I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We had a great time with my husband's family and I'm pretty sure my tummy will be full for days! ;) I know it's been for.ev.er since I've blogged, but let's be real....this past year has been busy, busy for me and I haven't made the time between caring for our first baby, learning a new grade, and a new school. I've just been trying to stay afloat! I'm starting to feel a glimpse of my old self and maybe I'll start blogging a little more. Either way, I'm here tonight to blog about our short week before Thanksgiving break. I was a last minute planner for that short week, but I think it turned out pretty well. The kids enjoyed it and I got a lot of "your the best teacher ever" comments. That's all ya need right?! ;)
During our typical reading block, we studied the differences between things we do and use now compared to back then. I threw together a little product for this lesson which you can see below.
I gave each of the kids a card with a picture on it. I encouraged them to use their very best coloring and use colors that made sense. They did a pretty nice job!
Then we came back to the carpet to sort our cards by things that are done or used now or then just using any prior knowledge we had.
This was the finished sort with just our prior knowledge.
Then we read a story about many of these things and began coloring the pictures.
After some time spent coloring, we came back to the carpet to review our sort and make any changes that we learned about from the story. We discussed some of the items and compared them. Then we wrote about how things we do now are different than it would've been back then.
The next day, we reviewed the sort and sorted again, read the book again, and did this piece of writing. They had to decide whether they would rather live now or back then and give reasons to support their answer.
For math, we did some easy prep math stations that I put together. There were a total of 4 stations so we did two rotations each day. They loved playing games like these.
The games worked on addition, counting on, decomposing, and writing addition and subtraction equations. To finish off the math block, we did some Thanksgiving problem solving.
These were differentiated to challenge some of my higher kids.
For writing I always have my kids do a countdown to Thanksgiving with 5 things they are thankful for. I didn't get any pictures this year, but the book is in my store here. We also made these cute little turkey hats. My students asked if I was going to make one for baby Creyton, so here he is! My little turkey in his turkey hat! :)
So yes, in the midst of having a busy year, there is so SO much to be thankful for. This little man is one of the big things I am especially thankful for this year. Again, I hope your Thanksgiving was wonderful and I hope you are all getting rejuvenated and ready for a quick December! We will be on winter break before we know it! :)
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