Thanksgiving and Turkey Weeks

The last two weeks have been a whirlwind of turkeys, natives, and pilgrims!  We started with turkeys. We used {Deanna's November Guiding Readers pack}.

She has a nonfiction book within the pack, so after we did some fiction fun with Turkey Trouble, we used her Nonfiction book. I usually project her books on the screen, since I can...and the kids love looking at it nice and big.  We added to our "Schema, New Learning, and Misconceptions" chart as we read.  We always add so much to the "new learning" section....and every so often, we move things over to the misconception side. I really like this kind of chart in lieu of a KWL.

We also wrote our If I was a Turkey Class book. You can grab it for free {HERE}.

And we also did a turkey preposition book. I don't do actual lessons with prepositions in my class. We just periodically write books where they use prepositions in their writing. You can grab this freebie {HERE}.

We did our Turkey Numbers. I do the pumpkins in October and Turkeys in November.  I give them random numbers and the give me the word form, tally marks, addition, subtraction, ten frames and fact families.

THEN, it was on to Thanksgiving - Pilgrims, natives, and Mayflower fun!

We used our Scholastic News magazines to help us. I kept last year's set and we used this year's set....and we got all kinds of good information!

We did the Mayflower book. This is one of my favorite activities. The idea came from Cara {HERE}, and I've just tweaked it a little here and there each year.

One day was all about making crafts for our Thanksgiving performance. We needed to make our vests, hats, headbands.... so I had some rotations going. They did a directed drawing from {Doodle Bugs Teaching} in one rotation.

They came out so cute!!

Another rotation was turkey headbands.

And painting their native vests. I had some symbols on a page they could look at to use on their vests if they wanted.

and another station was making their placemats. These are so stinkin' cute - they come from Kelley at {Teacher Idea Factory}. 

Our classroom was all set for our families to come watch our performance!

For our performance, we used Reagan's Thanksgiving Freebie {HERE}.

After the performance, while the families were still hanging out, I decided to make the turkey cookies. Sure, why not, right!? haha

The next day, which was Tuesday...our last day before break. It was time to take down the November fun and start putting up the December fun!  I had another round of rotations going.... One was the pattern blocks activities from {Little Kinder Warriors}.  They really love these! I have them ready for a quick math center, or rotation filler for these kinds of days.

Another rotation was their Class tree decorating.  I got this idea from Kelley...again. I love her ideas. She's super creative! She gives step by step on how to make the class tree {HERE}.

I had a parent volunteer in the room and she helped with the glitter station. Oh my gosh. Glitter. It's a love/hate relationship haha

Then we put the trees together to make class trees - so stinkin' cute!!

So now my room is ready for when we get back and it's December. As much as I love October and November, I love December too!

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Caroline's Birthday Weekend

What a whirlwind of a year it has been! My little Caroline just turned one! If you want to see the pictures of her Sunshine birthday, click {HERE}.

I also did an updated ABC photo shoot that you can check out {HERE}.

I'll be back Monday with some pictures of our Thanksgiving performance we're doing! Pretty excited about it! Our room is all ready to have our guests. As tiny as a room it is, we made it work :)

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Seasons - Freebies!

Last week we did some fun things with learning the seasons.  

Most of our learning came from our small group books. I use Reading A-Z, so I can make the themes fit what I want usually.  And it did PERFECTLY!

After a few days of really learning about seasons, we did a craft idea on an apple tree. They kids should REALLY know the apple tree, right?!  So that's what I like to do.  I got the picture of the tree from {THIS} post. It's a JPEG download (the link is in the comments on her blogpost). After I printed it, I just used good old fashion white out to cover the season names.  They colored the tree brown, then cute apart the tree. (She has them already divided up)   

They put the pieces back together on the paper and then I had them label the seasons, IN ORDER.

Once they had them in order (they could start with whatever season they wanted), I called them back to the table to do their painting.

And now they hang in our room - and I love them!

Another activity they did was to write their book of seasons.

I suggested they talked about the weather, the plants, what they see.....

Some were a little more detailed in their writing than others... but hey, their illustrations show me they know it!

Leaf Litter!! Our phrase we learned that week from our Scholastic News. I love it!

We really talked about the trees being bare in the winter.... you know, in other states besides Florida. 

If you want this little book, you can click {HERE} to download it.

Then, to end the week. they did a "My Favorite Season" writing, where they had to write to explain why...using what they like to do, what the weather was like, what the plants did and if the days were long and hot or short and cold. And we worked on having a closing statement. They drew what they would see if they looked out their window at home.  What would be going on outside?? Then, depending on which season they picked, they glued it to that color background.

You can grab this activity {HERE}.

Living in FL, I really like stressing about the season since we don't really have seasons here. That is the one of the FEW downfalls of living in FL.

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Turkey Preposition Book Freebie

This morning was a morning of learning in the Ross household.  (poor little teacher's kids...never safe! haha!)  Autumn made a book this morning - Where is My Turkey?  It's a book of prepositions.

Of course Brooklynn had to do it too... so her focus was coloring inside lines. If you knew what she USED to color like... like not even a month ago, oh boy.  We were worried. haha.  But school is doing wonders for her motor skills!  LOOK at how well she is staying inside those little lines on the barn! I'm super impressed.

Autumn is writing preposition sentences...over, under, beside, etc. 

The directed drawing comes from Jennifer over at {First Grade Blue Skies}.

And I'm really impressed with Autumn's spelling. She did it ALL herself. I don't believe in telling kids how to spell things...using their sounds.

In case you haven't noticed, we do a LOT of writing in my class. I really can't do ANY activity without having the kids do some kind of writing. I just think that writing goes with everything....Reading, Science, Social Studies. I don't teach grammar as a separate "content area." I teach it when I'm teaching them to write books...or stories...or paragraphs. 

If you want this book, click {HERE} to download it for FREE!

I also have a Penguin one {HERE}

and a Bumblebee one {HERE}

and a Spider one {HERE}

(All are freebies!)

I'm pretty sure I'll be making a Gingerbread one too. haha....and I think I'll have all the seasons covered - ha!

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