Thanksgiving Rotations

We love our rotations!  Just like our Halloween Rotations, each class travels with the teacher assistant to 5 other teacher's classrooms to do a different activity.  In my room, we always make the edible turkey.  I don't know why I continue to do this activity every year, because it can be a pain getting materials for 120 students and it can be super messy, but I do.  The kids love it of course...who doesn't like eating sweets first thing in the morning?

This is what you need for each student:
1 Oreo
5 Candy Corn (Feathers)
1 Whopper (Body)
1 Chocolate Chip (Beak)
1 Red Hot (Wattle)
1 Popsicle stick (To spread out the icing)
1 glob of Chocolate Icing

I usually have my intern or someone sweet put all of these materials except the icing into a ziploc bag ahead of time so I don't have to run around like crazy passing this stuff out and that has made things much easier.  First have the students break apart the Oreo - this can be disastrous so have extra Oreos on hand.  Next have them take their chocolate icing and spread it on both cookies.   Then have them take their 5 candy corn  and place them on the side of the cookie that doesn't have the white Oreo icing on it pointing in.  On the cookie that has the white Oreo icing, have them put the Whopper in the middle.  Have them put a little icing on the back of the chocolate chip and stick it to the front of the Whopper.  Then have them put a little icing on the Red Hot and stick it under the chocolate chip.  Finally, stand the cookie up that has the feathers on it and voila you have a turkey.  Then they can devour it!  This picture is the closest one I could find to the one we make, I can never remember to take a picture of my own or the kids making it because my hands are usually covered in icing.  I'll try to remember next year! :)


The other rotations the students went to were:

Making a fall/harvest trail mix with Mrs. Mitchell.

 Making Thanksgiving place mats with Mrs. Reel.

 Making Bracelets with Mrs. McGregor (each bead represented some part of Thanksgiving, I found this activity on someone's blog, but I can't remember where!)

They also made butter with Mrs. Biggs and learned a song with Mrs. Hardy, but we didn't get pictures of those for some reason.  The kids loved it of course and it's nice for them to get to see other teaching styles while doing fun activities ;)

Cooperative Groups

As I promised myself, I am continuing to plan activities that involve cooperative learning so that my students have the opportunity to work together and learn from each other.  In November we study all about Thanksgiving.  We discussed symbols of Thanksgiving and then I put them in their groups and they put the Thanksgiving symbols in a circle map.  Any extra symbols that were not Thanksgiving were sorted on the back.  We had a sorter, a cutter, a gluer, and a cleaner.  The activity went pretty well and I would definitely do it again.

1st 9 Weeks Terrific Kid Assembly

Forgive me friends and parents, I have gotten myself terribly behind in the blog world.  The past 2 months have been unbelievably busy.  I do want to take a few moments to update you all on what we've been doing the past couple of months and I guess I need to make a New Year's resolution to keep up with the blog!!

 On November 8th we had our 1st Terrific Kid assembly.  The students did awesome for it to be their first assembly.  They were super excited to wear their lanyards with their picture cards on them.

Our 1st 9 Weeks Terrific Kids were:

Amy
Kevin
Joshua
Eli
Katelyn
Jyrah
Kameryn
Meredith

9 more children will be chosen for the 2nd 9 weeks and we will be having another assembly in January.  I am so proud of these students for their great behavior!

Halloween with Parents

I was super excited when Food Lion donated large pumpkins to our class, because I wanted to get a few parents to come in and carve pumpkins with us.  Last year, Mrs. