President's Day and American Symbols

We spent a lot of time this week learning about our past presidents and American symbols. We made box books about U.S. symbols.

Liberty Bell Box Books

Bald Eagle Box Books

Students chose a U.S. symbol to write about. We had the U.S. Flag, Liberty Bell,  Statue of Liberty,  Bald Eagle, and The White House represented.

U.S. Flag

Liberty Bell

We also did some activities from Traci Clausen's President's Day Unit. The kids made themselves look like George Washington, did an Abraham Lincoln craft, and tucked a book about U.S. symbols in his hat.

I thought these were hysterical!

We also made these adorable Bald Eagles from Deanna Jump's America Unit. So cute!

President's Day Writing

We did some writing about Abraham Lincoln today.  

Click the picture to download the graphic organizer.

Here is one for George Washington

Cloudy with a Chance of...

Today we read Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and wrote our own stories about unexpected things raining down from the skies. We used stickers to help illustrate. They loved it!

I had a variety of stickers for the kids to choose from. Money, cupcakes, chickens, vegetables, donuts, soda, balls, airplanes, etc.

They look cute hanging from the ceiling.

Oh What a Day!

A giant vanilla marshmallow, a crumpled up $20 bill, and a tortilla warmer. Stumped? Just some of the treasures I brought home from our Valentine's Day extravaganza. I had to leave my own two valentines home with strep throat and face the day with 24 very excited first graders. After tackling the challenge of the boy who brought his valentine mailbox completely covered (no opening for the valentines to go in) and consoling the tearful boy who left his valentines at home, I was starting to feel feverish myself. Starbucks to the rescue! Two venti lattes later and I was ready to party. The kids ate breakfast, made a craft, and glued their valentines in a scrapbook. Just as the party was ending, one of my little guys walks over to me, grabs a $20 bill out of his pocket and says, "I almost forgot. Here's twenty bucks. Go buy yourself something nice." He throws the twenty down on the table and walks away. I'm speechless. For the record, I gave the money back. Oh...and the tortilla warmer wasn't a gift. Just something I picked up off the free table in the teacher's lounge. Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!

Love, Splat

We have been doing some activities from Cara Carroll's Love, Splat unit this week. I just love that story. It is so sweet and the kids cannot resist that adorable fuzzy cat. In addition to Cara's activities, we made these accordion heart folded story maps.  The kids did the folding and cutting themselves. Amazingly enough,  only one student had to start over because he ended up with four separate hearts. Did I mention that I had to do it three times before mine stayed together? We did a guided drawing for Splat and glued him on the back. They are adorable!

Valentine Friends

Picked up these adorable Valentine Friends from First Grade Blue Skies. I modified the writing by using the four square writing method to write complete paragraphs about Valentine's Day.

Here is the graphic organizer I used for the 4 square pre-write. The topic sentence goes in the heart. Detail sentences are written in the top two boxes and the bottom left-hand box. The concluding sentence is written in the last box, bottom right-hand corner. If you download, please leave a comment!

100th Day Write

Our class celebrated the 100th day of school on Tuesday. We made a class book from Deanna Jump's 100th Day Unit. I asked my kiddies to write one thing they would buy for themselves and one thing they would do to help someone else.  Gotta love first grade spelling!

If I had $100 I would by a home for homeless animals. I would buy a pool.

If I had a $100 I would buy a snow globe and give the rest to Pennies for Patients.