Holiday Writing!

Today was all about writing (with a little reading and math thrown in of course)!  My students are becoming great writers!  They work extra hard when they are making something for someone else, like their parents, or SANTA!!!  We made something for all of those special people today!

First off, I had the kids make holiday cards for their parents.  I know when it comes to drawing, kindergartners often have a hard time making things look right.  In hopes of building their confidence, I drew some different holiday themed pictures on the board (ex: snowman, Christmas tree, Santa, reindeer, stockings, candy canes, etc.).  I think this really helped make their pictures better, because they had an example to copy from.  Take a look at some of these beauties!

  

They wrote nice messages inside as well.  I thought this one was particularly amusing.

"Dear Mom and Dad, I hope the Christmas tree doesn't fall down again.  I wish you a Merry Christmas."

Kids are so funny.  Her letter to Santa was entertaining.

"Dear Santa, I have been naughty a little bit, but I do not want to be on the naughty list."  She goes on to ask for various items, including a camping chair and a curling iron!  She is five!!

All of the other kids said they had been good this year, even though several of them are much naughtier than this little girl!!  At least she is honest!  I encouraged them to make a pattern around the outside of their paper to make it look extra festive for Santa.

Gifts for the parents are complete and the letters have been sent to Santa!  One more day to go!  Hopefully the Holiday Program and Secret Santa exchange go smoothly tomorrow!

Here come the Holidays!

Sorry that I have not written in a while.  I took a bit of a break over Thanksgiving to relax with my hubby and get some Christmas shopping done.  Now it is back to business for a week!

My school is only in session for the first week of December, so we have to go full swing into the holidays.  Only a week to make presents for parents and write letters to Santa!  I have my kiddos make gifts for their parents each year.  This year the kids were turned into snowmen!  I ordered these snowmen from Oriental Trading and had the kids put them together.

I snapped a photo of each of them to add as the face.  They made the cutest little snowmen :)

Teacher tip:  If you decide to get these snowmen or a magnet craft from Oriental Trading, you may want to glue the magnets to the back.  They come with adhesive already on them, but mine never seem to stick for long.  I had gingerbread men last year and I had to glue the magnets on as well.  I used Tacky Glue.

My boss also picked up some wooden ornaments from the store for them to paint.  Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of those.  Let's just say we are still working on our fine motor skills, so some of them turned out a little on the messy side.  I helped the kids wrap both items up and put a gift tag on them.  Tomorrow we are also going to make holiday cards to go with the gifts.

We did some reindeer writing this week as well.  After reading a holiday book involving reindeer, I gave the kids pieces to cut out to make a reindeer head.

After they glued them together, they opened up their little book and wrote all about reindeer.  They know quite a bit, so they were able to fill up the whole page!

That is it for tonight!  Come back tomorrow for Christmas cards and letters to Santa!!

A Thanksgiving Feast with a Dash of Christmas

Normally my days seem to fly by, but this week has been moving at a snails pace.  It could be that it gets dark at 5:00 now, which makes me think it is time for bed when the evening has just begun.  Or it could be that it is getting closer to the holidays and the kids are getting antsy (which means loud, extra silly, and forgetful), which means they drive me a little bit crazy some days, making the day last an eternity!  I am guessing it is a combination of the two!  No worries, next week is a 3 day week!

In preparation for Thanksgiving, we have been studying all about the Pilgrims and Indians.  Last week I read about the chores that pilgrim children had.

The Pilgrim children definitely had more chores than the kiddos nowadays!  Read for yourself!

My students basically have to clean their rooms and make their beds.  No fetching water, milking goats, cooking meals, harvesting grain, etc.

To educate ourselves about the Indians, we did a little reading from the Social Studies books about different Indian tribes.  We also watched the slideshow of the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians on the Scholastic website.  To review what we learned, the kids did some writing in their Thanksgiving Books.

"The Mayflower is the ship can hold 102 Pilgrims."

"The Pilgrims sailed to America on the Mayflower."

"The Native Americans hunted animals."

We aren't quite finished with our books yet.  I will show you the rest of the pages next week!  If you want the template for the book click here.  

The art teacher was absent this week, so I had to come up with something to do with the kiddos. Martha Stewart inspired me to make corn husk dolls, but it is near impossible to find corn husks in San Francisco, so I had to come up with something else.  Since we learned about Indians making canoes, or mishoons, out of trees, I thought it would be fun to make our own canoes for art.  Don't worry, we didn't cut down any trees.   These were paper canoes, with little Indians to row them.  Lacing the canoe helped work on their fine motor skills.  We listened to Spirit flute music while doing art which they thought was funny.  If you happen to have corn husks, maybe you can put these directions to use and make some dolls with your kids.

We also made these items during art this week!

I know it is still November, but we are only in school one week in December and I wanted to have the kids make some decorations for the school.  If we wait until December, nobody is going to see them!  For the trees, I gave the kids a tree template to cut out and then gave them odds and ends for decorations.  They loved the shiny stuff!  After they finished decorating their trees they wrote about them.  

