Thanksgiving, Farm, and More

Well, I am WAAAYYY behind with my posts.  I will learn that I need to take pictures of things one year prior to each holiday or weekly theme so that I can post them on time the following year.  My husband took a trip to Kansas for 2 weeks and I have been SWAMPED at BES with a book study, unpacking ELA standards, unpacking math CC standards, and shoooooo...... I NEED A VACATION!!  The following pictures are a hodge podge of Thanksgiving, farm, and a few Scott Foresman story charts.  I have had a few people to email me from my last post asking for copies of things or the name of stories that I use.  I will be happy to email you anything that you see that the students have completed. I am not trying to sell anything, just sharing a few ideas.  cmcbride@brewtoncityschools.org  Happy Thanksgivng to everyone!! You will notice on a few student writings that the blank are colored.  This makes it very easy to complete a whole class interactive writing.  It is an easy way to use colors as your writing guide.

                                                          Farm Fun

 We use Scott Foresman as our skeletal reading series.  This writing activity was an extension of a story called "We are So Proud".  A GREAT book with purposeful vocabulary!!

  Loopy Turkeys.... you cut strips of construction paper and the children glue the two ends together which makes a loop.  Our math topic was greater than, less than, so I allowed each student to select a number between 3-10 .  Then they placed that amount of loops on their turkey.  Then we decided if the loops equaled more than 5 or less than 5. 

 We took the last 6 stories from our reading series and sorted them according to reality or fantasy and told why each story would be placed in that category.  Then we had the children illustrate in their reading station something that was real and something was make-believe.  I LOVED this!! and so did the kids. 

All Around our Community

I have a Community unit on TPT and a few thing that I am posting are from that.  We were able to take three field trips around our town.  One of my favorite field trips is to our local Wal-Mart.  Who knew they will give you a tour of their store, give the children a large goody bag FULL of school supplies, and teach them the Wal-Mart cheer.  We also took a trip to our Electric Co-op.  The children were able to ride up in the bucket truck.  It was a great way to end our week!!

 Career Dress-up day.  I had a few kiddos that forgot, but these are just a few.  The cutest one you ask??  The lawyer in the middle!!  Gotta love the suit and tie.

 Community Vehicles and transportation.  We set these up as stations.  The children were able to pick two that they wanted to make.  It kept us from having to cut out THOUSANDS of little pieces.

 OK.  I evidently deleted the pic of the sheet that contained pics and writing.  Those that could use invented spelling were encouraged to do so and those who could write beg. sounds were encouraged as well.  Sorry, I do not have the pic with writing. You get the idea.

 In the back of Wal-Mart.  I'm telling you, if you have never taken a field trip to Wal-Mart is a WONDERFUL learning experience and they treat you like queens and kings.  They even gave goody bags to the teachers!! 

 These pics are from Southern Pine Electric.  They had a mini power line set up so the children could see what to do in case they ever see a downed power line.  It was fabulous!!

 Bucket truck rides were the high-light of the trip!!

Monster Math and Frank E. Stein

I like to give appropriate credit for things.  I found these monsters EVERYWHERE on the internet.    However, there are only a certain number of ways that you can make a monster.   If you purchased our Kindergarten Scope and Sequence from TPT, you can see that in math we are working on numbers 0-5.  I wanted a fun way to wrap up this math unit and this is what I came up with.

I am pretty picky about doing lots of Halloween activities but when I saw this book in our library I knew I had to come up with some sort of GO map.  The picture does not do it justice.  The book is called "Frankie Stein".  It is a MUST PURCHASE!! 

Pumpkin Hodge Podge

I know that many of you have already taught your pumpkin unit.  But for those of you who may need additional thoughts, ideas, or plans for next year... this is for you!! 

 Spookley the Square Pumpkin is one of my FAVORITE pumpkin books.  The movie is available too.  Great to tie into math as well!!

 The following pictures came from my co-teacher's classroom, Mrs. Robinson.