Kacsko's Kiddos: November 2015

We made it to the end of the alphabet! Watch us do all our letter chants here (for some reason the video won't embed :/

As has become the custom in room 109, we celebrated this momentous occasion with an alphabet party. More on that in a minute. For now, let's wrap up this past week.

We talked about our Thanksgiving traditions, particularly the yummy foods we eat. We made a graph of our favorites....

then wrote about them and shared our writings with our classmates.

Landon apparently likes everything!

We wrote recipes and grocery lists especially for the big meal in the writing center

We made crafts of turkey and pie for our Here is Thanksgiving Poem Book.

We used our reading strategies (sound out the words, use the pictures, think, does it make sense?) to read about a family gathered at the Thanksgiving table. This anchor chart also reinforced the learning of the new sight words: want, some, & said.

We read a story (Silly Tilly's Thanksgiving Dinner) in which the characters participated in an accidental potluck style meal. The students then wrote about what dishes they could help their grown-ups make.

We also practiced setting the table for the big day. At one of our math workshops, the students rolled two dice (with 0-3 dots on the sides) and added them together. Our goal is to be able to add numbers with a sum up to five automatically. Each sum matched up to a different item to go on their place mat. This was their favorite station this week. I think we'll repeat it for a Christmas dinner when we get back from break.

We talked about turkeys a lot, too. We read/recited a poem each day that gave us a good idea of how subtraction works. A student would select a number card out of bucket, then we'd insert it into the poem. I forgot to take a picture, so here's how it worked. Let's say the students picked the number three.

Five little turkeys sitting in a tree

3 flew down and landed by me.

How many turkeys are still in the tree?

Then I would remove 3 turkeys and the students would see how many were left. I would also write down the subtraction sentence. I think we're starting to get it.

We used turkeys to sort out word families. Since we were finished with the alphabet, we reviewed rhyming words and word families in our small guided reading groups.

We read a silly book called "A Plump and Perky Turkey." In it, the town folk created turkey sculptures out of interesting materials. The students wrote about what they would make turkeys out of.

"I want to make a turkey out of pencils." (I know, I know.)

pipe cleaners

animal skin

clay

We sang a turkey song everyday that I made up in my first year of teaching. The students did a little impromptu performance of it for the parent and grandparent helpers at the Alphabet party.

And before I get to the Alphabet party, I can't forget to mention the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving feast we enjoyed on Monday - complete with pretzel stick, jelly beans, toast & butter, and popcorn.

Now for the event we had all been waiting for- we started things off with a bang - or should I say pop? Each child was given a balloon with a letter magnet inside.

Once they popped it, we put the alphabet in order.

Then the party stations started and we had a ball. The students had snacks, played alphabet bingo, tossed alphabet bean bags, and constructed their names out of toothpicks and marshmallows. I'll leave you with all the cute pics of their creative letter costumes and the fun that we had. Have a happy Thanksgiving!