How can you tell it's the beginning of December? Let me count the ways...
First up... Farley's Currently! Link yourself up at Oh' Boy 4th Grade and don't forget the rule or three.
Second... Christmas is in the air! I put up some Christmas decorations before leaving school on Friday. Even Pete the Cat, Pigeon, Gerald, and Piggie are sporting some Christmas hats. The bf and I started our Christmas advent calendars... yum! Our house has lights and some presents are wrapped. Just need a tree to bring it all together!
Third... We started our gingerbread study this week. I love reading all the varieties of stories and filling in this chart from Mrs. Jump's Gingerbread Man unit.
We read Mrs. Jump's adorable gingerbread emergent reader (free here). Instead of the students drawing themself eating the cookie, I made a large-sized gingerbread man and took their picture "eating" the cookie. The pictures turned out so cute and the kids loved seeing themselves at the end of the book!
And last... I created two new Christmas units for my TpT store. The first one is a pack of five word work centers that I plan to use during our Daily 5 time. There is stamping, rhyming, sentence scrambling, making words, and writing the room. Click the picture to check it out at TpT.
I am super excited about the second unit. It is a letter and postcard writing unit I will be using during Writer's Workshop. I plan to read "The Jolly Christmas Postman" by Janet Ahlberg. The unit contains mini lessons such as why we write letters, who writes letters, parts of a friendly letter, who to write to, what to write about, parts of a postcard, and how to write postcards. You can use this unit in many ways.... writing letters to Santa (or other North Pole friends), sending postcards to your classroom "Elf on the Shelf", or using it as a reader response and writing a letter/postcard to a story character (ie. Olive the Other Reindeer or Rudolph). Click the picture to check it out at TpT.
No Thanksgiving break or long weekend for me.... Just a normal two-day weekend that goes by way too fast and you can't get anything done in! *sigh* But the good news is, four weeks until Christmas vacation! Two weeks of relaxing and fun family time! Let the countdown begin!
Well, if you haven't heard yet, TpT is having a big sale this Monday and Tuesday. Everything in my store will be 20% off and if you use the promo code "cmt12", you get a total of 28% off! Click the picture below to check out the items in my store.
You can get ready for December with some of my Christmas-y products. Click the pictures to check them out at TpT...
Sorry, just stopping by for a quick update! I'm right smack dab in the middle of report cards. This was our Remembrance Day bulletin board. We read "The Peace Book" by Todd Parr and did our own "Peace is..." writing (posted this freebie here last year). My favourite is "Peace is suntanning." Haha. Too cute! We also made this cute poppy wreaths. Warning: oil pastels + hot laminating = runny mess. Whoops! Where was my brain??
In math, we have been practicing our 2D shapes. I put together this anchor chart that we filled in together over a few days. You can download the chart labels {here} for free. The shape clipart is from the blog LoveTwoTeach and, best of all, it's free!
I made the clipart into large posters, as well, and we like to play the mystery shape game! I hide one of the shapes and give the students three clues to try and guess it. It's a fun way to kill a few minutes at the end of class!
Here's a few shape books I like to read during our lessons:
After we read "The Shape of Things", we made our own shape pictures. I put out large 11x17" white paper and various shapes for students to choose. Each student chooses one shape and creates a picture around it. Tomorrow we will do some writing along the lines of "A circle is just a circle, until you add a body and wings, then it becomes a pigeon!"
Pigeon and duckling... so cute! Can you tell we are starting our Mo Willems author study?
Circle flowers!
Square robots... a whole squad of them!
Here's a fun game we enjoyed playing too. It's called "Trace a Shape"!Students roll the die and trace the shape they rolled. Did you stock up on foam cubes at the dollar store like I did? Then just draw some shapes on them to make a shape dice! Easy peasy! Grab your own game {here}.
If you haven't stopped by my TpT store lately, I posted this 2D shape book a few weeks ago. It's a freebie, so grab it if you haven't yet! It contains pages for the following shapes: circle, oval, triangle, square, rectangle, rhombus, trapezoid, pentagon, hexagon, and octagon. Each page follows the same format: write it, draw it, sides/corners, color it, and draw objects that are that shape! Click the picture below to check it out at TpT.
