Turkeys, Turkeys Everywhere!

Happy Sunday, friends! I cannot tell you how ready I am for Thanksgiving break!! I am counting down the days until I get to chow down on my mom's awesome cooking! I sooo envy those of you who are already on your break! :)

This past week we focused more on turkeys and what we were thankful for. In our basal, we read A Turkey for Thanksgiving. It is such a cute story!! We read several other books about turkeys and Thanksgiving, including my FAVE, 'Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving! Soooo stinkin' cute!

If you haven't read these with your kiddos, do it! :) We did a quick writing prompt, "If I was a turkey on Thanksgiving..." They had some clever responses!

Well, I wanted to share just a few activities we did this week...

I always have my kids make Thankful Turkeys. They have to write about five things they are thankful for and why they are thankful for those things. They came up with the sweetest ideas!

Then we worked on sequencing in our writing. As a class, we wrote "How to Bake a Pumpkin Pie." After we did that, they had to write "How to Cook a Turkey." They came up with some funny directions!

It's always funny to see what temperature they think a turkey should be cooked at :)

Tomorrow and Tuesday we are going to focus solely on the Pilgrims and Wampanoags, and we will do this cute activity I found on Pinterest! We will also have our FEAST!

Hope everyone has a fabulous Thanksgiving! Enjoy time with your family, and eat a lot :)

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!

Pumpkins!

I cannot believe it is NOVEMBER! I am so excited because 1). My dad came back from his deployment in Turkey! 2). It is fiiinally starting to cool down and feel like fall! 3). Only 2 1/2 weeks until Thanksgiving! 4). Then only 3 and a half weeks until Christmas break!! THIS IS MY FAVORITE TIME OF THE SCHOOL YEAR :)

We have pretty much wrapped up our pumpkin unit, and it's been fun! As I said in my last post, we did quite a bit with the basal last week (due to PT conferences) and read The Life Cycle of a Pumpkin and really focused on a pumpkin's life cycle!

This book is an amazing look at the life cycle, too!

We practiced sequencing by writing the about a pumpkin's life cycle using words like first, next, then, last, finally, etc. I forgot to take a picture, but we made the cutest craft to illustrate the life cycle of the pumpkin! Wish I had photographed it! Oh well :)

This week we observed, described, estimated, graphed and measured using a pumpkin (and pumpkin seeds) I brought to school.

We first observed the outside of a pumpkin and wrote down all of the adjectives we could think of to describe it. Then I carved the pumpkin open, and the kids to got to see, smell and feel the inside of the pumpkin! They LOVED it! Some thought it was nasty and would not touch it though :) Then we wrote all the adjectives about the inside of it. My kiddos completed a craftivity and had to write at least 3 sentences to describe the outside of the pumpkin and 3 to describe the inside. These turned out so stinkin' cute, and they were way into it!

 

Here is a photo of our pumpkin anchor chart (as well as our seed adjectives for Pumpkin Seed day!)

The next day was Pumpkin Seed Day! First we all got a few pumpkin seeds, and we had to look at, feel and taste them! We wrote adjectives on the giant seeds (see photo above) and we graphed whether we liked or disliked the taste of the seeds. We used Abby's cuh-yoot Pumpkin Seed Data and All About Pumpkin Seeds record sheets!  

That afternoon I read

 It is a great introduction to what it means to estimate! We looked inside our pumpkin and estimated how many seeds we thought were inside of it. Our estimates ranged anywhere from 12 to 101. My kiddos worked with their tables and had to make groups of ten.

After they finished counting their seeds, we added up the class total (great mini lesson on regrouping!)The grand total of seeds inside our pumpkin was.... drumroll please.... 253! Our closest estimate was only 152 off :) But they had a great time!

Today we worked with partners to measure our pumpkin using standard and nonstandard units of measurement. They did AWESOME!

Tomorrow we are playing catch up and doing lots of math games and activities. I am all pumpkin-ed out :) Can't wait until our Patriotic mini-unit next week!

Have a fabulous weekend!

I'm still here!!

Holy cow, I cannot believe it has been a month since I posted on this thing! Things have been busy and I keep forgetting to bring my camera to document what we are doing! We just wrapped up Parent Teacher Conferences last night. They went great! I have got some wonderful parents! It is sooo nice to have today off though :)

Lots has been going on around here! One thing I am VERY excited about is that I got funded through Limeades for Learning! Woo! We got ALL kinds of materials for Daily 5 and some fun math games (I am so excited about my hot dots set!!) My kids are really excited too :)

Last week we read The Life Cycle of a Pumpkin in our basal and did a lot of the activities from it. Not gonna lie, I needed something easy this week with it being conference week and Red Ribbon Week. Speaking of RRW, look who came to visit our school yesterday!!

RUMBLE! I looove me some OKC Thunder! It was SO. MUCH. FUN! Aaaand I got to go up and do a teamwork game with some of my fellow teachers, and our team won. I was so pumped!! I seriously felt like a little kid. I may have been more excited than some of the little ones.... :)

Next week we will continue our pumpkin unit and do the FUN stuff :) We are going to do a cool inside/outside pumpkin observation activity, measurement, estimation and some cute poems. I WILL bring my camera to document the week, as well as some of the other things we have been working on :)

Hope everyone has a happy Halloween!!

Spelling & Word Chunks

This past summer, my sweet friend, Amy, and I decided we needed to revamp our spelling. We were using the spelling lists that came with our reading program, and really, I feel like many of the kids were just memorizing for the test-not really learning the spelling patterns. This year we are doing word chunks and I am LOVING it! We structured our spelling based on this book:

Each week, we have a focus poem. We find helpful chunk words from the poem, and focus on 3 to 4 a week. My kids are doing GREAT! And they are actually using the chunks in their writing! They always point out old chunks and underline chunks in their work. LOVE IT!

