Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Thanksgiving Feast

We celebrated the first Thanksgiving during lunch today with our own Thanksgiving Feast. Student's chose to dress up as a Native American or a Pilgrim. We had several of each, but we did not have any boy pilgrims this year. During our feast, we went around the table and said what it is we are thankful for this year. I hope everyone has a Happy Thanksgiving!


 
 


 
 

Turkey in the Barnyard

Our poem this week was called Turkey in the Barnyard. This poem was special because we are all excited to eat turkey on Thanksgiving!


 
 


Hand Painted Turkeys!

We made hand painted turkey's last week and they are finally dry today to be sent home for Thanksgiving! The middle of the page has a poem on it. The poem fits perfectly with using our hand!

This isn't just a turkey
As anyone can see.
I made it with my hand,
Which is a part of me.
I come with lots of love,
Especially to say...
I hope you have a very
Happy Thanksgiving Day!







Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Word Collector!

We created a chart on our wall called a "Word Collector". This chart is a great tool for all children to focus on increasing their vocabulary. It makes collecting, learning, and retrieving vocabulary easier, help student's comprehension increase, as well as incorporate the new words into their writing and oral conversations. Whenever we come across an interesting word when we are reading, listening or speaking we can add it to our chart. The chart is split up into sections according to each letter of the alphabet. When we find a word, we place it in the section that starts with the same letter. We are excited to fill up our chart and collect words each and every day!
 

Run, Turkey, Run!

During writing workshop today, we reread a story that was in our listening station last week. This story is about a turkey who is running from the farmer. He thinks he can hide with various animals to stay safe from being caught and eaten for Thanksgiving dinner. He tries to hide with the pigs, the ducks and the horses and is found each time. Finally, he runs away from the farmyard and hides in the trees. He finds that he is safe out in the trees, until the family goes looking for their Christmas tree! Below are the writing examples of each student. They focused on writing our sight word "My" in the first blank of the sentence and then stretched out the sounds they heard when writing the final word. They were to write they would hide their turkey from the farmer.







My turkey will hide with horses.






My turkey will hide in the water.









My turkey will hide with trees.






My turkey will hide with pumpkins.
 





My turkey will hide with pigs.





My turkey will hide with ducks.






My turkey will hide with pigs.





My turkey will hide with horses.






My turkey will hide with the dresser.




My turkey will hide with mud.





My turkey will hide with pumpkins.





My turkey will hide with pumpkins.





My turkey will hide with pigs.





My turkey will hide with pigs.





My turkey will hide with trees.





My turkey will hide with horses.





My turkey will hide with horses.






My turkey will hide with trees.

Monday, November 21, 2011

Math with Someone--WAR!

I introduced a new activity this week for Math with Someone. I have several decks of cards and taught the class the old fashioned game of War. I removed the kings, queens, jacks and Aces and just left numbers 2-10. Each partner pulls a number from the stack and keeps it hidden from their partner. On the count of three, they reveal their card and determine who has the higher number. The person with the higher number keeps both cards. If they were to both reveal the same number, it would be considered a tie and each person would keep their own card.








Gobble, Gobble, Gobbling Up Word Families!

Last week we created our own turkeys using construction paper. We put the head, body, beak, eyes, legs and feathers all together. Today, we used those turkey's and a sheet of paper with words from our two word families we have been studying. We have been learning about the "-at" and the "-ot" families. The class cut out the words and listened for me to say one of them before having their turkey gobble it up and glue it on the tummy. They did a great job finding each word that was called out!