Happy Sunday Funday! That means lesson plans for me! The Mr. will be enjoying his Sunday Funday in his new oasis room that he got as a wedding gift! Oh the life of a teacher…working while others relax! Isn’t it a good thing we get all summer off?!?!?! How many times have you wanted to punch someone in the face when they say that?! HEHE No violence. Violence bad. But you can create the scene in your head!
So I actually started writing my lesson plans Friday on my planning period! And by writing, I mean the ones that you write for your administrator and not the actually preparing of the lessons that the teacher uses! Ya’ll know what I mean! So, now I can share my week full of Thanksgiving fun! Get ready!
Monday
We kick off our week with the book Turkey Trouble! If you don’t have this book, get it! It is a story of how the turkey tries to get out of Thanksgiving dinner! Um, great story for some problem/solution discussion! So guess what we’re going to do?! Yep, problem/solution charts! After we read the story, we’re going to do a shared writing activity on how to cook a turkey! Can you say HILARIOUS?! If you’ve never had your students write about cooking, you need to do it! We will also not be celebrating the letters D and R this week, so we will work on writing D and R and sorting with the sounds of D and R! You know I am the KING OF THE PICTURE SORT!
We are continuing to build a foundation for addition! Last week (the two days I was there!) we worked with the idea that adding means “putting together” and to find the answer you have to count. We did an assessment on Friday, 100% mastered it. Sadly, this was the second day of teaching this concept so I am a failure because they didn’t get it the first day…yeah, that’s the new working theory in our school. Anyways, back to the fun and excitement of teaching addition! This week we will start to add in the equations. We will still use pictures and put together but how my monsters will see the equations! Our first foray into this land of equations is with our selves. It is full body monster addition! I made cute number posters and symbols for the monsters to use. I have two groups of students stand up and my Price Is Right monsters count the groups and stand up with the correct number. I also have the symbols held up. So we create an equation using our bodies. We then put the groups together and count to find the answer! After we practice, we will do some independent practice using lego practice sheets!
And today is the day we do one of my all time favorite art projects! It is our Thanksgiving kick off (along with a Thanksgiving KWL chart) and goes great with our Turkey Trouble book and writing. It never fails that this project makes me laugh out loud. And inevitably, a little monster glues the wings on wrong so we have a Dumbo turkey!
I will post all about our turkey tomorrow!
Tuesday
We continue our fun Thanksgiving week with the book, Twas The Night Before Thanksgiving! This is another favorite of mine. The kids love it too! It provides some great inferring for our litltle monsters! We infer why the turkeys are hiding and why the students have big bellies! Look at that comprehension work! Smarter! Not harder! After we read the story I always try to get them to relate this story to another Twas The Night Before story but sadly they haven’t heard the other one! Guess what?! Twas The Night Before Christmas is read in December and then we do a double bubble map comparing the two stories! See how I did that?! I know…smarter not harder! Our writing for today will be a predictable chart on what we will eat for Thanksgiving!
Math continues our addition and equation journey. Today we kick it up a notch! I will write an equation using red and blue markers (there is a reason for those colors!) and the students will use their legos (red and blue…see, markers and legos coordinate ) to make the equation using their work mats (guess what else is coordinated ! The work mat!)
Guess what? I have some freebies for ya! You can get the work mat, the cute equation cards and practice pages in my lego math math pack! Click the picture to get it all!
Today’s craftivity is another fun one that really gets the kids in the Thanksgiving spirit! To go along with our writing for the day, we make a Thanksgiving place mat! I steal borrow a ton of fliers from the grocery store so we have pictures of Thanksgiving food and we use paper plates and plastic utensils to make our place setting! I will share more about this tomorrow!
Wednesday
Our Thanksgiving adventures marches on with the story T is For Turkey A True Thanksgiving Story. I love reading this book because it’s an ABC book so we can do a little letter review and ABC order practice (see how I work those skills in!) and I love that it gives students a great introduction to Thanksgiving in a cute way. The books gives on fact about the first Thanksgiving using each letter. Great way to introduce our students to why we celebrate Thanksgiving. Today’s writing is brainstorming a list of all of the things we are thankful for!