Wow, sorry I have been such a bad blogger. I'm trying to get on here at least once a week, but some weeks are harder than others! We have been super busy at school... no Halloween activities or parties (which was actually kind of nice, but I did miss dressing up!) but lots of other things to occupy our time. I couldn't believe Farley already had her next currently up and running... I'm trying to deny that it is November already! Report cards, parent teacher conferences.... eeeek!!! Go check out the other Currently's at Oh' Boy 4th Grade. Don't forget the rule of three!!
So here's what we were up to this week. Even though we didn't celebrate Halloween, we did study pumpkins. We did this cute pumpkin life cycle craft.... it did take a lot of steps to get it finished, but I think it was worthwhile. First we painted a paper plate and a half orange, then we coloured the pumpkin life cycle pieces from A to Z Teacher Stuff found here and glued them to a vine, and then we put it all together to make these cute pumpkins!
We practiced making patterns with these foam leaf stickers I bought from the dollar store. This worksheet was from the blog Just Add Clipart. The kids really enjoyed this! I think I will pull it out for each holiday... just buy some different seasonal stickers! :)
I think I have mentioned how weak my class is before, but it's pretty much like having a class of Kindergarteners. So when I find simple math centres that keep them engaged... woo hoo!! One of the most popular math stations is PLAY DO!! I had my numbers out (posted last year here), but wanted to extend it a bit further. So I created these number mats for the numbers 1-20. Students can create the number and fill in the ten frames to show the number. I also created mats for 2D shapes (circle, oval, triangle, square, rectangle, rhombus, trapezoid, pentagon, hexagon, octagon).
You can check them out at TpT for only $2. Just add Play Do for an instant math centre! Click the picture below to check them out.
Our author of the month for October was Melanie Watt. She is a Canadian author, which I love, and her books are too adorable. If you haven't read the Scaredy Squirrel or Chester books, you must go check them out now! I have a monthly author study bulletin board that I update each month. Can you tell it was Kevin Henkes before? Hehe... darn fading paper! Here is my Melanie Watt display:
I created some posters with some facts about Melanie Watt to display. We read all of her books... there are six Scaredy Squirrel books (the Christmas one is new.... we will read that one in December!), three Chester books, Augustine, Leon the Chameleon, You're Finally Here!, and Have I Got a Book for You! Love them all. Here are some activities we did: a Scaredy Squirrel craft, text-to-self connections about things we're afraid of, and our own emergency kits!
I combined these activities (and more) into a pack for you. If you liked my Clifford Author Study pack, you will love this one too! There are 65 pages of Melanie Watt fun! There are a bunch of activities to go with the Scaredy Squirrel books, Chester books, and other Melanie Watt books. Click the pictures below to check it out at TpT.
That's it for now! I promise to be back again soon. Next week we are doing some 2D shape activities that I can't wait to share. Enjoy the weekend everyone!
We will be practicing bus evacuations, talking about bus safety rules, and learning how to be good bus riders! I put together a pack of activities for us to do this week... Click the picture below to check out this "School Bus Safety Pack" at TpT.
I created a ten-page, full colour book that goes over nine important bus safety rules. This book can be printed out and bound into a book or you can project it from the computer. Inside the pack you also get a half-page student version of the rule book, in b&w, with a blank to fill in on each page.
There are a variety of other fun, bus safety activities to complete: bubble map, labelling, tree map, word search, poem, cut & paste sentences, roll & colour ten frame game, pattern page, and board game.
So today was our big professional development day and I just had to share this fabulous art lesson! My morning was about math games from the company Boxcars and One Eyed Jacks. They have a lot of neat math games involving cards, dice, and dominoes. The afternoon session I attended was put on by a grade 1/2 teacher called "Creating Art Through Children's Literature" and it was FANTASTIC!! She showed us a bunch of different ideas then let us have some make and take time to create some of the art projects.
