NOVEMBER FUN!

November is a great time to teach children about being thankful and grateful for all they have.  Children create these Thankful Turkeys and, depending on their writing level, they can add more or less information on each feather.  Other ideas can include writing a thank you letter to someone in their community who helps them (police officer, firefighter,teacher, babysitter, etc.) or you can show them how you donate your time/food/clothing to those in need.

Another all time favorite activity is Disguise A Turkey.  I have families work on the activity together and they love it. 

It also allows the family to work together to create somethig great.  This year, I wrote an emergent reader that is a great transition into the project for the Disguise a Turkey activity.  It includes everything you need for the Thankful Turkey above, many math printables, Tickle the Turkey emergent reader, sight word cards, a parent letter, turkey patterns, awards, and more.  You can grab it here!   Also, there's a FREEBIE to grab as well!

A fun idea is to use a popsicle stick and glue a feather to it to read the words and to tickle the turkey as well! 

Here are some cute creations from this year:

 Another great activity is to write what you are thankful for.   A great twist on this old favorite was this great idea from Sunny in Second Grade.  The kids enjoyed it a lot!  Feel free to grab the FREE turkey peekover from my store!

Popsicle sticks are also great to use as "Mr. Spacers."  Kids can decorate them and use them to remember spacing between words.  You could also stick a holiday sticker at the end of the popsicle stick and change it out seasonally!

If you like the writing paper below, grab it here! There's a FREEBIE  as well!

 

Here's a freebie.. Happy Turkey Day!

For Veterans Day:

You can create a flag with the children's handprints and cut a star shape out of a sponge to create the stars.

Another idea is to make some cards for the Veterans. We usually send them to a local organization, but this year I found this below in the Scholastic magazine. 

This is from the Scholastic News Lesson:

Operation Gratitude

This organization collects and sends letters, cards, artwork, and care packages to troops and veterans around the country. Their guidelines include:

• Bundle letters to deployed troops separately from those to veterans, and label accordingly. 

No envelopes are needed for individual letters.

• Start with a salutation such as “Dear Hero.” Do not use “Sailor” or “Soldier,” as the letter might go to a member of another branch.

• In addition to giving thanks, have students tell about themselves! (First names ONLY, please.)

• Include your school’s contact information (address or e-mail). Troops love to write back if time allows!

• Art projects are welcomed—but avoid glitter.

• Put all letters/art into an envelope or a box. 

Ship to:

Operation Gratitude

17330 Victory Boulevard

Van Nuys, CA 91406

 A big thank you to  Fern Smith for her  fabulous coloring pages and to Michelle Harper for the Veterans Day Timeline Activity.  
They go great together! 

My students highlighted the dates as we read the history of Veterans Day. Then, we went back to the text when completing the timeline.  

 (I did add Veterans Day on top of the coloring page since we already had our name on the project)

Huge thanks to:
Fern Smith's Coloring Pages... so many to choose from!

 Michelle Harper's  Veterans Timeline!

 

Other fun ideas: Have a sharing feast with your children where each child brings in a small amount of food and you share as a class.  Another idea is to have your own Thanksgiving Feast in your class. Sliced deli turkey works as an quick and easy substitute for the real thing.

We created some easy Native American hats to wear during our feast.  All you do is color in a feather outline, cut them out, and glue them to a sentence strip.

 The kids drew pictures to represent words.

Create Indian Corn:

  Give children thin strips of colored paper and have them rip it into small pieces to use as kernels and glue them onto paper. Add the husk on top and you're done! 

This is a great activity to practice fine motor skills.

Halloween!

So October is officially here!  

You can look forward to the crisp cool mornings and the beautiful fall leaves. I love this season and everything about Halloween! I still love to carve pumpkins, do all the fall activities that kids do, and try anything that has the flavor of pumpkin!  Do you know how many items you can eat that comes in pumpkin flavor??

I created Octoberfest (for kids!) for some fun and engaging learning activities for kids K-1.  If you grab it this month, there's a bonus inside for you!

Octoberfest For Kids includes over 110 pages of math, language arts, science, writing, and art activities. It has 4 emergent readers (non fiction and fiction) and is aligned to the CC.

You can grab it here and get a FREEBIE too!

  

                                       

 Here are a few previews:

Practice missing addends with manipulatives

Non-Fiction & Fiction Emergent Readers

 (with an interactive book that teaches positional words)

Uppercase and Lowercase Letter Matching Activity

 *NEW* Label It! Activities- children practice the skill of labeling (this is one of my best selling items - see Label It! in my store for a closer view of this type of activity)

Grab a FREEBIE Color by Code Here!

Some other fall activities to enjoy:

You can keep them as leaves and measure them to see who has the longest leaf or create a picture with them!

 This month, we're working on non-fiction text features.  I decided to have the kids work on creating their own book about bats.  This tied in nicely with Halloween and the kids were so fascinated by bats.

In the beginning, students created a web with all the things they knew about bats. 

We read a lot of books about bats (both non-fiction and fiction) and learned how to take notes using a 'can, have and are' organizer.
We used the following books that were great for note-taking.

I liked this book because it was written in a Question & Answer format and was very simple for kids to understand.  It's also great for teaching what types of questions you would want to find out about bats.

These are some great  books available from Scholastic Books.

Amazing Bats is great for note taking for older kids. Below are other great books:

Stellaluna is a favorite book of mine.  You can have your class listen to it on storylineonline.  Sometimes it's nice for them to hear someone else's voice =) Click here for the book.
After Stellaluna, students compared the attributes of bats and birds.

We read this non-fiction reader about bats.  It's an interactive book where students identify and add in the missing text features on the pages in the book (not shown below). Comprehension questions and non-fiction text feature match up is included.

Here are some of the notes the kids took after reading some bat books.

Check them out!

Then, using their notes, students created a rough draft outline for their writing and then worked on their final draft. There is another outline enclosed for students who need more guidance.

 The kids followed these directions to draw a bat and cut it out for their front cover.

This bat is hanging upside down!  Pretty creative kids!

We labeled a diagram from a bat I made.  

Here's a final product!

Create your own Bat Unit in your class. 

Check out BATS here:

Here's  a preview:

Here are some adorable bat crafts/treats to go with this unit:

Check the original pin out here.

Check the original pin out here.

Check the original pin out here.

Check the original pin out here.

MORE FUN HALLOWEEN IDEAS

The kids loved all the Halloween snacks and crafts, but my favorite healthy snacks were these:

Pumpkins:
Clementines with celery sticks

Ghosts:

Bananas with chocolate chips (mini chocolate chips for the eyes and regular chips for the mouth!)