Search results matching tags 'freebie' and 'thanksgiving'

Last Minute Turkey Day Activities {Another Freebie, too!}

Anonymous — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 01:54:00 GMT

We made our turkeys who are flapping around in our classroom as we speak!

This poem/song is always a favorite with students. It is such a great phonemic awareness activity! My students are now substituting all beginning sounds with t and it is hilarious (as well as great practice for them!).

And, just because we love these puzzles so much, I made another one for my babes to put together tomorrow and thought I'd share it with you, too. Hope you like it! I am thinking (now that my students are PROfessionals at this activity) that I can now add this activity as a staple center for building sentences during literacy time and working with numbers during math centers!

Click below to grab your freebie!

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Oodles of November Goodies!

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 21:38:00 GMT

I seriously can not believe Thanksgiving is in two weeks. Seriously?! I love this time of year, but it is flying by already!

I have lots of fun goodies for November and Thanksgiving, so I thought I'd just compile them altogether here in one blog post so you don't have to go searching through the archives. I'm cool like that.

Here's one of my most favorite writing activities. It's a twist on the traditional "What I'm Thankful For..." assignment. This turned out to be one of our best writing pieces last year. {Click on any of the pictures in this post to check out the original post for details, printables, etc.}

I love, love, love scoot games. Here's a fun one. It's a true or false turkey trivia game. I learned a ton making the game and some of the facts are pretty darn interesting! It's a freebie, just click the pic.

If you still haven't changed over your bulletin boards (like me) here's a super-de-duper fast, easy and free one for you!

Here's a fun game to help your little turkeys practice recognizing odd and even numbers (another freebie)

And also for math, don't miss Gobble Bump! All of my monthly bump games are always free :)

Ok, now some new stuff!

I recently started creating these Calendar Centers. I plan to have one for each month. Each set comes with correctly labeled monthly calendars for 2012, 2013 and 2014 and 20 task cards. I'm not sure where this aligns with CCSS, but dangit kids need to know how to read a calendar!! Somehow after doing calendar math for at least 3 years before they come to me, they still have major misconceptions about calendar skills. So these are working out really great for me. I print out the monthly calendar and task cards and leave it with the answer sheet as a center. You could also very easily just keep the task cards handy and incorporate them into your calendar routine or use to fill those awkward few minutes that sometimes creep up on us. Click HERE to check them out at TpT.

My other newest obsession are my monthly printable packs. I took some essential skill practice pages and added some fun and seasonal flair to them! I've been using them to supplement lessons and as centers and homework, but starting next month, I'm going to make it a monthly challenge packet. This way the kids can always just keep it at their seat and use it as an early finisher choice. I'm not just saying this, but my kids really had fun with the October pack and they were asking when the November one was coming! There's something magical about dressing up a printable with a turkey, I suppose! You can check out the November pack here. Here's a little freebie from the pack. I've also listed October and December so far.

Ok, I think that about does it! I have a feeling I'm going to run out of month again before I get to use all of my resources - especially considering I just took down our jack o'lantern glyphs today and still have mystery mansions hanging on my hall bulletin board! Think if I just added some colored leaves, I can turn it into a little fall landscape??

P.S.You can check out some of my favorite November read alouds HERE!

Monthly Holiday Lists

Anonymous — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 17:35:00 GMT

VocabularySpellingCity has a whole section dedicated to Monthly Holiday Lists. Visit my blog, Teaching...My Calling, for more information on their special Thanksgiving lists.

Thanksgiving Word Wall FREEBIE!!

Anonymous — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 23:32:00 GMT

Hey everyone! Happy Friday! And you all know what Friday means? Well besides that you have the weekend to recover and relax hehehe:)

TBA has Freebie Friday and here is my freebie!

I created a Thanksgiving word wall with pictures included, like the Halloween word wall I blogged about not too long ago :)

Click my blog button to get it. Enjoy!

Turkey Trivia Scoot Freebie

Anonymous — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 23:00:00 GMT

Hi there fellow addicts!

Have you ever played Scoot with your kids? If you haven't, you are going to LOVE me for sharing this! At last that's the way I felt the first time someone shared a Scoot game with me!

Here's a sneak peek - the link to download is in the next sentence :)

Ok, Click {HERE} to head over to my blog to read a bit more about it and download this fun freebie!

See ya on the sunny side!

Thankful Things

Anonymous — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 20:10:00 GMT

Raise your hand if you could live the rest of your life without hearing one more essay about your students being thankful for their family and toys! Peeps, my hand is WAY up! Now, as sweet and endearing as those writings may be, after 18 years of teaching I'm about over them. (Does that sound mean?) In my own school I see the concept starting in Pre-K with cute turkeys and scribbly handwriting telling the world they're thankful for their Famalee or some such cuteness. This year, I did the obligatory turkey project with the same ol' same ol' thankful things, but as I was doing it, it occurred to me that it was time to kick it up a notch. I decided to stretch their little imaginations a bit and ask them to think of ways they're thankful for some unusual things that are totally worth being thankful for, but never make it into one darn Thanksgiving project!

I started by reading one of my favorite seasonal books - We Gather Together, Now Please Get Lost by Diane DeGoat. In the book Gilbert learns to be thankful for Phillip even though Phillip is not exactly one of his favorite people geese. That inspired this writing project. I listed some everyday items on little slips of paper and put them in a cup. Then I had each student pull a slip from the cup and announce what they had. Here are some of the choices...you can imagine the puzzled looks on their seven year-old faces when they pulled "band-aid" out of a cup that was supposed to hold a cool topic for a Thanksgiving project! (Don't click yet, but there is a link at the end for a free copy of everything you'll need to do this lesson if you'd like)

After sufficient giggle time passed, I started with a think-aloud on my topic. I chose baby wipes. I talked about how I'm thankful that they make cleaning the classroom easier, that they smell nice and how some of them even kill germs! That got the ball rolling. I gave them a few minutes to talk things over with their partner and then asked for some volunteers to share. It was a little slow going, but eventually, the ideas were flying! We did a lot of talking and sharing ideas before I gave them this frame to help them organize their ideas.