For the spelling test, I give the kids 10 chunk words to study (most are 2 syllable words, some just have blends and digraphs). Then I add anywhere from 1-5 extra words (sight words, old chunks we need to review). On test day I give them 5 secret words that they don't get to study. They have to apply what they have learned.

It is very easy for all students to work on the same chunks, but you can modify the words for your struggling students, as well as your gifted students :)

Here is what our poetry and word work journal looks like. Our poem goes on the left, and we sort chunk words on the right. **Sidebar-this poem is also a great one to teach blends and adjectives!**

Here is what our Word Chunk Wall looks like currently. (I cut off the "U" and "Other" chunks, sorry!)

So this is kind of what our week looks like currently...

Monday: Introduce new poem at morning meeting (written on chart paper). Ask kids what they think would be helpful chunks. Pick out 3-4 (pre-selected) chunking words. Underline chunks in poem with highlighting tape (so I can reuse the poems on chart paper year after year :). Then I write the chunk words on construction paper in front of them. I do not have these pre-made, although I realllllly wanted to! I think they are more meaningful since we write them together. I give the students a copy of the poem and we read it again and circle our chunk words. Then they cut it out and glue it in their journal. We also go over our spelling words for the week.

Tuesday: We reread our poem. Review the chunks. Brainstorm words that have our chunks on the whiteboard. Then the students sort their spelling words on the right side of their journals. They will add other words at their own pace throughout the week.

Wednesday: I have a cut and paste word sort for my kiddos to do.

Thursday: We play our word chunk race! My kids get their marker boards. I give them one minute. They write as many words as they can think of for the first chunk. Then, I give them another minute, and I call on students to tell me as many chunk words as they can! I write them all on the board. Then it's my turn! Except I only get 30 seconds and I have to do it alone! (I don't win very often!) We repeat this for each chunk. They love playing against Mrs. Lynes :)

Friday: We play Sparkle and take our test.

When we have extra time throughout the day, I let them get out Word Work materials (magnets, pipe cleaners, stamps, etc). Once I get it up and running, it will be a rotation as part of Daily 5.

TGI (almost) F!

Apple Week!

I can't believe that Apple Week is over! The school year is really flying!!! We had a great week learning about Johnny Appleseed and doing different activities involving apples! At the end of the week we made homemade applesauce and the kiddos brought apple snacks for our apple tasting party. YUM! Here are just a few photos of some of the things we did this week.

Of course we read several versions of Johnny Appleseed and discussed what we learned, as well as comparing the stories.

I introduced adjectives to my students by giving them each a piece of a granny smith apple. I told them to use their senses to describe it. The very last thing they could do was taste it. They talked with their neighbors and then they came up with words to describe the apple! (I used this prompt to help make sure they were coming up with adjectives: I have a _____ apple). I wrote their responses on our huge apple (below). Next, I gave them a piece of a gala apple. We repeated the process, and of course they came up with different adjectives since the two apples look and taste different :)

The next day, we reviewed adjectives and I had them use adjectives to describe different things in our classroom aloud. Then they made these cute adjective apples!

This week, we worked on addition story problems. I had my students write story problems with apple stickers!

I had each of my students bring an apple to school on Wednesday to be used for some graphing and measurement activities. (Then of course we would use them for our applesauce!) First we graphed the color of apples we brought. At the bottom I had some questions about the graph for my kiddos to answer.

The next day we worked on measurement (and estimation) using standard and nonstandard units. First, we practiced measuring things that had a straight edge. We found that was pretty easy! We wanted to measure our apples, but could we measure something round using a ruler? Not really! So we decided it'd be easier if we put yarn around our apples and then measured that! I had my students measure (to the nearest unit) their apples using unifix cubes, dominoes, pennies, inches and centimeters. They did awesome!

My kiddos also got to make apple transformations. I have decided that next year I will now show them an example of an apple transformation... I may do a different object so they get the jist of it. Because even when you tell them 45 times, "No copying Mrs. Lynes!" you get about 10 who still do :) But they are still adorable regardless!

I can't believe Apple Week is already over! Pretty soon it'll be onto pumpkins, then Thanksgiving, then Christmas!! Eeep!

Communities

The first two and a half weeks of school have been awesome! I absolutely love my class-they are the sweetest kiddos! They are making it so easy to implement Daily 5 and I just know it's going to be a fantastic year! I will write about how Daily 5 is going in a future post :)

The past week or two we have been focusing on communities and mapping skills for social studies. We have read these stories from our basal to help compare the characteristics of different kinds of communities:

 

I am still trying to learn that I can LET GO OF THE BASAL while doing Daily 5, but these two stories went really well with communities. We have been comparing urban, suburban and rural. They loooved seeing my photos from NYC and Chicago, too! Many of them had no idea just how big a city could actually be!

 I made this bulletin board and we sorted out the different characteristics of each community:

Then, we made our own model of the different communities using milk cartons! The model turned out so cute, and I think they really got it! :) (This is a photo of my friend Amy's class' model-I forgot to take a picture of ours and had already let my kiddos take their buildings home!)

So stinkin' cute, right? :) The following day, we started our mapping skills. We made a map of our model. We learned that we needed a title for our maps, as well as a map key!

We will continue our mapping skills this week. We will read

and the kiddos will have homework-make a map of their bedroom! They will have to include a title and at least 5 symbols in their map key. I can't wait to see what they come up with!

Hope everyone has a great rest of the weekend!