Talkin Turkey

Here is some of the fun we had learning about the first Thanksgiving.  Can't believe it has taken me so long to update with pictures.  It seems like we have not had a second to just stop and catch our breath. 

Enjoy!

 

Pilgrim and Native American writing

 

Looking for pictures of words that begin with the letters in the word Thanksgiving. 

 

I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie writing

 

 

Placemats with patterns

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Home sweet home

In November, we studied homes/family and shapes to kick the month off.  Here are the shape posters we created for the 2D shapes.  Each day we looked at features of each shape and hunted for real life examples of each one to add to our chart.

We read The Shape of Things and selected a shape to create a new picture by adding a few extra details.  These turned out so good!  I did not take new photos after they were colored, but they were amazing!

 

Here are a few samples....

 

 ninjas

 a bunny and the ninja from above

 Santa!!

 

We looked at photos of different types of houses and discovered that people use the resources avaiable to them to build houses that meet their needs.  We read lots of different versions of the 3 pigs and compared them.  We discussed story elements such as character, setting, and events (beginning, middle, end).  We focused on setting one day and drew the 3 main settings from one of the stories.

 

 **photos coming soon**

 

We read The True Story of the Three Little Pigs (one of my personal faves) and discussed point of view.  This story is told from the wolf's perspective.  We talked about who we felt was truly the guilty party after reading this story and created a WANTED poster for either the wolf or the pigs.  So much fun... It was pretty even for each side. 

 

We watched this short video

and got into small groups to build a wolf proof house.  I put out lots of different building materials for the groups to choose from.  I was so excited to watch the kids test out their houses as they worked by blowing on them.  Then...the big bad wolf came around and tried to blow the houses down.

 

 (idea from sewingschool.blogspot)

 

Some other great 3 pig stories

 

    

We read the last one The Three Little Aliens and the Big Bad Robot on my Nook using the document camera.  I introduced Harold's second reading super power...asking questions using this story.  We made "I wonder..." statements and recorded them before reading this story. 

Some examples were:

I wonder if the robot will knock down their houses. 

I wonder if he will eat the robots. 

I wonder if they will build houses on Earth. 

I wonder if he will become a good robot.

 

We made shape houses for snack on Friday and recorded a recipe (from Kim Adsit's family unit). 

 

 

Parents...I found this video when researching 3 pigs activities and thought it was pretty interesting to think about how their story would play out in the media today.  I knew it was a bit too much for the kids, but thought you might like to check it out.  Pretty interesting spin on what would happen in 2012 if this were a true story.  Let me know what you think.  :-) 

 



Halloween fun

Back already! Here are just a couple of shots of some of the fun we had Halloween week!

Math stations

 

 
  Frankie from Deanna Jump's Halloween unit.  We read a story together on the smart board about Frankie and created a bubble map to describe him. 

We read Where's My Mummy?  and wrote about our text to self or text to text connections.  The kids are getting so good at sharing their connections.  They are truly digging deep and not just making the "I know someone named Tim" connections.  We created our own mummies using tissues. 
 

We did a directed drawing of a monster and wrote adjectives and action words that could go with monsters.  Here are a few samples.

 

I love Halloween, but I am glad it is over!!!  Now on to Thanksgiving...

Pumpkins and stuff

One of the days I will get caught up...at least that is what I keep telling myself.  I think I need to designate a student photographer as one of my weekly jobs.  I am always so caught up in what we are doing, I forget to pick up the camera and take pics of what we are doing.  I want to give parents a window into what we are doing in the classroom, but have not found the right balance/combination of how to get the pictures taken.  We'll see...

Here are a few pictures that I was able to snap of some of the fun we had with pumpkins. 
We used our class pumpkin to complete a pumpkin investigation.  We described the inside and outside.  We practiced estimating and counting using the lines and the seeds.  We had heard that the number of lines on a pumpkin is related to the quantity of seeds inside.  We had 26 lines on our pumpkin and 458 seeds.  We checked with the other classrooms and we all had lines in the 20s and seeds in the 500s.  Interesting...

Counting seeds

Measuring circumference 


We made 3D pumpkins and labeled the parts.

 

We learned about the life cycle of a pumkin. 

 



We read Pumpkinheads and made our own silly pumpkin faces.  I saw these on a blog last year and thought they were just too cute not to do.  They look so awesome with our owls. 

 

We read The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything and created a brace map for the parts of a scarecrow.  We used this activity to help us retell the story. 

 

Here is a song we listened to about the story.  The kids loved it!!

 

 

We visited the computer lab and used Kid Pix to create a picture of a pumpkin patch.  We learned how to use several of the drawing tools and the text tool to label our illlustration.  This was our first experience with Kid Pix and the kids did a phenomenal job.

Here are a few examples of our storybook character pumpkins.  Everyone did such an amazing job with these.  I loved them all (but of course forgot to take pictures until the kids were getting ready to walk out the door with them)!! I wish I had more photos of  all of the projects because they truly were outstanding.