Thanksgiving and More

Thanksgiving, Y'all!

This is is my favorite time of the year.  The weather is at the perfect temperature, holiday scented candles perfume every store, and everyone is in a festive mood... not to mention all of the delicious foods that are available.  I crave Starbucks peppermint mochas and gingerbread lattes all year long.  This is also a really fun time to be a teacher!  I love teaching about holidays and special observances because the kiddos really connect and engage in the discussions.

We finally finished up our dinosaur unit by creating our own "fossils" out of salt dough.  The kids had a blast playing with the dough and then using plastic dinosaurs and shells to make imprints.  They have taken a while to dry... hopefully they will be ready to go home after Thanksgiving break.  You can see an example below:

Salt Dough Recipe:  2 cups all purpose flour,  1/2 cup salt,  3/4 cup water,  1/2 cup used coffee grounds.... mix it all up.  I let these air dry, but they can also be baked at 350 F until they are dry.

We only had two days of school this week due to the Thanksgiving holiday, so I decided that I would spend all of one day to talk why we celebrate Thanksgiving.  It's difficult to explain the religious reasons behind the Pilgrims' voyage to America and the complex relations between the Natives and the Puritans to first graders, but I used a variety of websites, books, and SmartBoard presentations to convey my message.  In the end, I think they understood that Thanksgiving is all about giving thanks for what we have rather than just about eating pumpkin pie and turkey.  Of course, we also talked about all the delicious foods we were excited to eat.  The kiddos were surprised to learn about the different kinds of foods that were served at the First Thanksgiving--- many did not realize the meal consisted of venison, a variety of shellfish, and plenty of veggies--- a far cry from today's version laden with sugary pies, mashed potatoes, and buckets of gravy.  I used the book below to help the students sequence the events that led up to the First Thanksgiving between the Native Americans and Pilgrims.  

In this story, the mice put on a Thanksgiving play to portray the events that led up to the First Thanksgiving.  Very cute and kid friendly! 

On a less serious note... we also made some super cute Thanksgiving crafts.  I mean hey, who doesn't love crafting?  My students work so hard, I thought they would enjoy a morning of fun crafts--- and boy was I right!  They LOVED it!  Here are some samples below:

The students used washable marker to color a coffee filter.  I sprayed the coffee filter with water using a squirt bottle and then set it on some parchment paper to dry.  The colors bled together to create a neat "tie dye" effect.  After they dried, they used construction paper to create the turkey body, feet, and beak.  

The students used dried beans to make a pattern on their corn.   

I hope that everyone has a wonderful and relaxing Thanksgiving!  I know I will!  

Love, 

Mrs. Cook 

Dinosaurs, Rawr!

This week in first grade my little cookie monsters are learning all sorts of neat-o stuff about dinosaurs!  Who doesn't love learning about dinos?  We are integrating science and literacy in a really fun way.  Below are a few of the activities we have done so far this week:



This is our Dinosaur KWL chart we created.  The students lovingly named him "Spikey."  I was impressed at how much the students were able to add in the "What We Think We Know" column.  They were also able to formulate some really good questions about what they would like to learn during our unit.  We are still adding new information to the "What We Learned" column each day. 

This was MY sample.



This is a student's finished product. 


This week in literacy I introduced contractions to my students.  This is a very difficult concept even for my higher level kiddos.  I thought it would be cute to design a dinosaur themed practice activity for our contractions.  Each half of the egg has one of the base words that makes up the new "dino" contraction.  The kids got a kick out of the activity and (hopefully) some good practice!  A lot of them didn't know dinosaurs hatch from eggs like birds, and so they were tickled to learn something new. 



These are two writing samples from my class.  They had to come up with a name for their pet dino and write it in the name tag.  Many of the kiddos named their dinosaur "Cookie," "Cook," or "Mrs. Cook."  Not sure what they were implying...



I read the classic Danny and the Dinosaur to my students and then asked them to close their eyes and imagine being able to spend the day with their very own pet dinosaur.  Next, I had them create original writing with the prompt "If I had a pet dinosaur..."  Their writing was fantastic!  Kids really thrive when able to create fun and imaginative writings.   

Students hard at work extracting chocolate chip cookies from the fossil dig site.

Today the students got to do something really cool!  They got to become paleontologists.  I gave each student a chocolate chip cookie and a toothpick and told them that his/her job was to excavate as many whole chocolate chips from the cookie as possible... just like they were digging out fossils from a dig site.  The kiddos were not allowed to move their cookie or eat the chips they extracted.  Many of them found it to be very difficult to do without breaking the chips.  Afterwards, of course, we ate our "fossils."  They recorded their information and observations on the worksheet below. 

This week has been a blast so far!  I can't wait to make some dinosaur eggs and fossils! 

Love,
Mrs. Cook