Thanksgiving Crafts

With our new curriculum we are using our occupational and physical therapy time to do more hands on crafts and holiday related activities. The OT was here to help with tracing & cutting and the PT helped the students to move between stations using their gross motor skills and building their school muscles. They did bear walking, wheelbarrow walking and all kinds of other yoga poses while they waiting their turn at the craft stations.
The first project was designed by my student teacher and uses the students hand & foot prints to make a turkey. This activity required a lot cutting so it was excellent practice using their fine motor skills. It also required the students to plan how to put the parts together to make it look like a turkey. This was inspired by this pinterest post.

 This 2nd project was designed by my co-teacher's long term substitute. She mixed equal parts shaving cream and Elmer's school glue to make these puffy shapes. The kids loved getting all gooey to mix it together and create a blob on their paper. They then needed to rip paper feathers and stick them in the glue mixture in the shape of the turkey. The teacher added the eyes, beaks and legs to finish the project. We thought next time maybe we would have the kids stick googly eyes on the blob before it dries. When it dries, they remain puffy and soft.

Last Day of School!!

It's the last day of school for the kiddos and boy are they excited! Mrs. Moody made these cute little end of the year treats to send home with them today.

Have a great summer SMARTIE Pants!!

Diary of a Spider

Today we read the story Diary of a Spider as a follow up to Diary of a Worm both by Doreen Cronin. The kids really enjoy these stories and I find them great for helping to teach the kids about perspective. During this language group, the OT often pushes in so today we did a craft that required them to cut and plan how to make their web. We just made cuts into a paper plate around the edge and made a hole in the middle to give a starting point. The kids then needed to pull the string around the plate and criss-cross the strings in order to build a web. We then just used a little puff ball, google eyes and pipe cleaners to make a spider for the web.






Unrelated student quote for today: While looking at a dinosaur book during free reading:

Student: I really like the veggiesaurus!
Teacher: The what? Which dinosaur is that?
Student: The one that only eats veggies so they won't eat me!

We Love Spring!

We are so excited that spring is finally here! Our Physical and Occupational Therapists took the group outside today to collect objects for a reverse scavenger hunt. The students were asked to pick out 5 different  objects from the school yard. They found sticks, rocks, grass, bark, moss, pine cones & needles and even a little dog poo. (Yes, you read that correctly) When we returned to the classroom, they needed to spread out their items and create the scavenger hunt list of objects. This activity integrated their PT & OT needs as well as the classroom theme.

Groundhog Day

Happy Groundhog Day!

Today we celebrated by learning more about Groundhogs. Did you know that inside their burrows, they create a separate location for sleeping and using the bathroom? This was just one of the very interesting facts our kiddos got a kick out of!

We used a really neat SMART board presentation to introduce the holiday and learn a little more about groundhogs. Then we did a groundhog craft. I got the idea here, but tweaked it a little bit to create the 3-D image in the pictures. The students used black construction paper and white chalk to create the "shadow." We then taped just the feet of the ground hog (face down) to the page and taped a pipe cleaner to the back so it can stand up and see it's shadow.

We read the story "Groundhog Goes Outside" from readinga-z.com as a class and played a memory game matching objects with their shadows.  

The kids wrapped up the morning with writing. They had to answer the question "If you were a groundhog, what would you want to see? Shadow or no shadow?" We reviewed writing a complete sentence using the words and details from the question. Then to see how well they understood the legend of groundhog day, they had to draw a spring or winter picture depending on their desire.

The students homework for the weekend is to try and find out if Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow or not. We graphed their predictions on the SMART board and they can't wait to see if they were right. They voted 5-4 that he would see his shadow.

Friendship

This week we have learned about how to treat people, choosing friends and what makes a good friend. We have learned about Martin Luther King Jr and his dream for our country. The students heard more about it at our schools morning program where the teachers presenting talked about choosing good friends and the characteristics of a good friend. Our school counselor has also been working with them on learning to be "bucket fillers" which is the idea that doing something kind for someone else makes everyone feel good!

Today we read A Visitor for Bear by Bonnie Becker. In the story a grumpy bear lives alone and likes it that way until a little mouse comes along and is very persistent and the two become friends. I found these great freebie friendship scenarios for the students to act out. It was tricky at first, but then they really got into acting out each situation to show how they can be good friends that are generous, honest, helpful and good sports. I saved the "compliments" card for last in order to transition to us writing our "friendship mini books" where the students each wrote one nice thing about what makes each student a good friend. They were then able to take home a book filled with compliments about what good friends they are. I only wish I wasn't missing three of them today. This is a hard activity to go back and make up for them.

