Last year almost all of the teachers on my team used the adorable Elf on the Shelf in the classroom. Since I didn't want to shell out the $30 for the kit I got a Christmas Monkey from Dollar Tree for another teacher and myself. Our monkey has been causing lots of trouble around the room and occasionally leaving us notes. Below he is hiding in a wreath near our handmade Christmas tree. So much fun!
I am blessed again this year to have an amazing group of helpful and artistic parents. They made origami ornaments with the kids and everyone had a blast! They also made a beautiful 3-D Christmas tree by accordion folding! Talented!
We had so much fun discussing, graphing, and writing about who we thought worked harder the elves or Santa. I absolutely love reading the reasoning of first graders! We will turn their opinion pieces into little books next week!
Super blessed to have a track at our school and we take advantage of it at each transition running a lap or two before we get inside to get to business! I love having the kids get oxygen to their brains.
We have been working on our Life Long Ago unit for social studies for the past few weeks. Our informational text has been articles about life long ago, Blend Space research, and for fiction we have been reading about Johnny Appleseed. The kids were in expert groups that studied one area of Life Long Ago in depth. They loved doing their projects and here is some of their great work! We present to other grade levels and parents next week. The links for products are also below if interested.
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Johnny-Appleseed-Common-Core-Unit-1496196
I really like that idea for opinion writing...I bet the kids had a blast with it!
ReplyDeleteThey did! It was cute. They had some funny opinions.
ReplyDelete