?

Here's what to do...
1. Blog about this giveaway, linking back to this blog post.
2. Follow my TpT store.
3. Leave a comment guessing my favorite Thanksgiving food! {Don't forget to leave your email address!}

The first person who can correctly guess my favorite Thanksgiving food will receive all three packets! I will be back in a couple days to announce the winner! Happy Holidays :)

 

 

 

Veterans Day & Patriotic Week

We had a Patriotic/Veterans Day mini unit this week and the kids were all about it! Here is my bulletin board, thank you Cara @ First Grade Parade for this idea (although yours is cuter!!)

We started the week reading Red, White and Blue in our basal for a little history lesson on our country and our flag. We listened to it, then they got to read it to someone the next day during Daily 5. Then I read The Pledge of Allegiance to them.

This book is awesome at showing what each part of the Pledge actually means! It is something we say every single morning, but most of my kiddos didn't know what they were really promising. I made up a quick booklet for them to fill out afterwards. They had to write what each part of the pledge means, then answer a few questions about the flag at the end. They did great!

Heads up: this is NOT cutesy and I just hand wrote it because I was impatient and wanted to get home :) But it did the job!

 

I read them several other books about different symbols. A couple that I really liked, and that were easy for them to understand were these ones:

 

After we learned all about symbols, we made a cute booklet that my friend had given me a couple years back (that I completely forgot to photograph!) The kids were all about it, and couldn't wait to take it home to teach their families all about America's symbols of freedom!

We talked a LOT about freedom this week, and how our troops sacrifice everything to protect our country. We wanted to thank our soldiers and veterans for all they do for us. One of my little girls has a dad who is currently deployed, so we decided to write letters and draw pictures for him. They were SO into it, and the little girl was just SO excited and proud! LOVED IT.

On Friday, we had our Veterans Day assembly, and then I had my dad come talk to my class. He did really great :) I was happy he decided to come!

Then to end our mini unit, I had my kiddos write about their freedoms in America and make little Bald Eagles... although some ended up looking more like pigeons because I accidentally left the giant googly eyes in the bag for them to choose from!! They are still cute :)

^ That is how I intended the eagles to look :) 

This week was  a bit crazy with the Full Moon, but we survived, and I can tell that my students LOVE America and are so proud :) Can't wait to start Thanksgiving stuff for the next week and a half!! Then can you believe it'll be Christmas??? YAY!