Gingerbread Delight!

We had a fun-filled week full of gingerbread activities. If you have not purchased Deanna Jump's Gingerbread Unit, DO IT!! It is full of amazing activities! She has some freebies on her blog too.

So we started out by making our gingerbread journals. I followed Deanna's steps to make the gingerbread man, but for the booklet, I just folded a large piece of construction paper in half, stapled our activity pages inside, and rounded the top corners. It was so easy to make and a lot less cutting! The gingerbread boys and girls turned out so cute!

Here's a view of the inside of our activity books. It was a collection of gingerbread pages I've found from different resources.

Each day we read a different gingerbread book and filled in this chart from Deanna's unit.

During our writing time each day, students had to write a response about each of the books. If you would like to download my journal pages for these four books, you can click here.

 

We just finished our mapping unit in Social Studies, so I decided for a fun wrap up activity that would create a Gingerbread Town! I collected small milk cartons, covered them with brown construction paper (hot glued a strip around the bottom and two rectangles to the top... very easy!) and let the kids decorate them with crayons, markers, and pictures of candy! I found a photocopy page of a bunch of different candies from some gingerbread unit (maybe a Teacher Created Resources book) that they coloured and cut out. They placed their houses on the large map.

Using the compass on our map, we played a little game! I would draw names and the first person would take the little toy car to their house. The second person I drew would have to explain to the first student how to get to their house (using the cardinal directions). When they arrived, the second person would get the car and I would draw another name. The third person would then explain to the second person how to get to their house. We went until everyone got a turn to drive the car and give directions. It was so much fun and the kids were so engaged!!

What is a gingerbread unit without TASTING some gingerbread cookies!! We sat on the carpet with our gingerbread activity books and I passed out a cookie to everybody (store bought.... I don't have time to bake yet!! lol) with the instructions they could LOOK and SMELL, but NOOOOO eating!! Yes, I'm sooooo mean! ;)  We came up with some descriptive words about the gingerbread cookie.

After that, I allowed them have ONE bite! Then we graphed which part of the cookie we ate first (idea from Deanna's unit) in our graphing pocket chart. Students had Deanna's graph worksheets in their activity book, which they completed AFTER we ate the rest of our cookies :) If you would like my graph labels, you can download them here.

In Math we are practicing counting by 5's, so I created these gingerbread men activities to reinforce this skill. I started by handing out these gingerbread cards. The students had to rearrange themselves in order, from 5 to 100. Then we placed the cards in the pocket chart.

Then we did this little cut and paste activity that was a lot of fun. I gave each student 3 strips of brown construction paper (about 2x18") and they glued them together to make one LOOOOOONG strip (I think this was the fun part... working on the floor or on TWO desks). Then they got a page of gingerbread men that they had to cut out and glue in the correct counting by 5's order. We coloured them after.

Later in the week we did a little worksheet that had the students write the numbers out on the gingerbread men's tummies.

If you are interested in these gingerbread men counting by 5's activities, I put them together and put them in my TpT store for {free}. You can download them by clicking on the picture below.

I'm hoping to get my "Christmas Around the World" unit up on TpT this weekend. I'm starting the 9-day mini-unit on Monday with my class, and it will take me to next Thursday, the last day before Christmas break! Yahoo!! I can't wait to have 17 wonderful days of relaxing!

Happy weekend, everyone!

Giveaways!

Barbara over at Grade ONEderful is having a give away in celebration of reaching 100 followers! Make sure you check it out for a chance to win a $25 Amazon or Starbucks gift card! Who couldn't use either of those around this time of year? Awesome! :) Check out the details here to enter! Also, check out her cute Christmas writing activities. Very cute! I'm definitely going to use them.

Jenn at Finally in First is also having a giveaway! She is celebrating her 1 year blogging anniversary! Congrats and thanks for sharing your wonderful ideas! You can win any item from her TpT store (and she's got some goodies in there!!) Click here to see details about how to enter.

Thanks ladies, and good luck to all!

Math Stations 3 - Christmas Style!!

Happy Weekend, everbody! It is now December and officially time to pull out all the fun Christmas activities! I have been so inspired by all the great ideas out there. But with only 3 weeks until Christmas break, I know there is no way I will be able to fit in all the stuff I want to. Oh well, I'll save the extra ideas for next year! :)

Well, I have done it! I have ventured into the world of TpT. I have created my first EVER TpT item for sale (plus two freebies!!). It is a package of nine fun, Christmas themed math centers. They cover topics such as addition to 10, skip counting by 5s, skip counting by 10s, patterning, bar graphs, more or less, and  non-standard measurement.

I have started the math stations in our class and the kids are LOVING them. Although, they would probably love anything if I slapped a picture of Santa or a gingerbread man on it! Gotta love first grade! Here's a peek at the stations included in my pack.

Station #1:  Christmas Light Patterns

Students pull a pattern card and colour in the pattern on their sheet.

Station #2: Christmas Sums of 10

Students shake a cup of Christmas double-sided counters to find different ways to make ten.

Station #3: Christmas Roll & Tally

Students roll a Christmas die and keep track of their rolls with tally marks. They count their tallies after, and decide which picture was rolled the MOST and LEAST.

Station #4: Gingerbread House Graphing

Students count the number of candies on the gingerbread house and complete a bar graph.

Station #5: Christmas Measurement

Students use unifix cubes to measure the various Christmas characters.

Station #6: Gingerbread Addition (Facts to 10)

Students figure out addition sentences, using gingerbread manipulatives on a cookie sheet.

