Thanksgiving

It has been so long since I've posted! Things always get CRAZY this time of year! I know its late, but here's some of the great stuff we did for Thanksgiving.

 This is our "Squanto Snack" We read about Squanto and made this delicious snack to help see how he helped the Pilgrims with their crops. We smashed Oreos, then placed it in a cup (dirt) and put candy corn in the dirt with a Swedish Fish gummy. They LOVED this!!!

 POW WOW!!! Pow Wow is always so much fun. We made turkeys out of paper bags the day before. We made costumes and hats and went outside to go hunting! Students were put in "hunting party's" and sent out with a small bow and stick to go hunt their Turkey.

 Feast Time!!! We ate beef jerky, dried fruit, nuts, berries and popcorn.

October fun

Some high school students are coming over to share some science activities on Fridays. We were a bit shy this first time around!

 Pumpkin Happy Poem. Our poem of the week was a little more 3 dimensional this week. Students shows their favorite line from the poem and made their pumpkin and sentence match.

Four seasons craft. So Cute!!!

A few Pumpkin Day party activities.

Scarecrows and Owls

We are moving into Fall units! This is one of my favorite times of the year. We read plenty of Scarecrow and owl books and are getting ready to jump into BATS!! We also started working on word families. In addition, my class  completed the PALS test this week (Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening). We've been busy!!

All the graphics/fonts I used this week in my worksheets are by DJ Inkers www.djinkers.com 

For this sheet students rolled a die and placed the corresponding amount of patches on their scarecrow. Students worked in groups and tried to see who could complete their scarecrow first.

 This was a similar game where students used two dice and had to match the dots to a numbered flower. They competed against others at their table. If they had already rolled a colored number they had to wait for another turn to try again. This game took a long time, but they LOVED it.

We did this activity during small group rotations. I used pictures that began and ended with the letter sounds we've covered r, s, t, m, n, p, c.

I was able to do both beginning sounds with some groups and ending sounds with the students who were ready for it. 

Our poem of the week. We highlighted Popcorn words together on this poster. I was thrilled to find this cute  Owl outfit to wear for this unit!! Yes, I'm a nerd :)

 Here is the same poem we put into our poetry notebook. Students again highlighted the Popcorn words they knew with a yellow crayon. The owl pics are from scrappin doodles.

Our Paper Plate owls turned out SOOOO Cute! We used scrapbooking paper to glue on to the wings for added cuteness. 

 Added bonus!! Our art teacher just happened to do the cutest Owl hats this week too!!!

Apples

Its been all about apples these past two weeks. Here are a few of the many math and literacy activities we did.

We worked on this worksheet in reading groups. I cut out clipart pics beginning with the letter we've studied and put them on colored apples. The students would color an apple on their sheet that matched the apple they were looking at. Then we figured out the letter the picture started with and wrote it in the box below.

We read 10 Apples Up on Top. We sequenced the numbers and balanced them on our own tiger's head. Then for fun we tried to see how many apples WE could balance up on top. This was so much fun!

Noone got more than 3 :)

This is the poetry notebook poem of the week. We are finding more and more popcorn words each day!

We made these cute apples with paper plates. Then we cut up Popcorn words and built simple sentences.

Apple Graphing

We read several versions of Johnny Appleseed and made our own pots to wear.

Applesauce!

Reading Rotations

I started Reading Groups this week. This is always my favorite part of the day. I love small groups and the "organized chaos" of the room at this time. Everyone is BUSY for this 50 minute block! I was a little hesitant to even attempt rotations this year with the amount of students. I have 22! In past years when I had 16-18, I was able to do 3 groups where they would rotate from teacher/seatwork/literacy center. With the numbers I have this year I decided to add another spot in the rotation to keep the groups small. Luckily I was able to secure one of the TA's in the building to be with me at this time EVERY day. She will have her own teacher station to work on Dolch words and Word Study. So far it it is going GREAT!!! Here is an image of what my CRAZY chart looks like:

We are taking it slow. Right now I am talking them through how to read the chart before we start and making sure everyone knows where they need to go when I have them switch. Each station is about 10-15 minutes. Many of them have already gotten the swing of things. 

Monsters and Shapes

This week we worked a lot on Shapes. I always loved the Hubbard's Cupboard Shape Monster Book, so I decided to expand on that and create a "monster theme". Here are some of the activities we did.

In Math we sequenced numbers to ten with partners. Then we filled out a matching worksheet.

To complete the sheet, students colored the monsters in an AB pattern.

Popcorn Word Match and Write

This was a new station I added to Reading Group Rotations. Students point and read the sentences and then write the missing words in the sentences to match.

I created my own shape monster book that was a little easier to assemble than the Hubbard's Cupboard version. They glued the correct shape to each page.

After reading the book we made our OWN shape monsters! Each table got a large shape and a bunch of small shapes to decorate with. They had a lot of fun with this and they turned out so CUTE! Students were given a homework assignment to bring in items or magazine cut outs with shapes. They presented the items they brought in and fed them to the correct monster.

The final product on display!