Life Of A Pilgrim Child

November 02, 2016
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.
Andrea Sign

Life on the Mayflower

November 01, 2016
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.
Andrea Sign

A Week In Review

October 07, 2016
This week...

Our craftivity came from here.
Our phonics practice came from here.

We finished up setting and learned about characters this week.

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

Sorting It All Out

September 10, 2016
Finally!

Do you ever feel like there is that one topic that you just can't seem to figure out?? How can I make this topic really fun (but not have to spend hours prepping?!) Now, don't get me wrong I often spend hours planning and prepping but for some reason whenever it came to teaching about sorting and organizing I had the hardest time getting excited about my lessons...until now!!!

I think I have finally "Sorted It All Out!!"  and boy, could I not be more excited to finally have landed on this lesson! 

Here are some of the sorting and organizing activities we did this week...

Guess My Sort:  I started out by randomly choosing a couple of students to come up in the front of the classroom.  Then I told the class: I chose these students to come up here because I sorted them by something that they all have in similarity.  When a person sorts things, that means they group items together after finding something that all of the items have in common.  Then the students guessed how I sorted this group of students (the color of their shirt).  Then I did the same thing with another group (by type - all girls).  Finally, a third group (all similar height - this was the hardest one!)  

 Students found so many sorts which was great because I said "yes! You are right that is a sort, but that is not what my brain was thinking when I sorted them), and finally I told the students to make a shape, any shape with their hands, and then I brought the kids up based on that (shape).

Lucky Charms: Each child got a scoop of lucky charms and was told them to sort them.  Then we discussed the sorts we found.  Then they had to sort them a 2nd way.  Again, we shared.  This was absolutely a class favorite (and a favorite for me since it required very little prep!!)!!

 One other thing I loved about this activity was that it allowed us to talk about what we can learn from our sorts.  For example: we discovered that there is more cereal than marshmallows and why that may be significant information to know.

3 Little Firefighters: While they ate their Lucky Charms, we read this sorting story and talked about the sorts/created an anchor chart while reading.  

Andrea Sign

Phonics Phun!

September 09, 2016
"Get those littles to read!"

Phonics is such an important foundational skill that students need. Phonics allows children to be able to read and the ability to read then allows them to take even more ownership of their learning. 

A strong foundation of the phonemic sounds is imperative!! 

Phonics is a big focus in my classroom.  We do many different activities to constantly reinforce the skills the students have learned.

Each week we learn a new phonics sound.  To introduce the phonics sounds, I share with the students a story.  For example, the story of Nat the alligator who LOVES apples!


After that story, we add our new phonics sound to our phonics board.

Then we come up with a phonics chant that incorporates movement (something we as a class come up with to help us remember the sound) and words to help us remember the sound.  We also create an anchor chart with words that we can think of that have that vowel sound.     


Then each morning for the remaining days of the week, the students walk in and begin working on their Phonics Interactive Notebooks.  
You can get the short A Phonics Notebook freebie here.

 During the week, typically during literacy stations/Daily 5, the students hunt for words in their books and/or around the classroom.  They need to find 10 words throughout the week.  Depending on the week, this is sometimes a fast finishers activity.  I love these word hunts because they begin to see the sounds in their world around them and the hunts are also super easy to differentiate.  



During literacy stations/Daily 5, students also have an opportunity to complete games and puzzles based on the the phonics sound of that week AND the previous phonics sounds we have learned.


At the end of the week, each student creates a phonics visual that was connected to the story that we had read at the beginning of the week and incorporates their word hunt. 
Andrea Sign