** Note to all: Do not purchase glitter foam shapes for this station. Glitter ends up EVERYWHERE! I have now replaced them with regular foam shapes! :)

Station #7: Which Is More?

Students flip over two number cards (from 1-30) and figure out which number is more and which is less.

Station #8: Santa's Workshop Count by 10's

Students choose a toy from Santa's workshop. They figure out how much money the toy costs by counting the dimes by 10. There are Canadian and American versions of the cards included in the package.

Station #9: Christmas Tally Mark Count by 5s

Students count the number of tally marks on the card by skip counting by 5s.

All of these stations are included in my package on TpT for only $6.00. 

Click the picture to visit my store.

Here is another fun, Christmas math activity for you to try. It is a game called cover up. Scattered on the page are the numbers from 2-12. Students roll 2 dice, add them together, and cover up the sum. The first person to cover up all their numbers is the winner. This can be played individually, with partners, or in small groups. You can also allow the students to choose whether they want to add or subtract the numbers. It is a fun game to have on hand when students finish their work early, or as an additional center. There is a snowman and a Christmas tree version. Both are available for FREE from my TpT store. Click the pictures to download!

Enjoy! I hope everyone is getting in the holiday spirits! I have a weekend full of Christmas shopping to look forward to.

Our First Writing Project!!

During our writer's workshop time, we started off the year writing in our journals. We have been practicing putting capitals at the beginnign of our sentences, periods or exclamation marks at the end, and using buble gum writing (s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g out the sounds we hear, like a piece of bubble gum!). They were doing very well, so we started our first writing project! A book called "Things I Like". It's a very simple book where the students write about things they like. It has six pages that go "I like..." and the seventh page ends the story with, "But I don't like.." Simple, but cute!

So I started off the lesson by modelling a brainstorming session. Before we can write a book, we have to think about WHAT we are going to write. I made my bubble map on chart paper and wrote down six things that I like/like to do. I also thought of one thing I don't like to do.

Then I gave my little bunnies their own sheet to write about what they like. I had them write the one thing they DON'T like either on the bottom of the page or on the back. I tried to stress that these were just ideas... not the whole sentences. But of course, you still have some that write all the words!

Then we worked on our rough copies. I printed the paper on 11 x 17" paper and my students had to write one sentence in each box and draw/colour a picture to go with it.

We did a mini-lesson on making our drawings WOW! We looked at this anchor chart that showed what it looked like to make a Wow! 5 drawing. It had to use lots of colours, have many details, be outlined, and look neat! Now I always ask them, "Is your drawing a Wow! 5 drawing?" They always go back and add more details or colours. It has really helped so far!

Finally, we turned our rough copies into a good copy .We made a title page on half of an 8.5 x 11" paper and glued it to a piece of construction paper, which was then laminated. I put all the pages together and bound them. The books turned out super cute! They shared them with their parents at our parent-teacher conferences. Parents were quite impressed with all the work that went into these books!

If you are interested in any of the papers we used, you can download them below.

Brainstorm Map

Rough Copy 11 x 17"

Good Copy Writing Paper

50th Day

So it seems like my school is slightly behind everyone elses. We just had our 50th day of school this past Wednesday. After seeing all the super cute ideas out there, I knew I had to have a 50's themed party! Unfortunately Wednesday was crazy... we went skating all morning and had parent teacher conferences at night, so no time for fun 50's themed activities that day! We decided to have our 50's day on Friday (hey! 52 is still in the fifties!) and it was tiring a blast! I decorated the room with these cute spirly records that I got from the party store.

I gave each of the students a little baggie at the beginning of the week that they had to fill up with 50 items to bring to school. We had cheerios, q-tips, pennies, buttons.. you name it! Students had to count out their objects in groups of 5 and place them on the mat I gave them. Then we all counted our collections by 5's. We also put two groups together so we could count by 10's. You can download the mat here if you wish.

We had a fun little photo op. I took each kid's photo in the car to use in their end of year scrap book. They turned out so cute! Look at this cool dude:

 

I was inspired by Miss E over at Eberhart's Explorers to do a picture sort of things from the 1950's and things from today. I made my own set of matching picture cards (so every student had a card). I handed them out randomly and students had to find their "partner". For example, the student with the saddle shoe was partners with the skater shoe. Each pair came up to the front and we decided which item belonged in the 50's and which one was from today. You can download my cards from here.

The records at the bottom of the chart are a counting by 5's activity I got from Mrs. Magee over at First Grade Brain. After the sorting activity, we did this little craftivity and writing activity from Mrs. Carroll's adorable "Cruisin' Through the 50 First Days of School" unit. As you can tell, my class is still working on the whole "follow directions and work neatly" thing.

When they were finished their activity, they played this "Roll a Record" game (also form Mrs. Carroll's unit).

To top the day off, we did (another fabulour Mrs. Carroll idea) some interactive writing on how to make a root beer float. These were directions straight from their mouths! I had a mom volunteer come to make the root beer floats, so as the kiddies were working on their own versions, they could each go up to the table and help make their float. Too fun! The kids loved their root beer float books. One of my little boys was so excited. He said, "It's like my own recipe book!" :)

Lots of fun was had! I am glad that week is finally finished though. I am very jealous of all you American bloggers and your Thanksgiving break. We had no such break here in Canada, and we still have four weeks to go until Christmas break! I can't wait to pull out the decorations and Christmas crafts this month though! Good night everybody!