Five for Friday

Gingerbread Man Sequence

I have no idea where this sequence came from, but it is perfect. We read many different versions of the Gingerbread Man. Then students color, cut, and sequence the story. I add another aspect to the sequence for students that are writing sentences. I ask them to write one sentence to describe each picture based on the stories we have read. 

Gingerbread Boy or Girl Glyph

Each student was asked a series of questions and decorated a gingerbread boy or girl depending on their answers. This year I combined all of the tracers from over the years and allowed the kids to decorate using aprons and colors etc. They turned out so adorable. The students loved it. For our holiday party, we will be decorating gingerbread boys. Hopefully this activity gave them some ideas. 

Gingerbread Baby Letter and House

This year I combined two projects together. We worked on letter writing and wrote a thank you letter to Matti in the perspective of the Gingerbread Baby. I wanted students to learn to write thank you letters and hopefully inspire to write one to each person that gives them a present this holiday season. After we wrote the letter, I gave the students gingerbread house decorations and asked them to create their own gingerbread house. Their letters were placed inside so that when you open up the house, you can read each letter. What a great surprise. 

Holidays Around the World: Hanukkah 

This year, I am doing a ton of new things because I am at a different school with a whole new team. We are actually all new. It has been very fun taking things from these teachers. This dreidel activity I took from my team. I cut different shades of blue and white tissue paper. Then, I asked the kids to use their glue sticks to glue down all the different shades. I went over each dreidel with watered down white glue to make all the pieces lay flat. It also adds a shimmer to each one. Each one is unique and beautiful. 

Guided Drawing: The Grinch

If you read my blog, you know I love guided drawings. They are fun while working on students direction following. At our holiday party, we will be watching the Grinch, so I thought a guided drawing of the Grinch would fit nicely. The kids followed along great and finished their grinches with oil pastels. Advice on this, remind students to be careful where they place their hands. Many rubbed their hands in the pastels as they were coloring and got some of the white area splotchy with pastel color. Then again, they are 1st graders! I hope that they enjoy the movie just a little bit more after doing these drawings. 

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

Holidays Around the World- Diwali

I love doing holidays around the world. I start with Diwali. This year, I had student make beautiful Rangolis with oil pastels. 

Holidays Around the World- Las Posadas

After visiting Mexico, I lead the students in a guided drawing of a poinsettia. 

http://artprojectsforkids.org/portfolio/poinsettia/

I have them trace in black market and color with oil pastels. 

I display both the rangoli and poinsettia in my class as seen above in my Diwali post. Every time I walk into my class, I am put in a festive mood. 

Holidays Around the World- Germany

For those of you that don't know, Germany is the originator of the Christmas tree. Candles were originally used to decorate the trees outside of peoples houses. Being German, I am proud of the fact that many awesome Christmas traditions come from Germany, such as the tree and gingerbread houses! 

This year, I found this Christmas tree adjective quilt on TpT made by Games 4 Learning.

It was perfect. The kids came up with all sorts of great adjectives to describe Christmas trees. I was very proud of them. 

It called for adjectives for every letter, but I felt that was too hard for 1st grade, so I utilized my whiteout tape and turned it into an adjective quilt. I mean, who really knows an adjective for z that would describe a tree...?

It was also fun because they got to use black pens for their writing and markers to help color. Novelties make activities more engaging. 

Hour of Code- Scratch Jr. 

This week is Hour of Code week. We played around with Scratch Jr. It is free to download and lessons are already created for you here. I taught lessons one and two this week. Each took about 30 minutes, which filled my hour of code time. We also coded in computer lab using the Hour of Code website. My students chose Minecraft, but there are other options like Frozen. 

As you can see, the kids get to use pictures to code actions for a character. Both the Scratch Jr. app and the Hour of Code website work in a very similar way. 

Self Promotion- Holidays Around the World Expert Groups

I have never plugged a product, but I though I might try and see what happens. I create expert groups for my TpT store that are geared toward 2nd-4th grade. I created a holiday expert group that can help dive deeper into the winter holidays. Each holiday includes a non-fiction reading, note taking page, vocabulary page, and more. Check it out!

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! There is so much to be thankful for this season.

Five for Friday: Thanksgiving Edition

60th Day:

We made these 60th day of school turkeys. Each turkey gets 10 feathers. We practice counting by 2's, 5's, and 10's. 

Turkey in Disguise:

I gave this as a homework assignment. Look how cute they came out! I am so proud of the effort they put in to decorate and disguise their turkeys. They baby just cracks me up.

Scarecrow Art:

I love using these scarecrows to decorate the classroom along with the corn I posted two week ago for the 50th day of school activity. They turned out adorable. 

Sing Along:

This week we had an author visit and a sing along assembly. The sing along is something we are trying to do to create a sense of community at our school. It was really fun to see all of the students singing together. 

We Are Thankful Book:

This week we worked on a classbook . Each 1st grader wrote a paragraph about three things they are thankful for. It was the first time I asked them to write details. We started with reading a book and brainstorming ideas. I guided the student through a planner and how to transfer their writing from the planner to a first draft. I conferenced with each student. Then, they wrote a second and final draft. We are sending our pages off to Student Treasures for binding. Each student can purchase a book from Student Treasures. I am excited to see the final product. The students put so much time and effort into their writing and art work. I know it will turn out beautifully. 

Five for Friday

50th day of school activity 

Fall tree tear paper art

Hello Fall, Goodbye Summer Poems

Bat Habitat Dioramas

Rocky Road Apple

Since Fall has finally arrived in California this week has been filled with fall leaf activities. Tomorrow afternoon we are going on a nature walk to find leaves. We finished out bat habitat project. I am so proud of how they turned out. And really who can pass up a gourmet apple. Thanks to a teacher on my 1st grade team, I will be treating myself to a rocky road apple for dessert. Although, it almost looks to pretty to eat...almost!