December is here

December is finally here!  The cold weather and Christmas music is starting to get me excited for the month to come!  We have just started to get in the Holiday mood with winter and Christmas themed books and projects.  Before Thanksgiving we did a Reader's Theater performance for our parents.  One of the scripts was Click, Clack, Moo: Cows that Type (which they thought was hilarious) so naturally we had to read Click, Clack, HO! HO! HO!

 

This is a great story to work with order of events.  First, Duck gets stuck.  Then, all the farm animals get stuck behind him.  They also have to think of a clever way to get the animals out of the chimney.

To make the chimney we talked specifically about drawing the bricks. I think they really got the hang of it.

I'm sure the animals would enjoy their tails being pulled ;-)

Click on the link to take you to my TPT store to get this activity!

Also, we did a quick activity to extend our Kindness Challenge from Blair Turner.  Fun In First had the cutest idea for  sharing ways to be kind.  Since we have been working with weekly challenges all year this was a great way for us to write about a way we could be kind to others.  Some of them used ideas that we had done earlier this year, but some came up with totally new ways to show kindness.

I love how it 'lights up' or hallway.

Election Day!

In the spirit of Election Day yesterday we held our own classroom election.  We read Duck for President and Grace for President to get us in the voting mood.  

Both books are both really cute, especially Grace for President which gives a really good description of the voting process and electoral votes, etc.

We used part of a unit from Cara Carroll which had all sorts of Presidential and election activities.  To start each of the kids had to fill out their Voter Registration card.  Then when it was time to vote they had to bring their card, show it to me (where I checked to make sure it was really them ;-) and then they were able to place their vote.

 

The three choices were:
*Duck *Grace *The teacher ;-)
They really took this whole voting thing pretty seriously - it was adorable...

After they made their choice they got to color an 'I VOTED' sticker to wear.  

Finally we tallied the results and there was a clear winner . . . 

The activity was really fun and I think the kids enjoyed to getting to be part of the Election process!  Now I have to sign off as my free time will be spent working on my move to the White House ;-)

The Hallo-Wiener

The Hallo-Wiener is one of my favorite Halloween books.  It is so funny and the kids really enjoyed reading it.  The basic story line is about a wiener dog who dresses up as a hot dog for Halloween.  His dog friends make fun of him but at the end of Trick-or-Treating he ends up saving them from a scary monster!  Great story - please read it!

To go with reading the story we did this adorable little wiener dog project.  The kids wrote and illustrated about their favorite part of story.  I was surprised by all the different parts they chose.  They definitely had many different favorite parts - which just shows how much they enjoyed the story.

There were other comprehension pages that went along with the story.  One was to design your own costume for Oscar.  They LOVED that (and of course they were super creative)!

Click on the link to take you to my TPT store so you can get your own copy of The Hallo-Wiener activity.

Go for the Gold!

This week we had a special guest visit our school - Becca Murray.  This summer Becca participated in the 2016 Rio Paralympics where she and her team won the gold medal in wheelchair basketball.  She is a local member of our community and even went to our school, County Line, when she was in elementary.   

She spoke to the students about following their dreams and working hard to overcome obstacles in order to accomplish their goals.  The students really enjoyed getting to see her gold medal!  

What a cool experience and a great message to all the students!

Beginning of the Year

So September came and went before I even noticed!  We have been BUSY, BUSY in our classroom lately learning all our new routines. My favorite new routine has to be our Kindness Challenge.  I stumbled across it on Instagram this summer and instantly knew we had to try it out this year.  

Every week we flip the card to see what our "challenge" will be for the week.  It is a great way to start a discussion about different ways to be kind to one another.  

This week I found a great book in our book order "What Does it Mean to be Kind".  It was a sweet little story about things that you can do to be kind to others.  

Today our challenge was:

It could be my favorite challenge to date because the class did a great job interviewing each other to find out 5 new things about each other.  After they were done we all sat in a circle with our partner and shared one thing we learned.  

We have also been doing all things Apple (in September) and love these activities by Linda Kamp.

We do a lot of acrostic poems at the beginning of the year because the kid get the hang of them quickly and they always turn out cute.  

We also learned a little bit about each other by making Tree-Mendous Things About Me