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

Our Pumpkin Book!

You would not believe how late I am in even STARTING this pumpkin book!!  Seriously...it will be November next week and we aren't  finished with the FIRST page! We'll make it but the ground is a little shaky right now...

So, of course, we had to have a poem for the month for our Poetry Journals.  I had originally planned to have several poems a month for the journals but reality has reared it's not-so-fun head and I think we will be doing good to get in one poem a month.  Such is life...

Anyway, I pulled out the poem board I made for Five Little Pumpkins last year and lo and behold, it held up pretty well.  I wasn't certain how it would last since it is an interactive board for the kids to use during reading rotations. I bought all the cute little wooden pumpkins, fence pieces, moon and stars at the Hob Lob last year but they still carry them, I checked. :)  I glued it all down on a foam board and velcroed the poem cards to the board.  We have practiced and practiced reading it and will add it to our Poetry Journals next week.

Next we will make our Five Little Pumpkins artwork for our Pumpkin Book.

I staple 4-5 pages together and cut the edges in the shape of a pumpkin.  I did not come up with all this cleverness... the fabulous ladies on my team were doing this before I arrived on the scene, I am just good at copying.

Here is the Five Little Pumpkins page.  You can use Popsicle sticks for the fence or strips of brown construction paper.  It varies from year to year depending on my mood ....and my supplies.

Below is the page to use with the Poetry Journals. I tried to leave enough room for the kids to illustrate a picture next to each line.  Remember, Jessica Meacham has all kinds of poems ready to print for Poetry Journals,  I got this amazing activity from Jessica and have loved watching the kids get a handle on rhyming, punctuation and sight word recognition through this process.  Check her out  here!

Five Little Pumpkins


This is the pumpkin pattern page that I will copy onto orange construction paper for the kids to make their artwork for the book.  The script I will use on this page follows.  Have fun! 
Five Little Pumpkins Pattern Page 001

Five Little Pumpkins Script

The Very Grouchy Ladybug

Our second full week of our Eric Carle study was all about The Grouchy Ladybug!  They love this story -they really like just how grouchy that ladybug gets! 

We start off reading The Very Grouchy Ladybug using the puppet and the clock. 
This year I chose two student assistants to use the puppet and keep up with the time on the clock. 
The next day we read  ladybug and beetle facts. 

I bought this pack of Insect cards from the Target dollar spot and they each got a chance to share their two favorite cards with the class.  It was amazing what many of them already knew.

We used this chart to list facts we learned about ladybugs.  I had to fill in every available space!
 My team and I have been very excited to see how the writing process is unfolding for the
children through the step by step process we are using with the graphic organizers that
Deanna Jump has provided through her tPt sight.  Click here to see what all she has to offer!

I wish I had taken a photo of the graphic organizer we used for our fact writing but I sure didn't! 
The day we charted the ladybug facts in whole group, we used the organizer to write four ladybug
facts in small groups.  The next day each child wrote their four facts in paragraph form to include
in our Eric Carle books. 
I can't emphasize enough how much easier it is for the children to write these facts in a paragraph after 
they have used the organizer.  I think if we utilize this process thoroughly in the last five weeks of school (we do a LOT of writing for this unit and our fairytale unit in May) it will, hopefully, embed the writing process in their thinking to use in the upper grades.



I took this photo before she wrote her fourth fact but since this was her second time writing these facts she felt confident in her writing and it flowed fairly easily.



Next came the artwork!

They each painted  their own paper red one afternoon.

The Very Grouchy Ladybug page in their book. 

Another day, we made our Aphids math page. 
Simple but they enjoy using the hole punch and the ink pad!

I think I will add a script to this page about aphids-it just looks a little blank! 
Ladybugs Are a Gardener

Of course, we charted the Ladybug Life Cycle and recorded this in our Science Journals.

We learned The Five Little Ladybugs poem and will include it in our Poetry Journal next week.  I like to give the children at least two weeks practice with a poem to really focus on learning it and then recognizing the sight words, punctuation and rhyming words.

Five Little Ladybugs

This is a Hungry Caterpillar story sequencing activity that I found online a few years ago. 
I looked and could not find it's source but I did find another sight that actually had quite a few
literacy and math activities for The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  Click here to see what they have!

This is one activity we use to practice nonsense words in small groups.
 It is very simple and not very original but they enjoy it!

I call out one letter at a time and the children say the sound it makes as they write it on their white board.  The first child that is able to read it as a word gets a sticker.  Not exactly rocket science but it is great practice for speed and fluency for DIBELS.

Practice, practice, practice!

The Mitten and The Snowy Day

Our schedule has been all wonky with a week lost to snow days and two days of delayed start times so we are all just trying to CRAM in as much as we can when we are in class!!

I really enjoy this book and all that can be learned about animals in winter, sharing, habitats, etc.  I wanted to stretch this theme into math by introducing counting by two's using this story.  I started by collecting as many inexpensive mittens as I could get my hands on the past few weeks.  Target's Dollar Spot was a good choice but Walmart also had two pairs for $1-an even better deal!

We started by giving everyone a mitten (1/2 of a pair).  They needed to notice how the mittens were alike and how they were different but how they were all used for the same purpose.  Of course, it came up that some were for girls and some were for boys! 

Next, everyone had to find their "match".

I know this is cheesetastic, I was trying to get the mister to smile since he had to match up to my mitten.  He WASN'T buying it!

Next, every pair got a clothespin with a number on it (2, 4, 6, 8, etc.).

We then clipped them to the clothesline hung over our math board.  Then we practiced and practiced counting by two's.

During math rotations, the extra mittens were placed at a group for the children to pair up and figure out which numbers would come next after 20.

Mrs. Lawson and her daughter came in that afternoon and she read The Mitten to our class.  She bought the book as a gift for them!  Thank you, Mrs. Lawson!

A math job that I got from Deanna Jump-I believe!  It also could have been from Growing Kinders!  I have downloaded SO much from these two ladies that I am having trouble remembering where I got these great activities!

A mitten follow up activity counting by two's.

Snowflake Addition

We are continuing to work on our Winter Books. 
We will add a page for The Mitten next week.

I got the idea for looking out of your window to see a snowman's profile from Musings of Me.  We will add black strips of construction paper to make our window.

They are loving this poem!  We will add it to our Poetry Journals on Friday.

Today we were delayed coming to school because we were supposed to have four inches of snow.  We didn't.  But we went ahead anyway.  I love that one of my girls noticed the pretty gold medal on the cover.  She knew that that meant this was a special book.  :) 

At my table, we wrote what we did on one of our snowy days the week before last.  I provided the sentence starter,"On my snowy day, I..."  they had to finish the sentence themselves. 

At another rotation, the children made themselves as they would look if they had a snowy day with Peter.

This is another page in our Winter Book.

I love all of their different versions of the same thing!!

I have the snowflakes all ready for our Snowflake Experiment on Friday!