turkeys, pilgrims and native americans...oh my!

This is week two for our Thanksgiving learning. I have to say that I am so glad I bought those two packs from teachers pay teachers. They are great and have been so helpful reviewing and reinforcing our learning.

These are the skills we have been working on -
math -
fact families
reading number words and writing the number
ordering numbers from least to greatest
even/odd
ordinal numbers
language arts -
adjectives
nouns
writing -
complete sentences
descriptive sentences
how to writing
lists
ABC order
long a word families

Here is a quick peek at some of the things we have been working on...

turkey fact families

Didn't these turkeys turn out so cute? The girls have fact families down pat now and I am so proud of them! They are such hard and smart little learners :) They make this Mommy proud! I saw these super cute turkeys on The First Grade Parade ~ surprise, surprise!

recycled turkeys!

I found the cutest little turkey hiding in my yard today! Well, not really, but isn't he adorable? We made these darling turkeys a couple of years ago and this year we are going to use him as a writing prompt. If you would like the instructions on how to make these turkeys, you can find the tutorial at plum pudding. We decided to add feathers to ours just to give him some added pizzaz!

an update

I just wanted to give you all an update on us. Lastweek, we maintained our school routine {sorta} and I did lots of planning, printing and cutting for the next 2 weeks. Now I have to laminate and cut again :) After drooling over several cute thanksgiving packs at a few of my favorite 1st grade blogs, I decided to buy 2 packs from teachers pay teachers.

I bought this thanksgiving math and literacy pack from Doodle Bugs Teaching -

and this thanksgiving words writing pack from Teacher Bits and Bobs -


We were supposed to start using these adorable learning materails today, but my 4 year old son decided to turn cartwheels like his sisters. Only it didn't end so well... now he has a broken clavical and has to wear a sling for 2 weeks. Things are about to get interesting around here to say the least! AND to top it all off, Ella started running a fever tonight ~ she has a terrible head cold and is miserable. Here's to hoping for a better day tomorrow!

similes, please!

Today, we talked about similes. The girls grasped the concept pretty quickly. We will continue to talk about similes and review them as we go along this year. First, we made an anchor chart and I came up with some examples. I had the girls tell me the 2 things I was comparing in each example. Then, I had them write a simile for a pumpkin. I found this writing paper at Oceans of First Grade Fun!

pumpkin learning stations

Yesterday, I had the girls write sentences with our fall vocabulary word cards.
They also did a long vowel word sort.
And, did a matching game in math.

life cycle of a pumpkin

Today we talked about the life cycle of a pumpkin. I had the girls do this pocket chart activity together.

Then, they put this little craftivity together. I saw this idea at Fabulous in First. Here's the link for the sequencing activity.

This is the life cycle activity we did last year.

pumpkin predictions

Yesterday, I had the kids do a little predicting about pumpkins. I found this great pumpkin prediction recording sheet at First Grade Blue Skies.

Here are their predictions -
Ethan - 4 seeds, float
Ella - 100 seeds, sink
Gracelyn - 20 seeds, sink

Actual finding -
our pumpkin had 298 seeds
pumpkins float


The kids helped clean out the pumpkin. Ethan was a little apprehensive at first, can you tell?


Daddy finished off by carving the pumpkin!

pick a pumpkin {activity}!

It's pumpkin week here at our house! Man, I love fall and all of the activities that go along with this season. Today we started the week off by doing sight word shape writing - reviewing fact families
did a pumpkin prediction activity
abc order
Check back this week and see all of our pumpkin activities!

apple round-up!

Whew! We had a fun week learning with and about apples. I made a collage of all of our apple activities that we have done this year and last year. If you see something you like, you can find all of these activities by clicking on the apples tag.

apple tree sequencing

I got this cute apple tree sequencing activity from, yep you guessed it ~ The First Grade Parade!

fact families

I came up with this idea today during math for the girls to have more practice with writing fact families.

how to bake an apple pie

Yesterday, we read The Biggest Apple Ever. It's a cute book about Clayton and Desmond who can't find the biggest apple to win the school contest, but decide to make the biggest apple pie ever to share with their class. For writing, I had the girls write and draw 'how to bake an apple pie'. I made a graphic organizer and divided the page into fourths. I labeled each section with transition words like - first, next, then and last.

apple stained glass craft

Last night, the kids made these adorable stained glass apples! I saw this idea on The First Grade Parade, too.

materials-
construction paper - red, green and brown
tissue paper - red, green and yellow
glue stick
laminator and sheets (or clear contact paper or wax paper)

directions-
1. fold the red construction paper in half and then cut an apple shape out of it
2. fold the apple in half (on the same fold line) and cut the center out - leaving only an outline
3. cut a stem and leaf out of the brown and green construction paper and glue on top of the apple 4. glue the apple outline onto the center of a laminating page or whatever you are using
5. cut the 3 colors of tissue paper into squares
6. glue the tissue paper into the center of the apple
7. seal the apple closed either with your laminator or an iron if you use contact paper - the contact paper will stick to itself

parts of an apple

Today, we labeled the parts of an apple. I used a die cut that I had and paper pieced the stem, leaf and flesh. The girls glued black beans for the seeds and they labeled the parts.

even/odd numbers

I downloaded this cute math mat activity from The First Grade Parade a couple of months ago and saved it up for our apple week. I've had the girls do this activity a couple of times already this week.

sight word shape writing

I came up this idea yesterday and tried it out with the girls. I think it looks kind of neat! I hope the girls enjoy it because they will have to do it again next week when we do our pumpkin theme! If you would like the apple and pumpkin shape for sight word work, just let me know and I'll be happy to share!

apple time!

Today we are starting our apple theme. I know it's a little late for apples, but I was waiting on some new apple books to come in from Scholastic. We started the day by describing an apple with adjectives. Then I peeled the apple and we used our 5 senses to also describe an apple.

Ethan got in on the action and I recorded his answers on his page for him!

The girls then used the graphic organizer to write about apples in their writing journals.

Be sure to check back, I have lots of other apple activities planned for this week!

fall fingerprint trees

This week we are doing a fall theme. Monday, I printed off a tree from making learning fun for the kids to add fingerprint leaves to. They really enjoyed this activity and it will be a great keepsake for me!

number line addition with mr. froggy!

Last week, I taught the girls how to use a number line as another method to add numbers together. I glued frogs to popsickle sticks and used him as a visual. I also taped the numbers 1 - 10 on the wall as our number line. I think Froggy was a fun way to introduce the concept of using a number line! This is how I taught this lesson:

5 + 3 = 8
start hops answer

"Put Froggy on the number 5. He needs to make 3 hops to get to the answer. What number does he stop on? So, 5+3=8."

finger spacing

Ever notice that when kids write, they like to write their words back-to-back with no spaces between each word? Well, I teach my girls to finger space with 2 of their fingers while they are writing. That way I can easily read their writing.

The Foot Book {antonyms}

I taught the girls the offical first grade word for opposites ~ antonyms! We read The Foot Book by Dr. Seuss and listened for antonyms throughout the book. After reading the book, I had the girls trace their feet onto paper and then think of a word and the antonym. So cute! I saw this idea on The First Grade Parade. I am loving all of these great 1st grade blogs!

big, little

nice, mean

wet, dry

happy, sad