"My tree is shiny.  My tree has a lot of ornaments.  My tree is beautiful.  My tree is green."

Their writing is really coming along.  We worked on syllables this week, so it was easier for them to sound out the longer words.  I was so proud of their writing!  It made my day, until I saw this. . .

  which was the cherry on top!  They can be a handful sometimes, but then they surprise you!

Tom Turkeys and the Mayflower

Merry Christmas!

Oh wait, I guess I am a little early :)  I was able to take a little break this past week to go and visit family in Miami.  While there, we took full advantage of the family time and put up a massive Christmas tree.  In case you were wondering, it took the entire day, but it was well worth it because it is gorgeous!

Ok, back to reality.  It is still November.  It is time to study Thanksgiving and turkeys, not Christmas.

While I was away, my boss was nice enough to teach my class.  She made some cute crafts with them to help decorate the school.  Take a look!

Indian corn made with a paper corn cutout and tissue paper

Colorful paper plate turkeys in the school's front window

I got this idea from Pinterest.  

Head on over to Happy Home Fairy for the full details on how to make it.

Origami turkey--the kids actually did this with the art teacher, so I have no idea how to make them.  Sorry!

Every November I give my kids a Tom Turkey project for homework.  They have a week to work on it and then they bring it back to school to share with the class.  I send home a turkey outline and the letter below.

I hung all of the turkeys on the bulletin board.  Can you guess what their disguises are?

It isn't all just fun and turkeys in November though.  We also study the first Thanksgiving, and learn about the Pilgrims and Indians.

We have been learning a lot about the Pilgrims and the Mayflower this week.  After reading about the Mayflower, we discussed the things we might need if we went on such a journey.  I gave each of the kiddos a suitcase, and told them to "pack it" with the items they would bring on the Mayflower.  They cut out the white paper and glued it inside the suitcase.    

They had to draw the items they would pack and then list them or write sentences to tell what they brought.

This is what she wrote: water, apple, carrot, skirt, pants, shirt, bottoms, a stuffed animal, my horsey blanket smells so good

 She didn't write the word, but she told me that the purple, red, and pink items towards the left are underwear.  She said she needed to make sure she always had a clean pair.  Smart thinking!  None of the other kids "packed" any underwear at all!

water and carrot and pumpkins and a hat and pants and shirt

 She worked so hard sounding out the words!  I didn't have the heart to tell her that pumpkins are going to make her suitcase too heavy.

I was very proud of them.  Not a single one of them suggested bringing an iPad, video game, or phone on the Mayflower.  They only "packed" necessities: food, water, clothes, etc.  

You may think all kids catch on quick and realize that electronics weren't around back then, but I have had kids in the past try to pack tvs in their suitcases for the Mayflower!  I didn't tell them they wouldn't get any channels out at sea!

If you want the suitcase printable for this activity you can head over to my TpT store.  There are also other fun writing activities included in the packet.

Scholastic is another great resource for Thanksgiving.  They have videos and slideshows about the Mayflower, Pilgrims, and Wampanoag Indians, that you can show your kiddos.  This is an awesome resource if you have a Smartboard or projector in your classroom!

Going Batty for Halloween!

I didn't go all out decorating my classroom for Halloween, but our class mascot and pumpkin both got costumes!  I can't take credit for the little paper witch hat and broom.  One of my students made those for the mascot when they took her home yesterday.  So creative!

Apples, pumpkins, flowers.  .  .  plants, plants, plants!  We had our fill of plants and learned all of their parts and needs, so it was time to move on to animals.  What better animal to study the week of Halloween than BATS!  We have been going batty this week--studying bats, as well as doing some fun activities with them.

We started by making our own bats and attaching labels to the different body parts.  I traced the templates and the kids cut them out and put them together.  We did the labeling together since it was our first day of bats.  You could always do this activity at the end of a bat unit to see if your students know where all of the body parts are.

This was my example up on the board.

I hung all of the bats from the pipes in the ceiling for classroom decoration (sorry this isn't the greatest picture.)  The kiddos loved it!

Reading is a great way to learn, so we read some books about bats this week as well.  After reading and discussing, we worked together to make a chart of bat facts.  Here is what we came up with.

Each student had their own graphic organizer to complete as well.  Head on over here to Alissa's store on TpT for the freebie I used!  Thanks Alissa!  I left the chart of facts on the board for them to use as a resource.

I think the highlight of the week for the kiddos so far has been measuring bats.  Don't worry, not real live bats!  I got this great measurement freebie from Jessica on TpT.  It includes the bats, as well as the handout for the kids to fill in.  I made 2 copies of the bats and laminated them, so the kids could share them, and I could reuse them each year.

They were SUPER excited about getting candy corn, even though I only let them eat 2 pieces and packed the rest up for them to take home (no sugar highs in my classroom!!)  We went over the answers together at the end of the lesson.  I loved how they clapped whenever they got each answer right!

We have a couple more days of bats in store, but I am not expecting to get too much accomplished tomorrow with all of my kids in costume.  I will let you know how it goes!

Pumpkin Math and More!

