November Happenings Part 3

As promised here is part three  of our November activities. (Part 2 was the "Thanksgiving Feast" ) We read so many great books last month! In this blog I wanted to share just a few of the literature response activities the kiddos completed.

At the beginning of the month we read several books as background for the holiday.  Students completed a picture story map of the first Thanksgiving.

"The Littlest Pilgrim" is a cute story about a little girl who wants to help out in any way she can, but everyone tells her she is just too little.  The story has a sweet ending about friendship.  We brainstormed ideas of how the little girl could have helped her family and wrote our advice to her.  We also created a cute little Pilgrim girl to hold our work! 

Another fun story was "The Great Turkey Race!"  In this story the turkeys decide to have a field day to determine which one was the best turkey, hoping the farmer would pick that one for Thanksgiving.  Little did the turkeys realize that the farmer wanted the turkey to eat!!!  The boys and girls completed a sequence story summary and attached it to a very cute "athletic" turkey complete with sweatband and running shoes!.

One of everyone's favorite stories was "Run, Turkey, Run!!  In this story the turkey overhears the farmer saying he wants a turkey for Thanksgiving dinner.  Consequently, the turkey takes off running and disguises himself as various farm animals.  As a response activity the kiddos wrote their own stories about a turkey running away.  It included learning about  introduction sentences, using transition words (first, next, then, finally), and writing a conclusion to the story.  This was a very challenging assignment, but I am proud to say that everyone did a great job on their original stories.  I wish I could have shared them all with you!

"Turkey Trouble" had a similar theme.  As a follow-up to this story, the boys and girls created a "wanted" poster complete with a turkey wearing a disguise and and "reward" to anyone finding the turkey.

We read many, many more stories about turkeys, pilgrims, and Native Americans to celebrate the season, too numerous to include here!  

  

November Happenings Part 1

Hello again and welcome back to our blog!  The following is a recap of some of our November activities. This is part one of four parts!  Three more to come!!!

We have been spending a great deal of time lately working with fact families.  Students love using the interactive whiteboard (IWB)!

Another activity the students enjoy is a "missing number" problem game on the IWB.  The kiddos use dry erase boards to solve the problem and show their work.  They get very excited to show what they did to solve the problem and are amazed that there is more than one way to solve it!

We also used candy corn to help us solve missing number problems.  Yum!

The boys and girls partnered up to begin working on a woodlands animal research report.  They are using graphic organizers to record facts about their animal.  Trade books and information from the internet are the sources used.

We read books and watched videos as we learned about Veteran's Day.  Then, students wrote a letter to a veteran thanking them for their service.  These are really cute!

 We always spend time each day reading from a variety of books.  Big books are a favorite!

                                 

 As Thanksgiving drew near we reviewed 2-D shapes and created colorful turkeys.  (A part of the common core state standards is using shapes to create something new.)

  

Of course we expressed our gratitude by writing thankful thoughts.

Keeping watching for more about our November activities!

Busy November!

We have been so busy in our room this month that it just flew by!  So, this post is to catch you up on just some of what's been going on in Mrs. Nelson's room in November.
To begin our study of the first Thanksgiving, we read several books about the pilgrim children and the chores they had to do.
    
 Then, we made comparisons to the chores that modern-day children have to do:

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We practiced with contractions making these cute pumpkin pies complete with "whipped cream" (cotton ball) topping! Thanks to Kelly at Teacher Idea Factory!

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We learned all about real turkeys and made these booklets containing turkey facts:

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We practiced counting syllables in words with this "Turkey Syllable Sort" activity:

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We read the book "Run, Turkey, Run!" and wrote our own version about why the turkey should run.

We enjoyed learning an old, favorite Thanksgiving song and sang it for our kindergarten friends at the feast:

And, in the tradition of the holiday we wrote thankful thoughts and displayed them on our bulletinboard for all to see after reading this book:
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Before we left for Thanksgiving break we enjoyed a "feast" with Mrs. Woodard's kindergarten class.  Enjoy some pictures on the Smilebox below:
<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" bgcolor="#ffffff"><tr><td></td></tr><tr><td></td></tr><tr><td align="center">This free picture slideshow customized with Smilebox</td></tr></table>

We hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving Break with your families!