I Teach Second Linky-Fun with the "G" Word!

Hey there! My bloggy buddies from I Teach Second and I are linking up today to share the ideas that we love most! I decided to share about our fun with a mean, grouchy, green guy who we see at Christmastime :) This is one of my favorite units that we do all year! We are starting ours next week!

**In case you were unaware, it is against copyright to use the "G" word in any products on TpT! So if you search, you may want to search words like "mean, green" or "you're a mean one," etc.**

We always read the book, and make a chart about our mean, green guy's character traits. Then we write adjectives to compare his heart at the beginning of the story to his heart at the end of the story. I believe this idea originally came from Cara Carroll a few years ago?!

We then have our kids write about our mean, green friend at the beginning and the end of the story. They add adjectives to his heart, too!

We also work on antonyms. We use a lot of the character traits and words that described his heart and do a whole group matching game. The kids always love this!

Our mean, green friend stole gifts from everyone in the town, and he always drops the gifts off to our classroom so that we can measure them. He wants to be sure that they will fit into his sack! The kids always get a kick out of this :)

Our kids also work on fractions using the gifts that our mean, green friend has stolen!

Our kids love to make these little crafts {template originally from Deanna Jump} and write about how to be like our mean, green guy. 

By the end of the week, the mean, green guy is feeling nicer, so he brings some treats for our kids to graph. He also brings some candy canes :) At the end of the week, we watch the cartoon movie and have some yummy mean, green snacks! 

This is seriously one of my absolute favorite weeks of the year! We cover so many skills, and our students are highly engaged, which is hard to do around Christmas! What activities do you do during your "Mean, Green" day or week?! I'd love to see and hear them!

And be sure to check below to see more awesome ideas from our iTeachSecond Bloggers!

An InLinkz Link-up

Christmas Randomness & Grinchy Fun!

I hope you all had an amazing Christmas filled with lots of fun and family! We had a great Christmas and it was nice spending it with our families! Lots of good food, and Santa was very good to us this year :)

I am going to take you back to before Christmas break! As you may or may not know, we had a few snow days, so that kind of messed up our plans. We decided to do our gingerbread unit after we come back in January... It is too fun of a unit to skip! {That also means we had all our plans ready for the first week back-SCORE!} We did make our gingerbread houses on the very last day as planned though... there was no way we were coming back to that craziness!! :) The houses were a hit, and our parent helpers really made it so much easier!

 

For parent gifts, we had our kiddos make these cute little reindeer ornaments that are floating around all over Pinterest! These ornaments are styrofoam and glittery! Thanks, Hobby Lobby!

 

 

Amy and I gave these gifts to our teammates for Christmas... "Wishing you a holiday season full of peace, love and hope soap!" Another cute idea found on Pinterest!

 

 

Every year our kiddos get to wear pajamas and watch The Polar Express! Our elves brought some bells from Santa's sleigh! The kids were so excited! When we wrote Santa letters earlier in the month, the only gift one of our little girls asked for was a bell from Santa's sleigh. How cute is that?! Looks like she got her Christmas wish! **I downloaded these tags last year but do not know who I got them from! If you know, please let me know so I can give credit!**

 

Okay, now onto some Grinchy fun! Most of these ideas are from my pack, A Mean, Green Christmas. However, as you probably know, it had to be revised, so if you see the "G" word in any of the photos, just know that if you purchase this pack, it will NOT say the "G" word anywhere :)

 

 After reading the book, we listed the Grinch's character traits at the beginning of the book. We also wrote adjectives to compare his heart at the beginning and at the end of the book.

 

Then we had our kids write a few sentences about how he was at the beginning and how he changed at the end. 

 

 

We had the kids write "How to be a Grinch" and we used Deanna Jump's templates for our cute Grinchy friends!

 



 

After comparing his heart at the beginning and end, the kids realized we were using a lot of opposites! So we taught them about antonyms. First we read Straight and Curvy, Meek and Nervy. Our kids were pretty familiar with antonyms, even though this was the first big lesson on them. We made an anchor chart and brainstormed LOTS of antonym pairs! Then we played a whole group matching game, using hearts to tie in the Grinch :)

 

 

 

For some Grinchy math, we worked on fractions! Inside the sacks are the things the Grinch stole from the Whos! They had to write the fraction of ornaments, stockins, and presents.

 

 

The kids worked in partners to practice their measurement by measuring the Whos' gifts! This was a big hit for sure!

 



 

By the end of the week, Mr. Grinch wasn't feeling grinchy anymore... so we did some graphing using gumdrops that he dropped off for us! {you can use M&M's too, or any red and green candy}.

