Lighting Up for the Holiday Season {a FREE craft}

We are ready to light up the next 3 weeks of fun and learning!

There are so many fun activities planned BUT we still have a LOT of learning to do in first grade.

One of my favorite things to do at home and in my classroom is decorate!

These lights add the perfect touch of "Hello Holiday Season"!

You can call them 'Christmas Lights' or 'Holiday Lights' depending on what your district allows ; )

They will add the perfect touch of holiday cheer to your classroom!

This craft is so versatile and can be made to fit any subject matter.

Here is an example of what I have done with my classes in the past.

Other Examples Include:

singular/plural nouns

noun/adjective to describe

numeral/facts

numeral/expanded form

numeral/draw tens and ones

Stop by my TpT store to grab this craft for FREE or click on the cover photo below!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Turkey Trouble

Turkey Trouble is a favorite in my room each year around Thanksgiving. 

It's funny and clever AND the kids love it!

 I use it to teach problem and solution.

Problem: Turkey is going to be eaten for Thanksgiving by Farmer Jake.

Solution: He dresses up as a pizza delivery "man" to disguise himself.

(This is after trying to disguise himself as many other farm animals, but failing miserably.)

My students complete the reader's response problem/solution page and illustrate each.

We put together the cutest turkey and definitely hang them in the hall proudly!

Here's a close up of the craft:

You can catch this in my TpT store now!

November in a Nutshell

Good grief...when did November get here? I feel like I was just getting excited about it being October!

 After reminiscing through all my November activities, I've decided to put them altogether in one post to help ease your planning needs! 

Below you will find all the fun things we do with turkeys, Pilgrims, and Thanksgiving galore--all grouped by subject. Here is my November in a nutshell!

I came across this template several years ago from The First Grade Parade.

We add feathers each year to our turkey depending upon which phonetic skill we are working with.

The past 2 years they have been 'blend turkeys' and 'digraph turkeys'.

I just love running across cute ideas from other teacher bloggers.

This one comes from Reagan.

We've been talking about verbs so this activity fit perfect into our week.

We read Run Turkey Run and recorded turkey verbs.

Student then chose a verb and created a sentence to mirror that of the title.

"Fly Turkey Fly"

"Snap Turkey Snap"

We always review our knowledge of fact families by making fact family turkeys.

Some years I give my kids the 3 numbers to work with and others I let them generate their own.

It depends on my group from year to year.

I have them write the 3 numbers on the turkey head and the feathers are the facts.

This precious idea comes from Around the Kampfire.

What kid doesn't love THE Pigeon!?!?

Students have to try to persuade others why they should eat hot dogs instead of turkey for Thanksgiving! 

Alliterations are SO much fun! 

What we do is brainstorm words that start with the letter 'T' and record them on our 'turkey words' chart.

Then I have students make their turkey and name him/her.

They pick 4 words from our chart and write an alliteration sentence about their turkey!

Using my It's Thanksgiving Unit (see below), we study pilgrims.

We compare how they lived to how we live.

Students complete a rip art pilgrim and respond to the following:

"If I were a pilgrim boy/girl......"

Last but not least I'm sharing my It's Thanksgiving unit with you. It's packed full of Thanksgiving goodness.

It's a literacy and social studies unit that can be accompanied by any fiction or non-fiction books.

It includes:

-Turkey can/have/are organizer

-Children then and now venn diagram
-Describing Pilgrims bubble map
-Describing Native Americans bubble map
-If You Give A Pilgrim A Pumpkin Pie... writing activity
-Making words with 'Pilgrims'
-Making words with 'Turkeys'
-Thanksgiving ABC order
-Making singular nouns plural with Thanksgiving words

**Grab it on sale for the next 2 days**

Hoping my nutshell of a post gave you some ideas for this month!

Verbs in the Fall

The month of November is here an we've officially made it 50 days in first grade!

And the closer we get to the holiday season, the antsier we get in the classroom.

So it was time to break out and teach verbs. 

I came across the cutest lesson to supplement my teaching on verbs. 

It's from who else but Cara! 

We read the book When the Leaf Blew In. 

Each page has an animal doing some sort of action.

I read it once and had them listen for the action words.

We went back and read it a second time and this time recorded our verbs on the leaf chart.

You can find her original post on it {here}.

Now that tomorrow is Friday...it's time to act out those action verbs with a game of verb charades!