Thanksgiving has come and gone...

...and I am finally posting about it! Gosh I am behind! I swear we actually did these activities before Thanksgiving...I am just finally getting around to sharing them (maybe put them in your save bank for next year! ;))

We started off last week by reading "Turkey Trouble" by Wendy Silvano. Then we created some fab "turkeys in disguise". You can get the template for this activity by clicking here. Thank you for sharing Tori!

I know this is a project that most send home for students to work on with their families. However, as many of my students do not have the resources to complete them at home, I always do them in class. I ask them to bring little items if they can contribute and then I bust out my craft supplies! It is quite hilarious to see what the students come up with on their own anyway! Here are a few samplings:

A "fireman"

A "gift" and a "poodle"

Yea...see those beans along side the poodle...are you thinking the same as I was. The poodle did her business....you would be incorrect. I was informed that they are eggs lol...apparently we need to review the whole mammal thing!

A "rainbow and a "dinosaur"

Also please note the "Nemo" at the bottom of the page. When I asked this student why he was adding a fish he informed me because his face looks frightened and dinosaurs are scary. The things kids think of!

We also did an activity in Spanish last week to reflect on what we are thankful for. I only had time to snag one photo as we were scrambling to get it done at the end of the day....but he is our "Doy gracias..." mobile we created as a decoration for our homes!

If you would like a copy of the template for this (for next year...or if you get in the "thankful" spirit at another point throughout the year) you can grab it by clicking on the templates below. I just precut and hole punched the construction paper for my students to glue their work to in creating the mobile! This saved some serious time!

We also took the opportunity to make some comparisons between past and present last week. Here is a quick venn diagram we created as a class after reading the book "If You Lived in Colonial Times..." While reading, I gave the kiddos post-its, one labeled S for Same and one D for Different and as I read I asked them to jot down anything they heard in the text that was the similar or different to our present day lives. Here are some of the things they came up with:

We are finishing up past and present this week before embarking on our "Celebrations Around the World" unit the first week of December!

What time is it? Freebie

I found this latest math activity on Pinterest and thought it was just too perfect for our review of telling time to the hour/half hour. Here is the link to the original at Red Ted Art's Blog if you would like to check it out as well.

In the original activity, the students just cut circles and drew their own clock faces. To save some time on my end, I stamped a clock face on to a notecard. Then I wrote a specific time to the hour or half hour on the back of the notecard and each student was responsible for drawing the hands to represent the time on the back of their card onto the face of their clock. Once this was finished, we stapled the clock face to a strip of paper for a watch band. And voila...!

Once finished making our watches, I shared with the students that they would be walking around the room and asking their peers "¿Qué hora es/ What time is it?". Once asked, the classmate instead of telling them the time will simply quietly show them their watch face so that they can read the time. The students then record the time that they read next to the corresponding classmates name on the "What time is it?" recording sheet.

Here are some of my kiddos participating in the activity. They were so engaged. It was a great way to practice telling time vocabulary!

You can grab a copy of the Powerpoint to create your own "¿Qué hora es?/What time is it?" recording sheet by clicking the image below. By adding text boxes you can add your students' names to the 1st, 3rd, and 5th columns. Then your students will fill in the time next to each peer's name in the correponding space in the 2nd, 4th, and 6th columns. 

Graphics and Fonts by Creative Clips, The 3am Teacher, and Kevin & Amanda.

Once the students had sufficient time to walk around the room finding the time, we came back together as a class, and I called on each student to share the actual time on their watch to check our work. They did a great job with it, and it made for an authentic learning experience with telling time!

Super Citizens

This past week we have been focusing on how to be good citizens! 

After learning what a citizen is, we worked to come up ideas relaying things we could do to be good citizens of our communities! 

Yes, yes....I made a boo boo and used a sentence strip to cover it up rather than re-do the whole poster! You can barely tell right?!

Here are some examples of what my kiddos wrote on their post-its:

The next day we put our ideas into action. I shared with the kiddos that not only were we going to learn about being good citizens, we ARE going to be good citizens!

We went about writing these letters to the our parents sharing our plans. 

We discussed how one way to be a good citizen is by giving back to others in our community. Thus, we started collecting cans...and after just two days...here is where we are...

I think I am going to need another container! We will be collecting them until Thanksgiving break when I shared with my students that I will be bringing them to the pantry. Each morning we add tally marks representing the cans we bring it....good tie in to math too!

This week we also learned about what a law is and how good citizens follow the laws of their community!

We then created this class book reflecting laws that we follow in our community each day!

"The Superkids Always Follow Laws"

Here are a few pages that were created:

Okay all...use your picture clues...what do you think this law is?

(If you guessed putting on your seatbelt, you are correct!)

And of course....we should not steal from houses or stores!

We will be continuing our government unit this coming week, so I'll share more as we get to it!

Happy Veteran's Day!