Math continues legos and equations to help us build our addition skills. We will build on what we did yesterday. I will write an equation on the board using my black marker! And the students will work independently to solve the equation. Frustrating? Yep. Will there be some angry monsters? Probably. But what I love is that we keep working and we get there! There will also be some independent practice and center time!
Today’s craftivity will be a super cute pilgrim craftivity from my friend Lisa from Learning Is Something To Treasure! She has this great pack with 4 craftivities and writing activities to go with each one! Check it out!
Thursday
Our thankful week continues with another funny story about turkeys! It’s called 10 Turkeys In The Road and it’s a story about turkeys blocking the road and the angry farmer. The book also counts down from 10 so it’s a great little teaser for subtraction and counting backwards!! Look at that…introducing a math skill during reading blog! SCANDALOUS! We will create a flow map to re-tell the story of the 10 turkeys! We will use our list of things we are thankful to compose our own sentences of things we are thankful for!
Math is more addition! More equations! More legos! Today will be more focused on my monsters who might still be struggling! While I am working with my monsters on equations and addition, I will let my other monsters have some fun and do some Thanksgiving puzzles! They will have to cut apart the picture and glue it back together in number order! Fun!
Our craftivity today will be to make a Thanksgiving feast! We have been reading our emergent reader this week (you know, for repeated readers…because it builds fluent readers…but I do this everyday of very week and i’m still ineffective…huh?! Can you tell there was another email about teaching reading?! And can you tell it upsets me?!) The reader is about a Thanksgiving feast! We will put the feast in order and then the students will get to make the pieces of the feast! You can find this great activity here!
And we finally made it to Friday!
We wrap up our Thanksgiving week with the story The Amazing Turkey Rescue! The turkey’s use clever disguises to escape the fox and save themselves from the farmers dinner table! And I have a super fun craft project to go along with the book (surprise, right?!)
I saw this on Facebook and just have to use it! It goes great with a book about turkey’s in disguise! And it’s everyone’s favorite pigeon This is from Linda at Around the Kampfire! You seriously need to check it out!
We will publish our “I am thankful..” sentences and illustrate them! Then they will be added to our collection of class books! We love our class books!
Math is just a good ole fashioned paper and pencil assessment. Sad but true. I need to see if the monsters are getting the additions and equations! And then it’s math centers!
And Friday means, Foodie Fun Friday! But I don’t have any idea for a snack…thoughts? suggestions? HELP!
And that’s our Thanksgiving week!
We are also starting intervention this week! We are doing it differently this year and I think this will actually benefit our students. We got a school wide license for Reading A-Z for our intervention materials. The high kids will be pulled out for literature circles The lowest kids will be pulled for intensive letter and sound instruction. The remainder of the kids stay with us and are divided into two groups. My two groups will be introduced to word study/DSA during this time. We will also be reading our leveled reader! I am excited to see how this goes!
And we will do math journals…we will have not one, but two silly hats! Here is your sneak peak: dogs and rabbits! And we will sing…and dance…the monsters will be the best and I will be ineffective! It will be another great week in Monsters, Inc!
And here is a sneak peek of our two days before Thanksgiving break:
Stone Soup! Yep, we make it!
I Am Thankful For The Words I Can Read sight word based art project (and cute for sight word assessment! Check out my thanksgiving pack for the project!)
Turkey hats! Pilgrim hats!
And if you’re in need of some fun Thanksgiving activities and writing paper and a great sight word craftivity, check out my Thanksgiving pack! And for some fun with measuring, I have a great measurement pack, too!
And for all of your lego needs, check out this great unit!
What will you be doing this week? I hope you found an idea or book that you will use in your class! I hope you’ve been inspired by something we’re going to do! Thanks for reading and visiting the kindergarten Smorgasboard of ideas and fun!
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