 

 

On our 3rd Annual Grinch Day, we all wore green and enjoyed some Grinch Grub and Grinch Punch while we watched the cartoon version of the book! One of my favorite Christmas movies ever!

 

 

Last but not least, Mr. Grinch dropped off these green candy canes for the kiddos! 

 

 

WHEW. If you made it to the end, THANKS! I hope you enjoy your Christmas break, and let's hope it doesn't go by too fast!! :)





Grinch Week! The best week of the year!!!

You all. I love Grinch Week. LOVE IT!! It is so much fun and the kids absolutely enjoy it!! I have been looking forward to this week for a couple of weeks now.... And now it's already over!! Today was our school's 2nd Annual Grinch Day {I HAD to get that started last year!!}. Our kids led our morning assembly, and sang Deanna Jump's Mr. Grinch song! Amy and I added a few lines to the song to make it longer for 2nd graders... I may be a bit biased, but our kids ROCKED it!

 

 

 I absolutely LOVE this book. It is probably my favorite Christmas book! I read it to the kids twice, then they practice a reader's theater for it all week {and they were AWESOME!} We did a lot of activities found in my Mean, Green Christmas Pack and I just wanted to share some photos with you :) ENJOY!

 

After reading the book the first day, we discussed character traits of the Grinch. We also brainstormed adjectives about how his heart was at the beginning and end of the story.

 

 

The next day after reading the book again, the kids wrote a few sentences about the Grinch at the beginning and the end of the story. They also wrote adjectives to describe his heart :)

 

We worked on antonyms....

 

 

We wrote "How to be a Grinch" and made a mini class book out of it!

 

 

We measured the Whos' gifts with partners...

 

 

We worked on Grinchy Fractions...

 

 

The Grinch wasn't feeling Grinchy anymore, so he brought us a little treat from the store :)

 

 

Then we ended our unit by watching the cartoon movie and enjoying Grinch Punch and Grinch Grub!!

 

 

And the kids got to go home with this little treat from the Grinch {Cindy Lou Who dropped it off for the Grinch!}...

 

{The green notes are not my original idea.. I found these tags through Pinterest}

 

All in all it was an AWESOME week!! The kids had so much fun, and so did we :) Next week we will work on our Elf Applications and Elf Craftivity {pictures to come soon!} And then on to our Gingerbread Man Unit!

 

HAPPY WEEKEND, FRIENDS!

 



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 :)

 

 

 

The Grinch!

Grinch Week was so fun!! I will definitely be doing it again next year, and it may even be a two week thing! Originally, I wanted to do a Grinch Day with my kiddos. I shared the ideas I had found through Cara  and Deanna  with my team and it turned into a whole week of fun! We decided we wanted to do a day where we all wore green and Santa hats, and the whole school wanted in on the action! It was great! Look at my sweet Assistant Principal, aka Cindy-Lou-Who!

She visited our class and was a special guest reader for our Grinch reader's theater! The kids were stoked! We practiced our reader's theater all week long, then got to share it with my friend Amy's class. They did great! This story is a great one to reinforce reading with expression!

After I read the story for the first time, I had the kids describe the Grinch. They also came up with adjectives to describe his heart at the beginning of the story, and his heart at the end.

Then they did some writing comparing the Grinch (and his heart) at the beginning and end of the story. They did an awesome job!

We talked a lot about how the Grinch had changed in the story, and what caused him to change. I was able to tie in antonyms with this. I gave each child half of a heart. On the left side of the heart was a word that described Grinch (and/or his heart) at the beginning, and on the right side of the heart was a word that described the Grinch at the end. The kids had to find a person who had the antonym to their word. They did great!

Then to assess them, I made up this antonym page. Nothin' fancy. Again, it went along with how the Grinch was at the beginning and at the end of the story. (Sorry it's a little blurry).

We worked on similies this week, too. I first read this cute book: 

Then we listened to the Grinch song. You hear a couple of similies in the song, like, "You're as cuddly as a cactus." So we brainstormed similies to describe the Grinch, and then similies to describe Cindy Lou-Who! The similies they came up with were darling!

We worked on fractions, too!

We also practiced measuring in inches and centimeters by measuring the Whos' presents! The kids worked with a buddy to measure the length and height of each gift.

At the end of the week, we ate "Grinch Grub" (basically rice krispy treats, but you use corn flakes instead, and you dye it green!), watched the cartoon Grinch movie, and made the Grinch grin!

I loved this week and can't wait to do it again next year! Off to plan our Gingerbread Week now :) Have a great weekend, friends!