Gobble Gobble!!

We only had 2 days of school this week but we packed it in with a lot of Gobble Gobble Turkey Talk! We made a Turkey Sentence Wheel and used adjectives to describe our turkeys and added them to the super sentences.

 

The kids made these 2 different turkeys. They made turkeys counting by tens and used what we have learned about symmetry to make these Symmetrical Turkeys. This has been a favorite activity for years! I love the way they turn out and they have so much fun decorating them!

Turkeys Counting By 10’s!

Symmetrical Turkeys!

 

I feel very blessed to have my wonderful job, great parents, and super sweet kids! I hope everyone has a very Happy Thanksgiving!!! Off to cook now…

Turkey Time & Pilgrims-Ready for Thanksgiving!

After spending a week learning about the Native Americans we went on to our learning of Pilgrims and the First Thanksgiving and we are finishing up with Turkeys…GOBBLE GOBBLE!! Our centers this week were Turkey Trot Sorting Nouns and Verbs. Turkey Ten Frame Race using 2 ten frames and two sided counters to create a number sentence to race to 20. Turkey Number Order-using numbers to 75 and putting them in order from least to greatest. Pilgrim Fact Families-creating 2 addition sentences and 2 subtraction sentences using 3 numbers that belong in the Pilgrim “Fact” Family. Turkey Sentence Scramble-creating complete sentences by unscrambling the cards and then adding their own punctuation marks and capital letters. Graphing Turkeys-creating a bar graph then answering questions about the graph and adding sets of turkeys. Turkey Telling and Asking Sentences-reading sentences and writing them with capital letters and adding a period or question mark. Turkey Turn Down-rolling a number cube and using numbers 0-6 turning over 2 numbers that can add up to the sum of the number rolled on the cube and turning over the turkeys with those numbers. Students race against each other to see who can get their turkeys turned over first!

 

We took a ride on the Mayflower after sequencing the events of the Pilgrims voyage we made these Mayflowers with the pictures and story events.

We read several stories about the life of a pilgrim and compared them to how we celebrate Thanksgiving today. We also did a Venn Diagram of past and present Thanksgiving events. This cute activity was found on-line so I can’t take credit for it!

After doing our compare/contrast activity we made our Pilgrims and wrote about what Pilgrim kids had/did and what we have/do today. I loved the way their art projects turned out. I found the writing idea from Cara at The First Grade Parade to add to our art project and class discussion on past and present Thanksgivings. I loved their ideas! TOO CUTE!

We finished up the week with a study on Turkeys. We did a HUGE KWL on our promethean and brainstormed what we Know about turkeys, what we Want to know about turkeys, and finished up with what we LEARNED about turkeys. We used a fantastic book by Jim Arnosky called All About Turkeys and made our Tell Me About Turkeys facts book that went perfectly with it.

 

For the past 2 weeks the students have been working VERY hard on earning feathers for their Native American headbands. They earned feathers for following our Maize Way Character Traits, doing good deeds, having neat work, and working quietly, etc…After 2 weeks we have a winner of the most feathers and our new “chief” is Sophie! Congrats to her and to all of the kids that are using the Maize Way Character Traits!

Happy Thanksgiving from Our Tribe!

Taking a Trip!

This week in reading we read about taking a trip. I had the students each bring a picture of their family on a trip. They wrote stories by answering the following questions:

Where did you go on your trip? How did you get there? What did you see on your trip? What did you do on your trip? Did you go and visit anyone special? Would you like to go to the same place again? Why or why not? How did you feel about your trip?

They did a FANTASTIC job putting all these elements in their stories! It was fun to listen to their stories about going to Disney World, New Orleans, Houston, Branson, South Padre, Florida, Texas, Sea World, Colorado, the beach, Yugoslavia, KU football game, grandma’s house, etc…Here are a few samples of their writing and how proud they were:

Native Americans

Learning about the First Thanksgiving and the impact that our Native American friends had on the First Thanksgiving was our focus this past week. We spent time learning about a few of the different tribes and where they are located in the United States. We also spent a lot of time enjoying many Native American tales and discussing the meanings of the stories.

     

We read the story Dancing With The Indians and learned about Pow Wows and made these friendship bags. We discussed what we would take to a Pow Wow to celebrate like they did in the story.

After reading Giving Thanks we made a sensory poem about things that we like to see, hear, touch, taste, and smell in nature.

  

Their favorite stories were Raven, The Legend of the Blue Bonnet, and The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush. They were very touched on how the girl gave up her only possession and burned her doll as an offering for her people. We then made a class book about our favorite possessions. On Monday we are going to finish up our unit and make some Indian Paintbrushes!

Centers:

I was not very good about taking pictures at center time this week. I was short my parent helpers so I only got a few pictures. A few skills we worked on were sorting feathers after adding and subtracting facts and matching them to the correct Native American. Sorting Tee Pees, Dream Catchers, and Arrows by 2’s, 5’s, and 10’s. They did a center called Ten Little Indians and used number words, sight words, adjectives, and verbs to make complete sentences. They also did a real/nonsense word sort, Thanksgiving Addition Game, Thanksgiving Sentence Scramble, and Thanksgiving ABC order. As always they worked hard at centers and enjoyed having new partners this week!

Turkeys are next! Gobble Gobble!!