celebrating president's day

This week has been fun-filled! On Monday, we went to the Atlanta Zoo and Wednesday, Thursday and today we learned about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. I found 2 really good clips about these two presidents and a fun song that the kids loved watching on Pinterest. (You can check out the other cool president's day things I pinned here). Seriously, we listened to the president song ALOT! We learned lots of facts about these two presidents and recorded 3 facts onto a recording sheet for each president. These handy-dandy recording sheets came from this awesome and *free* president's day pack from first grade fanatics. We made George Washington, too. I saw how to make his hat at the first grade parade.

We also made Abraham Lincoln and did a writing activity to go along with his hat. I printed the pattern for ol'Honest Abe and the writing sheet from this awesome and *free* president's day pack. We learned that President Lincoln used to keep important papaers in his hat, so I had the girls make a list of things they would keep in their hat. I love it!

Gracelyn's list read - "In my hat, I would keep - a book, a snack, my water bottle, my cat, a marker, a pack of gum, money, my camera, MobiGo, movies, TV, iPod and phone."

We talked about the difference between common and proper nouns. I printed off these neat sentences (also free) that we used to help us distinguish proper nouns from common nouns from here. I also had the girls do a writing activity about what they would do when they become president that came from one of the packs.

100th day ~ woot woot!

To celebrate our 100th day, we broke from our "normal routine" and had some fun! We put 100 gumballs into a gumball machine with our Do-A-Dot markers. By far the highlight of their day :)

We also played a tally mark game with dice and a recording sheet. This activity was a great way to reinforce tallying and counting by 5s. We worked on a 'I Can Write 100 Words' book throughout the day that I got from first grade fever, drew ourselves at 100 and made a 100th day trail mix! I printed off the tally mark game, drawing paper and estimation recording sheets from what the teacher wants.

it's groundhog day!

We actually did all of our groundhog activities yesterday because today we are celebrating our 100th day of school! Woot Woot ~ only 80 more days to go for this school year!! More about our 100th day tomorrow.
We started our morning off by writing down what we already know about groundhogs. The girls knew 2 facts - they are mammals and live underground. Not too bad :) Then we looked up information about them on the internet and recorded the new information onto index cards. After we got the factual stuff out of the way, we had fun with the tradition of groundhog day! We talked about predictions and predicted whether or not we thought the groundhog was going to see his shadow. We called some of the grandparents and aunts and got their predictions and recorded all of our data onto a graph that I printed from Growing Kinders. Today, we have to write a sentence about what really happened.

We wrote 6 facts onto this adorable graphic organizer that I also printed from the groundhog pack from Growing Kinders.

Then they drew burrows and did a little creative writing as if they were the groundhogs.

We did a word search that I printed from a cupcake for the teacher.

To finish off the day, we did a little quick and easy craftivity ~ a groundhog made from hearts, googlie eyes and a black pompom. Easy Peasy!