Handwritten letters are one of my favorite things in the entire world. So, teaching my students to write letters is such fun - plus, it's a quick little unit so it's perfect to do right before Thanksgiving Break.

This year, I have a precious little boy in my class who often says things that just make my day! He is so sweet, earnest, adorable, and just plain funny! Before I get to the part of the story with him in it - I want to remember the "lightbulb moment" I had and some background that led up to this epiphany. 

Now, in the past at the end of this unit I've always asked the first graders who they want to mail a letter to. At first, I would just tell them to bring a stamped & addressed letter to school later that week so we could finish our project. Of course, I noticed a lot of the letters were written by parents and such. Which is totally fine! But I wanted the students to do it and I figured if I wanted them to learn it a certain way, I should be the one to teach them. Plus, it wouldn't always come back quickly because not every has stamps or envelope anymore, yada yada. 

So then, I started e-mailing their parents for the address (since it's typically a relative or friend). Then, I print each one out for them. Of course I had to take some time for this because I had to separate the return address from the mailing address and next thing you know, prepping this activity would take me 2 hours...and that's a problem...

So as they returned these papers and the first graders finished the letters they had been writing in class, I started to pull the students in small groups to address their envelopes. 

Okay - so finally it's one of my sweet first graders turns. He's sitting down, addressing his envelope. After about each line in the envelope he proceeds to put his pencil down and shake his hand out - because "oh man, it's just such hard work." Then, he finished addressing the envelope and I tell him "Good job! Now flip the envelope over, put your letter in it, lick the envelope & you're finished!" He just looks right at me and says "Oh, I've heard about this part." Of course I'm dying laughing in my head...you've heard about this? Like what, all the kids are meeting together to talk about it at recess? So I say "You've heard about this?" and he goes "yes, it's gross." So I respond "it's not that bad, just stuff it, lick it & you're good to go." He proceeds to stuff the envelope and then he puts it face down on the table (so the licking side is facing him) and fear factor style - puts his hands on each side of the envelope on the table and gives a big sigh. I say "It's okay, lick it." And he does. Then, I say "Well, how was it?!" He sweetly and very sarcastically responds: "MMMM, delicious." 

With all the new technology and advancements, there are so many things kids don't know about anymore or get to experience - like knowing what a VCR is (literally, one of my strongest readers paused for about 5 minutes when she came to this word because she had no clue what it was, let alone said), having chalkboards in schools, licking a stamp, etc. It's so fun to be able to provide them with a little bit of "old-school" experiences. 

Today was filled with so much pumpkin fun!

We started out by reading all about pumpkins! 

Then we spent time measuring how tall our pumpkin was, finding out it if would float or sink, measuring how wide it was, how many seeds were in it, and more! Unfortunately, we were so busy I forgot to take pictures! 

After reading, we talked about the pumpkin life cycle and created our own mini pumpkin life cycle booklet. 

We learned sequencing terms and did this pumpkin craftivitiy. 

Finally, we planted a pumpkin and are going to spend the next few weeks observing the life cycle of a pumpkin! We planted some seeds into a pumpkin and others into cups for each of the children. The pictures I took didn't turn out. I hope our pumpkins turn out as well as the one in the picture above!  

We also made a pumpkin volcano which the students thought was so fun to watch! 

During the year, I host an after school club. It is one of my favorite things that I do with my students. During this club we focus on one country each month. Last month, it was England. This month it is France.

This month we've been doing the same activities as last year. I've also added some new activities and twists on past ones.

I don't have any tissue paper readily available this year so we made these flags.

Next, I wanted to do something for the students to remember the lavender fields. So we made these cute lavender flowers.

We also went on a scavenger hunt around the school for Eiffel Towers, learned many different French words, and made our own nutella & banana crepes! 

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

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.

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!