This was my favourite project: Splat the Cat!! So simple, yet so cute! I am definitely doing this with my firsties.
Students take a teaspoon of black acrylic paint and dump it in the middle of the paper. Using their finger, they spread it around to make an oval (the body). Then they dragged the paint out from the oval to make the arms, legs, and tail. You can talk about the different ways to "pose" Splat. He's never in the same pose in the book. Then, while the paint is still wet, use the end of a piece of pipe cleaner to scratch around the edges of Splat, to give him that scruffy look. Then just add details using coloured paper: white for eyes, grey for muzzle, pink for ears and tongue, and black sharpie to draw details. You can stick the paper right on the wet paint or wait until it dries to glue the pieces on. It was very simple and a lot of fun! I love how mine turned out. :)
Thank goodness for Thursdays that are Fridays! :) We have a professional development day tomorrow, so no kiddies! It's a nice little break.
I'm going to admit that the beginning of this year has been difficult for me.... combine moving to a new school with a large class of needy/weak students, and I have been stressing out since September. I just haven't been able to get into the groove of things and feel like I'm constantly one step behind! After my resource teacher popped in for a few lessons on personal safety, she commented on how emotionally needy my class is. I think that was the moment I decided to make some changes--for myself and my students.
I really want to work on creating a strong sense of community, so we are starting each and everyday with a morning meeting. There are three parts to our meeting:
1. Greeting--We gather in a large circle to say good morning to each other. Today our greeting consisted of turning to the person beside us, shaking their hand, looking in their eyes, and saying, "Good morning, ___!" Very simple, but important skills for students to practice! I have eight EAL students in my room, so practicing oral language skills daily is super important for them as well! I have been collecting a variety of fun greetings, so we will change it up every few days or so. Eventually I might let the star of the day choose the greeting. Responsive classroom has some great ideas for greetings you can download here. I found some other cute greetings here too.
2. News & Announcements--This just consists of going over the daily schedule and talking about important upcoming events. Pretty simple!
3. Activity--My school is using the program Second Step this year. It is a social-emotional learning program that focus on learning skills, empathy, emotion management, and problem solving. I really like this program so far... it comes with cute puppy & snail puppets and large scenario photo cards. So far we have finished the first unit on learning skills. We have talked about good listening, focusing attention, following directions, and asking for help.
I found that the morning meeting really got us off to a good start! We started the day smiling, laughing, and talking about the things we wanted to accomplish that day. I found that the rest of the day just flew by and everyone seemed to be in a happier, calmer mood.
At the end of the day I implement the 3 H rule: "Say goodbye with a hug, handshake, or high five!" It ensures I make a connection with everyone at the end of the day too.
Now, to work on our noise level, I picked up this awesome idea from Teacher Tipster! Today we started the whisper bell. Just an ordinary bell. When the voice level gets a bit too loud, I ding the bell and the students whisper "whisper bell" (accompanied with jazz hands). The first time it happens is strike one. If they get three strikes/dings, then it's five minutes of NO TALKING! Eek! If we make it through the day without getting three strikes, we get to pick a number for our prize bingo (fantastic idea taken from the lovely Miss Kindergarten). We are hoping for a pajama party!!
This week we have been talking about fall. It's been a lot easier since the snow melted! Now we're just stuck with gloomy rain. Yuck! So I made up this little five senses fall book. It's called "Fall is here!" and each page has a sentence frame: I see, I hear, I feel, I smell, I taste. We brainstorm a list of ideas together, then students choose one to write and illustrate. You can download the book {here}.
I found this cute fall poem on Kinder Latino's blog. You can download the student version (in English and Spanish!) from her blog {here}. I made some larger poetry cards to use in the pocket chart. You can download them {here}. We did some shared reading together, then students glue the poem into their poetry book. We keep our poetry notebooks in our book bins. I love seeing the kids take them out during read to self or read to someone time!
That's it for tonight. Off to watch Grey's Anatomy! :) Happy Friday!