On A Snowy Winter Day

We have a book shelf in our classroom for our theme books. Every few weeks we update the books in this area to seasonal, holiday, science, etc..related books. This gives the students the opportunity to preview books we will be reading or revisit books we have read as a class. Since Christmas, we updated this shelf with all of our winter/snow related books.

The first book we read from this group was Snowy Winter Day by Estelle Feldman. The kids loved all the activities in the book and it really got them thinking about what they like to do in the snow. As a class, we brainstormed a dozen activities that they enjoy doing on snowy days. Each student then chose one activity to write about and illustrate to make our own book for our classroom library. The story ends with the children going to sleep and more snow falling down. As a follow up activity, we had the students lay on the floor and draw night time snowy scenes using black paper and chalk (making the OT & PT happy).

I don't have a picture of the final product yet, as it needs to be cut out and put together still but I'll get to it! The kids love reading their own work.

Final Day of Christmas Fun (for this year)

Teaching in a multi-age classroom gets a little tricky on special days like today. Some general education teachers invited our students to their classrooms so we actually ended up with only 3 students for most of this final half-day before Christmas vacation. We read The Gingerbread Girl by Lisa Campbell Ernst and let the students decorate their own gingerbread cookies. In this version, the girl is made with lots of candy to make her especially sweet so she won't want to run away. With so few students, we just let them have at all the decorations they wanted. This is what they ended up with:

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! Enjoy the holiday season with your family and friends and we will be back after the New Year!

Santa's Workshop

Just some quick pictures of our gifts for the students parents. Santa came to visit us at our morning program and he read the book 'Twas the Night Before Christmas to the whole school. We made a mini-book for each student and re-read it together. Then we used baby food jars, construction paper and cotton balls to make a Santa face. We filled the jars w/ red tissue paper to give him Rosy cheeks.

We read Frosty the Snowman and again used baby food jars to create a decorative jar using the children's hand print wrapped around the bottom of the jar so each finger is a snowman. We did a similar craft last year using a plain bulb ornament.  

In order to safely wrap these glass gifts, we used a brown lunch bag and had the student cut Christmas images out of wrapping paper and printed gift tags made by Mrs. Moody. This was a great activity to work on cutting and planning for size and space usage.

All Aboard! Polar Express Day

We started our day by reading The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg. This is such an amazing story to read to students this age. To see the wonder and excitement in their eyes when we show the bell that Santa gave to us to share with them really sparks your Christmas spirit!

As a writing activity, the students needed to recall and choose a favorite part in the story. We really got the students to stretch their thinking to specific moments. Many of them liked the train or the bell. With encouragement, they were able to give the exact moment from the book such as when they drank hot chocolate on the train or when the little boy opened the bell on Chirstmas morning. We are working very hard on getting the students to meet the common core standards of supporting their ideas and responses with specific information from the given text. I was pleased to see how well they were able to do this with a much more complicated text.

We followed up with independent work that included activities for handwriting, cutting, word work, shapes and letter recognition.

For snack, we made Polar Express Hot Chocolate and train treats which were both inspired from pinterest.

The occupational therapist pushes into our classroom every other day and today was her day. We put a model of a train on our SMART board. The students needed to cut out given shapes and use those to build the train. Then could then color the train anyway they would like.

The following amazing bloggers helped us create this fun, festive and educational day!

Flying Into First

Living Life Intentionally

The...the...the...GRINCH!

This week is a crazy week in the world of a primary school. So we are embracing the excitement by celebrating a little differently each day with one of our favorite Christmas books. Today is How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss. We only had our K/1 students this morning because the 2nd graders were off carolling at the VA hospital.

We started by reading the story and making our own connections booklet. The students needed to identify the Grinch's feelings at the beginning and the end. They then made a page giving an example of what makes them feel grumpy and happy. This was a great writing activity and I was very proud that they were all able to come up with their own ideas and reasons to support their answers. We brainstormed other words we could use to describe his feelings as well.

