Aw, yeah!! It's finally THANKSGIVING BREAK! I always feel a little guilty saying this. I truly LOVE teaching and seeing my students every day! They make me laugh & just make my day.  This year has been incredibly busy as I am working on getting my National Board certification as well as holding many leadership roles at my campus & of course have a life out side of work...so I am really excited to have the TIME to get check off many things that are on my to-do list so I can remain present with my students when I get back!

When things get crazy and our emotions get the best of us it's then that we must remember what we are truly thankful for.  There are so many things to be thankful for!

Originally, I wanted to make wreaths with my students and so I made the example above and everything; but then decided that since the first graders had already done the Thankful place mats, that it was too much of the same thing.

THEN I decided that I wanted my students to think a little deeper about what they were thankful for. So, instead of making the wreaths this year (although I plan to make them next year instead of the place mats), the students made turkey bags!

Then, the students wrote about what they were thankful for and why.  They then put the thankful notes in their bags. They also had to fill out a thankful pilgrim hat for each of their table mates (they wrote their name on the backs of those hats so the recipient child would know who it was from). But instead of putting those hats in their bag, they put them in the bag of the child they wrote about!

My dream would be that the students all open the bag with their families sometime during Thanksgiving dinner and read to their families what they wrote down that they were thankful for. I just think that would be such a wonderful experience for everyone involved!

We focus a lot the last few days before the break on the different traditions that the students have when celebrating Thanksgiving.

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! 

Just Like Me!

During our morning meeting this morning, I LOVED our morning meeting activity. Some background: Yesterday, we made mini-versions of ourselves and learned that no 2 people are alike and that our differences make each of us special! So this morning during our meeting, I had the students go around in a circle and share something that made them special. For example: I have 1 sister. Then everyone who that statement was true for too would sit up, point to themselves, & say "Just Like Me!" Literally, such a sweet way to start the morning! 

My next favorite were these scientists we made. I always wish my science lessons had a craft to go with it to work on those fine motor skills.  Well after reading about sweet Ada Twist, we talked about what a scientist does. The students then made themselves as scientists and wrote a wondering they have. 

DISASTER MASTER

So after lunch, the students came into the classroom to a HUGE disaster. Tables were flipped over, books were knocked out everywhere, papers were just thrown about, all of our math materials were dumped over, etc. We soon discovered that our class mascot Stripes, had had some fun while we were at lunch.

We decided we needed to make some classroom agreements so that everyone would know what the expectations were and we wouldn't have this happen again.  The students were more than happy to do this as they did not want to pick up another mess left by Stripes, or anyone else for that matter. They even signed their names at the bottom of the agreement to make sure of it ;)  

Bonus: At some point today, one of my firsties raised his hand several times & asked several questions in a row. After asking them he commented loudly to himself "I sure ask a lot of questions." #selfawareness #bless

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.

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 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)! 

This week we learned all about Fire Safety!

Even though Fire Safety isn't until "officially" for 2 more weeks, I have found that Fire Safety really hits home with the students when I plan these lessons during the same week as our 1st Fire Drill.

I did not have a chance to take pictures of the activities we did this year so I thought I would throw it back to the fun we had last year!

After reading a couple fire safety books and practicing our fire drill, we thought about our favorite fire safety tip and wrote about it!

We loved these asking & telling sentences from Alexandra! 

Some other activities we did this year included reading the book "Stop, Drop, and Roll," learning about the history of Dalmatians and firefighters, talking about how brave firefighters are and thinking about a time that we were brave like a firefighter, and of course a fire drill! 

...I've got my sister, mom, dad, and me!

Not the right lyrics? Well, they work for this post ;)

Today we learned about families.

We started out by reading this precious book...

Then we talked about what a relative is and what families are.  We discovered that a family is a group of people that come together because of a common bond and family is made up of people who love and care for you.  

The students then shared with each other what their family looks like.  This was such a fun activity! We loved seeing all the different families - some with just immediate families, some including cousins, adopted families, etc! 

When my teammate did this, she had the students write "_____'s family" rather than "my family."  I am definitely going to do that next year.  

Today was the day my group of firsties have been waiting for! Class Jobs day! We spent the day filling out applications to see if we can get "approved" for these jobs.  The room let out cheers when we were all approved to help with our class jobs.

You can get the free printable by clicking on the picture above! Enjoy :)