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.