Every year we make calendars to help bring in the New Year.  Depending on the year and things going on, I sometimes have my students make these calendars the week before Winter Break, sometimes the week after we've come back.

As a class, we fill out the dates and holidays for each month.  We do 2-3 months each day.  After we fill out each month, the students spend about 5-10 minutes getting started illustrating something that happens during that month. 

Then at the end of the week, I give the students some time to add details and complete the illustrations for each month. 

The students LOVE these and always talk about them hanging up in their homes.

If you want a copy, feel free to get it here.

 Some fun Winter themed activities that we've been doing...

After learning all about snowflakes in science, we made these snowflakes that the students could hang at their home - on their tree, wall decor, whatever works for them! 

Before Winter Break, I give the students these gifts of crayons and an activity book filled with things that can help keep them busy over the break (and to help prevent any Winter slide).

This year we made snowman magnets as gifts from the students to their parents for the holidays.  This activity only took about 10-15 minutes and they all ended up super cute!! The students all decorated them their own way and then put a picture of themselves where the purple frame is on my example.

I've been searching for the best Holiday gift and I think this is one that I will repeat for ages!! 

 When we learned about the Pilgrims at the beginning of this month, we also learned about the Wampanoag tribe.

Today we read a class favorite and as we were reading we were reminded of our own likes & dislikes. 

After reading, we talked about how Little Pea doesn't like to eat candy.  We then shared one thing we do not like.

We also thought about what Little Pea does like and what we like. 

Today we learned all about the Life of a Pilgrim Child.  The lessons we did happened to be an extension of the last post, BUT I have done these as stand-alone activities before.

We started off today by reading some of our favorite Pilgrim books.

If I had a copy, I would have also read the book "Samuel Eaton's Day: A Day in the Life of a Pilgrim Boy" by Kate Waters.

Then we added to our pilgrim boy and girl venn diagram.

We then went back into our character roles that we did as part of our Mayflower lesson which you can find here.  

To refresh your memory: we finished watching the first 10 minutes of Charlie Brown Mayflower Voyage and they are now at the part where they are about to get off the ship & explore the New World. 

I told the students that before they can get off the Mayflower and explore the New World (w/ Charlie Brown), they had to write an expert piece about children living in Pilgrim times.

After they finished their writing, they created themselves as a pilgrim boy/girl.   

You can get the pilgrim writing paper & templates here.

It's November!!

This November I had to go ahead and restructure my plans...normally I do election stuff around President's Day but with the election happening I decided to rearrange and talk about elections in November.  Also, we have a full off for Thanksgiving rather than 3 days...ughhh.  Anyone else have this happening this year?? How do you feel?? I'm feeling like those 2 days before are also a nice time with my students and also that no one else in my family is taking the whole week off so I'm just hanging around for 2 days until we are all ready to go on our family trip on Wednesday.  But may be that's just me...    

Anyway, so I restructured my November plans...

Week 1: Past/Present: Mayflower, Pilgrims & Wampanoags   

Week 2: The forming of America & Elections

Week 3: Thanksgiving Traditions

We started off this week by reviewing the past and present by doing a past and present sorting activity. We did a lot of Past/Present work when we learned about Christopher Columbus so this is just a continuation of that & America's history.

We started by learning about the Mayflower today.  We began by picking up & [[skim]]  reading one of our favorite book series!!

As we read a section of the book, we would jot down fact onto our "Life on the Mayflower" anchor chart.

After we had researched about the Mayflower, what life was like on the Mayflower, and why the Pilgrims went on the Mayflower I told the students it was time for them to pack their chests because they were about to go on their own Mayflower voyage.  They were SO EXCITED!  We reviewed what things the Pilgrims were allowed to take with them & then they were each handed their own chest to pack with things that they would have had in the Pilgrim era.  

Click on the pic above for a free copy of the template.

Once they all had packed their chests, they were told to meet at the carpet.  We happened to do this entire lesson in one day; however, it can easily be split into 2).  We talked about how we were going to pretend the carpet was the Mayflower.  As we sat aboard the Mayflower, we watched the 1st 10 minutes of "Charlie Brown - Mayflower Voyage" - while I do not watch video often, there are so many benefits of using this one!! 

1) It is pretty historically correct

2) Charlie Brown is pretending he was on the Mayflower Voyage - just as the students were

3) The sounds within the media often changed based on the emotions happening - so we paused & talked about what the purpose of the sound was (TEK #16B)

Note: Before we watched, we did talk about how this is a tool to enable us to learn more about long ago & reiterated that they did not have technology back then.

Is it just me or does this little ghosty crack you up? I adore him! 

Building a sense of community is one of the most important things to do in the classroom.  It is such a focal point at the beginning of the year and I feel like it needs to continue through the rest of the year too.  

Letting students share about themselves and learn about others is one of the best ways to do this! 

Each Wednesday morning after the announcements (starting about the 3rd week of school) we have an All About Me presentation.  I remember having All About Me presentations growing up and loving them so I wanted to make sure to incorporate them into my classroom as a teacher.

Each child has a week assigned to them.  The students LOVE this time! The presentation lasts about 5-15 minutes and during this time the student's family members come and watch the student tell the class about themselves - from what their favorite food it to what their favorite color is to their favorite sports team to introducing the class to their family members, etc.  The student creates a poster at home with all of these favorites on them and the students use this poster to guide his/her presentation.

