Free President's Day Poem!

OK, so I was inspired to make a mini book for the poem that I wrote for President's Day.  I know!  We will study this poem as a class for sight words, rhyming words and punctuation and then add it to our Poetry Journals. Anyway, I will try to make a reader for the kids to go with the poem but for now, here goes... President's Day Poem

Star Spangled Sight Word Match Up Game!

A new game to play for President's Day and our study of America to help with that sight word reading!  These are all of the sight words used in Scott Foresman for Units 1-5 plus color words.  I can't enough of all of these fun graphics and I NEED as many Go-To Activities as I can get my hands on!

Star Spangled Sight Word Match Up Game

Our America Unit!

This is my second year to use Deanna Jump's America unit and I love it!! 

We make a book out of the activities (of course!) and so I wanted some writing pages for the book this year. So, here they are!!

America Unit Writing Pages

Dr.Seuss

 I have a slightly different approach to my Dr. Seuss unit this year and I wanted to show you what we have worked on so far!  Click here to see how we celebrated Theodor Geisel's birthday in my class last year.  I have a darling little girl in my room this year with a severe allergy to eggs and dairy so I wanted to come up with something fun to do for Dr. Seuss without eggs.  My teammate and friend, Michele, thought of making green "eggs" out of jello with a marshmallow center.  Eureka!  All I have to do is find a flower (egg shaped) cookie cutter by Thursday and I'm in business!.  Thank you, Michele!  I am also toying with making Oobleck with the kids so if anyone has any recipes or hints, I am all ears!

Of course, we start by reading as many Dr. Seuss books as possible the first few days.  They love it right off the bat!

Who doesn't love Green Eggs and Ham?!

Wow!  I read this one today and I always forget how tongue-tied I get!  It's hard to be cool on this job.

Before I read each book I ask the children to listen for three different things in all Dr. Seuss books.  He was famous for his nonsense words...what a great way to segue into seriously hitting nonsense word practice for DIBELS!

his Make-Believe characters...

and of course, his love of rhyming words!

I give each table a book we have already read and they work as a team (ok, they really TRY to work as a team) to find examples to fit into each of the three categories.

They take turns giving me examples for us to chart.

so eager...

We will continue to add to our charts as we read a new book each day until we fill up our charts.  I am going to make a writing activity for them to complete that will coincide with the charts.  I will post on this later. :)

We are incorporating Dr. Seuss into our literacy centers. 
Hop on Pop is at Listening Center.

In their Listening Journal, they will list a pair of rhyming words from the story and illustrate. 

They may also get a white board and make their own rhyming sentences.  She read "I like box" and "I like socks" to me.

I had rhyming cards from our Read Well series that they paired up using the pocket chart.  A little noisy but mission accomplished. Tomorrow they will make a "Four Square" page (a piece of paper folded into four squares) illustrating and listing four pairs of rhyming words using these cards.

A rhyming match-up game.

I buy these literacy games at Marshall's, Ross and TJ Maxx.  I have never paid over $5.00 for one and I still see them there often. 

These are the hats we will make to wear on Friday. 
Ms. Potts is a step ahead of the game! 

This is the recipe card used for sequencing to make green eggs and ham.  Ms. Potts class worked on these today. The kids love it and many will come back later and say they used it at home to make the eggs and ham with their family!  Cool!

I also wanted to show you what Maisha Booker has done with her class to celebrate Black History month.  She completes a wonderful study and I love what she did with Harriet Tubman's page!  Her class will have an entire book for Black History to take home and share.

She used the fold-over flap book for their writing.  The children wrote a fact about Harriet Tubman on each flap and illustrated it.

Lana Holzer's class completed a page on
Garrett Morgan-the inventor of the stoplight.

I also wanted to show Michele Potts' Flag page for their
American Symbols book.

The fact writing is fantastic!

I will post more on how we continue to celebrate Dr. Seuss.  I will include our page for our Famous Americans book on Theodor Geisel and our Cat in the Hat scrapbook page.  In the meantime, have a Seussical week!