We then watched the movie and with a little "pinspiration" I came up with a cute little craft that we turned into ornaments to be taken home. All you need is a small paper plate, green paint, red and white paper, a cotton ball and google eyes. The students painted the plate green to make his face, and then used their fine motor skills to rip paper to make the hat, eyes and mouth.

For math, I found 2 great math activities. One is a dice game for addition and the other is using the 100s chart to color a surprise (a Grinch face). I modified the dice game for my younger students by whiting out 7-12 and adding a 1. I gave them a dot dice to count sets and record their data. The other students used 2 die; one dot and one with a number to practice counting on for addition. They all recorded their information by coloring in one square for each sum they got until they filled one whole column. This is slightly different from the directions on the page.

Reindeer Games!

This Friday we themed our Holiday activities around reindeer. We started by reading the short story "Five Little Reindeer" The story is similar to the Five Little Pumpkins poem which helped the students follow along as we read it together. We were also able to review ordinal numbers and rhyming words.

Next, we made reindeer food to help the reindeer find our homes on Christmas eve with oats, sugar and glitter to catch their attention in the snow.  (Hopefully, we'll have some by then)  We read Olive, the Other Reindeer by J.Otto Seibold & Vivian Walsh to keep us in the reindeer mood!

Then, we watched Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and made reindeer treats using a chocolate donut, a red peanut m&m, 2 white chocolate chips and a pretzel. The students made one to eat now and one to take home. This was an excellent activity to work on their fine motor skills, visual perception and planning.

We went on to read "Rudolph, Rudolph" which was a great little book to review color words and rhyming. We also used the coloring activity that required the students to roll a number to find the correct color. The students worked as teams to complete this activity.

We did not get to many activities today, but they will make great centers for next week. We had a great addition packet and color by number activity.  I also found a cute reindeer themed bump it game for math and a pattern activity. Check out the links below to get all these FREE activities from some great teachers!

The following people helped provide materials for these activities: reindeer snack , reindeer food tags, dice game, addition packet, Five Little Reindeer book, , bump it math game, patterns, The Rudolph, Rudolph book came from moomootutu.blogspot.com, but I can't find the link to the exact unit and there is a bunch of great stuff in it!  

Snowmen Adventures

With so much excitement in the air about the Christmas season, we decided to use Fridays as our winter/Christmas craft day and incorporate a variety of language, literacy and math skills throughout the activities.

Snowmen at Night by Caralyn Buehner is one of my favorite winter stories. We used this book as the base for our first literacy and craft activity.

We read the story and while we made our pine cone snowmen we brainstormed ideas for the adventures each one would have. You can find the directions for the craft activity here. 

The students were then asked to write a short story detailing the adventures their snowman would take. We used printed snowmen to help them see that the character they chose will be the same character through the story. We then used transitional words (first, then, next, finally) to help lead their ideas and make a story. Here is an example from "The Adventures of Daisy" by Alexander. "First, Daisy will go sledding. Next, Daisy went skiing on a giant mountain. Then she went down the mountain to the finish line. Finally, she had hot cocoa and candy."

I will put the free template for the story on my Teachers Pay Teachers store soon.

MORE Thanksgiving Fun!

This week has been full of Thanksgiving activities! We tasted a variety of Thanksgiving side dishes. The students got to taste stuffing, apples, mashed potatoes, homemade squash, apple sauce and cranberry sauce. Mrs. Neumann, our OT, did this in another classroom in our building and shared the idea with us. We were able to tie in our first grade science curriculum by having the students describe the color and texture of the foods as they tried each one. We tied in our math curriculum by collecting data about which ones they liked or did not like. We could have furthered that by creating a class graph comparing the information we collected. I'll keep that in mind for next year!

                                                

Then we wrote our own Thanksgiving recipe book. We tried to be as accurate as possible by remembering what we tasted and researching some recipes and pictures online before writing our own. This really helped the students to use more interesting language when writing. They used words like sprinkle, steam, boil, degrees, and stir. We were also able to discuss informational writing. We used the transitional words first, then, next and last. Each student will get a copy of this book to take home for their parents to read and enjoy. The kids did a fantastic job, but I hope they don't follow these recipes exactly! (PS: I posted my Thanksgiving recipes format in my TPT store)

We also made handprint Turkeys as a gift to someone we are thankful for. I found the poem on this blog. The kids always enjoy painting their hands for various projects.