We have learned all about pumpkins in my class.  This week we got to explore one, inside and out!

 We started by using our pumpkin for math.  We measured the height, circumference and weight.  The kids had to make estimates before we actually measured each of these aspects.

The height was measured using cubes.  Each child constructed a tower of cubes to show how tall they thought the pumpkin was.  They recorded these on their paper by coloring in the corresponding number of boxes.  Everyone got to compare their tower to the pumpkin, identifying whether their tower was taller or shorter than the pumpkin.  Then everyone recorded the actual height and circled whether their estimate was more or less than the actual amount.

The next day, we estimated the circumference of the pumpkin by cutting lengths of yarn.  I helped them measure the yarn with a ruler so they could record it on their paper.  Each student wrapped their yarn around the pumpkin to see if it was too short, too long, or just right!

As they measured, I gave each student a piece of tape to place their yarn in the correct category on our chart.  I think they did pretty well with estimating the height and circumference!

Estimating the weight of the pumpkin was a different story!  I passed the pumpkin around for each child to hold it and guess how many pounds they thought it was.  44, 43, 38. . .  this was a sugar pumpkin (the little ones you use to make pie!)  To get their estimates a little closer I told them they should guess a number less than 20.  They recorded all of this in their pumpkin math books.

I brought in a food scale to weigh the pumpkin.  I wasn't going to carry a full-size scale on my walk to school!  It worked just fine since we had a little 2.7 lb pumpkin!

Next, it was time to cut open the pumpkin!  I cut off the top, which sort of freaked the kids out because I used a huge knife (don't worry, I made sure they were not anywhere near it, not to mention it wasn't that sharp.)  While I was cutting, I passed around a paper for everyone to guess the number of seeds.

Each child had to reach their hand into the pumpkin and pull out some of the seeds.  Some of them were very reluctant to do this, but I told them it was mandatory.  Everybody has to get their hand in icky pumpkin goop sometime!  It is part of childhood.  No getting around it in my class :)

After we pulled all the icky seeds out, it was time to start counting!  They counted out ten seeds on each little pumpkin.

We had a LOT of seeds in our little pumpkin!  487 to be exact!

I was not expecting quite this many seeds!  It was a little high for some of my kiddos to count!  It was also a little too much for some of the pages in my pumpkin math book.  I think next year I will just have them record the amount of seeds that they counted, not the total amount.

We counted the seeds by 10's, so we practiced writing those numbers too (no, I did not make them write all the way to 487!)  They did okay until they got to 100 and then they didn't know what to do, so I wrote the numbers on the board for them to copy.  We're still learning!

They also colored in a pumpkin each time they had a group of 10.  We did this after we washed our hands so we didn't have pumpkin goop all over our crayons and papers!

To tie in some science, we tested to see if our pumpkin would sink or float when placed in a tub of water.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of this :(  It was pretty amusing to see because we had already scooped out all of the seeds when we did this activity.  It looked like a little pumpkin boat!  (I forgot we were supposed to do this before we cut it open!  Oops!)  Most of the kids guessed it would sink because it was heavy, but it actually floated!  They drew a picture in their pumpkin math books to show what happened.

After we had our fill of pumpkin math (not really because they would have gone on forever, I just ran out of ideas) I took the pumpkin and seeds home.  I baked the seeds in the oven so they could taste them the next day.  Here is the recipe I used if you are interested in doing this as well.  (I used the same cooking method, but only seasoned with olive oil, salt, and pepper.) The kids loved them!

I also baked the pumpkin so we would have pumpkin puree.  It was super easy!  Cut the pumpkin in half.  Place it on a baking sheet cut side down and cover with foil.  Place in a 350 degree oven until fork tender (1 to 1.5 hours).  Let it cool slightly and you can scoop the inside right off the shell!

You may be wondering what I did with this pumpkin puree!  I took it back to school and used it to make pumpkin chocolate chip bread with the kids!  My amazing boss had all of the other ingredients on hand at school.  I spread it all out on a tablecloth on the carpet in my classroom.

I read through the recipe and let the kiddos help measure some items out.  They also got to help with the mixer, which was a little nerve racking.  I was afraid one of them was going to lift it out of the bowl and get batter all over me!  It all went smoothly, and we had delicious bread for afternoon snack!  They were definitely fans of the bread, and so was I!  Here is the recipe if you want to try it!

Afterwards I had the kids write/draw a "how to" piece to tell how we made the bread.  They were allowed to write about something else you can make with a pumpkin if they preferred.  One student chose to write directions for making pumpkin pie.  I found this one really amusing!  See if you can figure out why.

Kids are so funny!  If only it could be that simple!  It would be a really healthy pie that way!

We finished off our pumpkin unit with a trip to the pumpkin patch today.  Some of them got excited when they saw a green pumpkin in the sea of orange.  "Look, a green one!  It isn't ready yet!"  I am glad to see that they remember the pumpkin life cycle I taught them!

All of the pages used in the pumpkin math book are available at my TpT store, or you can just click here!  Have a great weekend!  If you are looking for something to do, make some pumpkin bread!  It is absolutely delicious!