After this presentation, the class creates a book for the student. The book consists of a page (or more) from each classmate about what he/she learned about the week's presenter.  The students love writing all about their classmate! 

 It is also great because it is a time the students are often using common words like "like," "favorite," "color," "is," & "has."

After we finish the book, I read it to the class.

You can grab this freebie here.

October is such a fun month because of the unlimited amounts of festive craftivities that are possible! 

We have been spending this week talking all about timelines and chronological order.  

I've been searching for what feels like forever for a good timeline activity that my first graders could do and I have finally found the perfect one! 

After talking about past, present, & future and sequencing Columbus' voyage, we created our own timelines.

How cute are these?! Perfect for first graders!! 

Today we started learning all about syllables.  It is an important topic when teaching what sounds "y" can make.  

I teach them to put their hand under their chin and every time their chin moves down when they are saying a word = ones syllable.  So in butterfly their chin/hand moves down 3 times when saying that word which means butterfly has 3 syllables. 

We then practiced this strategy for counting syllables by doing a whole group syllable sort.  I showed them many pictures and then as a class they should me with their fingers how many syllables was in the word.

Tomorrow is game day - we are going to start practicing the syllables by playing different games and hands-on activities! First, each child will complete the syllable zoo activity.  After they finish that activity, they will race each other.

Happy Sunday!

Is it just me or do these weekends FLY by??

Every Monday my First Graders always come in with so much that they want to tell me about theiir weekend! Between students wanting to share and parents telling me things about heweek, I often found Monday mornings a bit overwhelming. 

I wanted to be sure to have a chance to listen to what my first graders had to tell me in a way where there wasn't a line first thing Monday morning...

This is my FAVORITE way to kick off the week with my group of Firsties...

I just love this time when my students practice writing about what they did over the weekend and my first graders love being able to share after writing what it is that they did.  

Here is how it works: when the students come in on Monday morning, they spend the first 15-20 minutes (with morning announcements at some point during that time) writing in their "Weekend News Journal" all about their weekend! Then, all of the students come to the carpet and we take turns sharing what they each did during the weekend. 

Tip: I have the students write the date at the top of the paper to help with organization.

Here's to a great week! 

A lot of our comparing numbers activities came from this packet.

One of my favorite activities we do is our character projects!

After spending the week learning all about character traits we spent today outlining and then creating our own characters from our own imagination.

The characters that the first graders come up with are so great! I love them! 

They then wrote about their characters.  They were so engaged and excited that many wrote numerous pages! 

Today I spent time setting up for our Columbus Day fun on Friday.

Here is what we did last year...

Y'all, today was an ABSOLUTE BLAST!

Here is what led up to our fun for today...this week we have been learning about explores!

We began by learning all about explorers, creating an anchor chart, and writing about where we would like to explore as an explorer.

I found the cute templates for the boy and girl templates here and made the paper to fit the writing prompt.

We then learned all about Christopher Columbus.  The students were amazed that this happened over 500 years ago!  After reading the books, we made these great sequencing boats. 

Tip: After having the students cut out all of the sails, have the students find a spot in the room and lay out all the sails.  Then teach them how to sequence them (put one behind the other) and read each sail many times until they are able to sequence them.

Our morning work.

Finally, TODAY, we packed our bags, created a map/telescope, and put our hats on for a journey to a new land!  I found this idea from Jodi and isn't it the BEST?! My students absolutely LOVED IT!!!! They were so into it and many adults commented on how impressed they were with the deep understanding of facts that the students knew about the voyage! 

My goal was that the students understood the risks, sentiments, preparation, and trading that goes into exploring BUT the students were so into this Columbus Day voyage that they also were all about learning certain "Columbus trivia" facts - such as 1492, the 3 names of the ships, etc.

A couple of tips...

Happy Exploring & Happy Columbus Day (almost)! 

Q: Why do seagulls fly over the sea?

A: Because if they flew over the bay, they would be called bagels!

{Who doesn't love a good cheesy joke?}

I decided to incorporate a Classic Joke Tuesday into my classroom (based off of Ellen Degeneres' Classic Joke Wednesday) and the students LOVE it!

Each Tuesday morning I write a joke (with many grammatical mistakes) on the board.  During the morning meeting, we work as a class to correct the joke.  Once the joke it written on the board correctly, it stays there until the end of the day (rewritten in a small corner so it doesn't take up too much space).  

Before they leave for the day, we take a few minutes to guess what it could be and then I share with them the answer.  

Last week in math we began learning about Even and Odd numbers.  It was a very busy week though so we did not quite get to everything and will be finishing up this week - which is perfect because it is October and I love making our "Even Gleevens and Odd Blodds!"

In prepping for the rest of our Even & Odd unit, I thought I would share what we did last year since we are doing some of those activities again.

Back when we first learned about digits, we did learn about which were even and odd.  First I had my first graders find a partner and then I told them I had different food items.  If the items were even and they could share them fairly then they could eat them.  This brought a great concrete idea to the concept of even & odd.

Now onto learning about how to know if a number more than 10 is even or odd.

First we played a game called prove it.  The students created a game board and then passed their board to a partner and had to prove whether the numbers on the board were even or odd.