After they wrote, I edited with them and they published it on this little turkey peek-over pattern I've had in my files for at least a hundred years.

They grumbled a bit at the beginning, but their finished products were so incredible! This really helped them look at things in a whole new light. The ideas they came up with were things I hadn't even thought of. I took pictures of the writing and put it together in a little slideshow here. You have to read kind of fast because it automatically advances in 30 seconds...so ready, set, read!

"Picnik Show"

Create a free slideshow with Picnik!

If this looks like something you'd like to try, click {HERE} to get a free copy of the lesson steps, word cards and pre-writing frame. I put it together pretty quickly, so if you spot any mistakes, let me know. Sorry I can't share the peek-over turkey, I don't have the rights for that. Boo, Hiss Copyright Police!!

I can't even believe that I have the WHOLE week off next week! Don't be hatin'. Two of the days are furlough days, but we recently got a new superintendent who publicly said that furlough days are a thing of the past in this county - let's hope so!

Gobble Up This Free Turkey Pattern as a Thank You

Anonymous — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 13:47:00 GMT

These turkeys have been hanging around our school for as long as I've been teaching there. I have no idea what the origin of this pattern was, but I had to sort of revamp it to make it fit on a digital paper file. Consequently, if you use my pattern the way it is, it will be smaller than the turkeys seen here. If your photocopier has the capability to take larger construction paper, you might want to consider enlarging the pieces to make it larger. My coworkers (who shared this activity with me) use tracers, so that the students have to trace each piece. It is perfect for 1st graders to do these extra steps, but I found that it was difficult to have kindergarten students trace all pieces, so I copy some onto the colored paper for them. You know your students best and can decide which would be best for your particular class.

You can also make a large pattern by creating a tracer AFTER you assemble the body and the wings. We usually use brown paper bags to trace that huge apparatus on, but this year I got a huge roll of brown butcher paper that we all used and, I have to say, it was much easier than taking apart all of the bags.

I am not a huge fan of "cookie cutter" projects, but this is too darn cute to pass by and, even though they all get the same pieces, they still come out looking differently, which is the way I LOVE it. Of course, there must be a literacy component as well, so the last page of my free kit is speech bubbles that make the turkeys say, "Eat ____________, not turkey." The children can decide what it is that they want the people to eat instead of turkey and write it down. We will be adding these tomorrow, since we made our turkeys last thing on Friday afternoon (I know, WHAT was I thinking???).

I also just added a Disguise a Turkey Family Kit to my TpT store. It has everything and more that you would need for this project and allows you to expand in the classroom with writing activities, puppets and even trading cards. My favorite part, that never occurred to me before now, was that I created 40 different awards to be given to EVERY child, as well as some blank ones. I am going to print them on sticker paper/labels to just peel and quickly stick on each turkey, but you can also just print them on paper, cut, and tape them on.

Do you do this project at your school? If not, now is the time to start. It is a great way to allow families to be involved in their child's learning and promotes great discussion in the classroom.

Click Above to read more about it

Five Favorites for November

Anonymous — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 18:00:00 GMT

It's no secret that I have a slight addiction to picture books. It's bad. I can't even just check them out or borrow them either, I have to OWN them. So, in the spirit of the season, here are some books I am very thankful for this month!

A Plump and Perky Turkey If you haven't read this one - it's a hoot! Squawk Valley is looking for its turkey day dinner and stages an art fair to attract a gobbler to their town. Pete can't resist. Such a fun story told in rhyme. There's also some great alliteration and the illustrations are hysterical. Don't miss this great website from the publisher complete with online games and printables!

We Gather Together, Now Get Lost This next one is also one of my favorites. Who doesn't love Diane deGroat books? In this one Gilbert is bummed because his field trip to Pilgrim Town is ruined when he is paired up with Tattletale Phillip as his buddy. Gilbert tries to ditch Phillip, but ends up in a bit of trouble. Cute ending that could spark some good discussion about finding the good in everyone. I just love the illustrations on this one too. Who knew possums could be so cute?

Don't Know Much About...The Pilgrims This next one was a MUST for me. I have to say, history was not my very most favorite subject. It still isn't. This is basically Pilgrims for Dummies. I actually dig all of the books in this "Don't Know Much About..." series. I bought the American History one when I was studying for my National Boards test and it honestly helped - a lot!

Eating the Plates I first saw this book as part of my work with the National Writing Project. It is seriously fascinating. It details the foods pilgrims ate on their Mayflower journey including weevil filled, rock hard biscuits and maggot infested meat! Finding parts of the book to read aloud will be easy and have a serious impact on the kids. Try having them write a journal entry from the point of view of a pilgrim child on The Mayflower after their daily meal. They really get into it!

T is for Turkey This next one is a double whammy. It's a picture alphabet book! This one has a unique twist. It's told in an alphabet book format, with rhyming couplets, as it tells the story of a class putting on a Thanksgiving play. Super cute. Try having your class make their own version. Click {HERE} for a free alphabet book template to use.

Wow, that was five already?? I could actually list a few more, for sure. I really am thankful that I can use these amazing, engaging books with my students. I'm also thankful that I have large bookshelves at school to hold them all!