Christmas Activities

Here are some of the Christmas activities we have done this month. We made big paper candy canes. Students had to tear the paper stripes and I helped them glitter their names. (Ugh, glitter.....I use it but once a year!)

Another activity is our Grinch activity. We read the book and did a little brainstorming on what the Grinch could do to make Christmas better. Then we completed the story. Students colored a Grinch topper. I found this activity on a blog, but I can't remember where. The kids love doing it. Then we wrapped up the day by watching the movie.You can grab this activity here or by clicking on the picture.

We also made a Christmas tree by putting our numbers in order. Students colored their tree, then glued on the number ornaments and cut the whole thing out. We put them in our classroom window because they looked so nice. You can get this activity here or by clicking on the picture.

Enjoy your last week of school! I know I am!

Gingerbread Week

It is Gingerbread Week! We have a lot of fun this week, especially because it is the last week before Winter Break. But, I still want my students to work on language arts and listening skills. We do hunt the Gingerbread Man all over school. He's a sneaky little guy. We also make our Gingerbread Man: Escape Prevention Plan (a unit my class LOVES every year and available on TpT). This year we will be working on a story study. We will be comparing the different versions of the Gingerbread Man (and there are A LOT!) Below is a copy of the book we make about our stories. This book is for beginners. There are no writing lines. I chose to leave out the lines because I do not want my students to get stuck on the idea of writing a formal sentence. I want them to be brave enough to try and write about the story. Even if all I get are color words, I will praise their efforts and make suggestions so that next time that student will feel brave enough to try and write a little more. Take a look at this free story study and I hope you can do this with your own class.

Gingerbread Man Story Study

As a family project this week I am asking my students to decorate and write about their gingerbread man. I have formal lines on this sheet because I want parents to help them complete a sentence. They can make their gingerbread man into anything they want. Then they have to finish the sentence "My gingerbread man is ___________." This gets the parents thinking about their child's writing as well and helping the kids with their writing by providing a starter to the sentence.

My gingerbread man is ______________.

I hope you and your class have a MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

And a very merry WINTER BREAK!

Gingerbread Man: Escape Prevention Plan

I have put some Gingerbread Man activities up on TpT. My favorite is the Gingerbread Man: Escape Prevention Plan. This is a booklet that the students make, taking the Gingerbread Man apart so that he cannot run away. (Yes, we eat him.)

Our Gingerbread Man hunt starts after we read the book The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School by Laura Murray. We chase him into the library, the office, the cafeteria, the 1st grade, and then back to our classroom where he is "sleeping." After we find him students go out to recess and when they come back the Gingerbread Man has been taken to the office to talk with the principal who is "watching him."

 When we get back into class we talk about how we could have stopped the Gingerbread Man from running away. We then begin our Escape Prevention Plan. We all get 5 little paper gingerbread men. We color and cut them out. Then we glue them into our book one step at a time, like this:

As we make our book we also have little gingerbread men cookies. For each step we take the same bite in our cookie. I like the Keebler Gingerbread Men, but there are the Peppridge Farm one and the ones at Trader Joe's. This is probably the best part of the book! Yum!

If you would like to try out the Escape Prevention Plan in your class so that your Gingerbread Man doesn't run away you can get it at my TpT store.  This mini unit also includes some writing activities so that your little ones can write about the Gingerbread Man or can dictate what you write down. (The recipe activity in my unit always turns up some pretty funny kid answers!)

Enjoy!

The Pumpkin Project

So my school is literally across the street from a pumpkin patch. We could walk there in 2 minutes. But, I don't take my students for one reason: money. I don't have enough money to take my entire class to get a pumpkin. So, instead we have pumpkin day! I had an amazing grandmother buy each child in my class a small pumpkin so that we could experiment with what a pumpkin was and what it can do. We called it The Pumpkin Project.Usually, when I do not have a generous grandmother I get one pumpkin per table and students investigate in small groups.

This is a picture of one of my students investigating her pumpkin.
1. Observe the pumpkin (we drew pictures).
2. Decide if the pumpkin is big, medium or small.
3. Count how many lines the pumpkin has (I drew a black line so students knew where to start and stop counting).
4. Put the pumpkin in water and see if it sinks or floats.
5. Measure the pumpkin with unifix cubes.
6. Draw what kind of face they wanted on their pumpkin.

I have another version of this where they cut the pumpkin open and count the seeds. That seemed like too much for my TKs.

This picture is of Version 2 of the Pumpkin Project. Version 1 has the seed counting option.

Grab Version 1 and Version 2. Enjoy!

Bats and Pumpkins!

Halloween is in full swing in Kindergarten. We have been working, creating and learning new and silly songs. One of the first crafts we made was our bat hat. It is too cute.

When the kids finish and put it on we all walk around saying, "So and so....you have a bat on your head!" They crack up all day long. Here is the template for the hat. I recommend poster board or card stock for the wings so they stand out.

What else are we doing? Pumpkins! We have been learning about pumpkins all week. We have even entered the PTA Pumpkin Decorating Contest. I have yet to think of a good idea, but when I do I will post it.

Here is our bulletin board outside my classroom. Cute huh?

This is a page in our daily journals. We are working on capital letters, spacing and punctuation. Students have cut apart sentences (GRAB here!!) and they have to glue the sentence in their journal. Then they write the sentence, following all the rules, and then they draw a picture.

 

We learn the poem 5 Little Pumpkins and act out the poem with puppets. My students have it memorized in about 3 tries. I got these puppets at Michaels.

We make a 5 Little Pumpkins craft with popsicle sticks. I have them glue the poem on it so they can read it at home with their families. Grab the 5 Little Pumpkin craft here.

And of course, the paper plate pumpkin. We painted the plate and added a face to it, then did the life cycle on the back. To get the life cycle pieces go to my Pinterest Fall Activities Board.


We have a lot more Halloween fun to go !

It's October!

It is finally Fall. I always look forward to Fall and then realize how much I have to do with report cards, parent conferences, the Fall Festival and Halloween. Plus, I have to teach!
We kicked off our October with Stellaluna. We made a bat out of construction paper and wrote our own little sight word story retell on the back.

Grab the simple story here.

Another activity we did to go along with the bats theme was Nocturnal vs. Diurnal.
We read the story Where are the Night Animals? by Mary Ann Fraser and do a little sorting of our own.

Students will cut apart the animals and decide if they come out in the day or the night. Get the sorting sheets here.

We also had some fun with our math this week by putting our Spider Web numbers in order. I teach a Transitional Kindergarten class and do one number a week. We have only learned up to 7 so I only asked that my class order to 7. However, my numbers go to 9. If you would like to try some creepy, webby numbers grab them here.

Pumpkin Reader

Here is a quick freebie!

My Big Orange Pumpkin reader is a cute activity to go along with your pumpkin unit. We are learning how to follow along with our "reading finger" and reading the sight words. Grab it here.