More "All About Me"

This week we will be continuing our "All About Me" study. On Monday, we will talk about feelings. I love reading this ABC book called "Have You Ever Noticed? An A-Z Look at FEELINGS and ACTIONS!" by Ray Ali and Rudy Ambtman.

Some other good books to read about feelings are:

Students will each get their own "My Feelings" book. We will read the sentences together and then students will draw their face for each feeling. Click the picture to download.

The next day we will talk about our family. We will read the book "Who's In a Family?" by Robert Skutch. We will talk about who is in our families and make an anchor chart with family vocabulary (mom, dad, brother, sister, grandma...)

As you can tell, I love using read alouds to teach concepts. They always lead to such great discussions and text-to-self connections. Here are some other good family read aloud books:

I will have students draw a picture of their family and label the people in their picture. I will ask them to just draw the people who live in their house (yes, pets included). Click on the pic to download.

I love talking about all the special things each kid can do. We had a whole school assembly on Friday and one of the themes was the multiple intelligences and how everyone is smart in some way. They had a staff member represent each intelligence in some way. When we went back to the room, I talked about it with my first graders and how everyone is good at something, but everyone can work hard to get better at other things. This will go well with our "I Can" lesson. I love the classic story "The Little Engine That Could". After reading it, students will create their own train book. On each page, students will complete the sentence starter "I can..." Click the pic to download.

After reading Mercer Mayer's "When I Get Bigger", I will ask my students what they might want to be when they get bigger. I will record everyone's responses on chart paper then have students complete a page to put together in a class book. I have included the title page and student work page. Click either pic to download.

We will be doing "All About Me" glyphs on Friday. I will take some pictures to show you how they turn out!

Have a great week everybody!

Back to School!

I can't believe how exhausted I am at the end of the day! Those little ones sure do have lots of energy! Two days down so far, and I'm lovin' every minute of it! I definitely have a few firecrackers in my room, as well as a couple shy sweeties.

We are working on an "All About Me" theme right now and as an intro, we are doing ME bags. I first showed my bag to the class. Inside the bag are five things that are important to me. I had a book (my love of reading), special scissors (for scrapbooking), a purple crayon (my favourite colour), a picture of my two cats, and a picture of my puppy.

I tell the students that they are all getting their own me bags to bring back filled with five items that are important to them. We read the little poem on the bag. We talk about the rules (listed in the letter to parents). I tell them it has to fit in the bag, so their pet elephant will probably have to stay at home! I give the students their bags and have them write their name at the top and decorate however they wish.

Here are the poems I put on the bags. I print them out on 2x4" labels and just stick 'em on!

I send the bags home that day with the following the note. Feel free to use it if you can! Click on the picture to download.

I had a few cuties bring their bags in today to share. Lots of favourite toys, birthday cards, photos. It's a great activity to get to know your students at the beginning of the year! Well, one more day until the weekend! Happy Friday everybody!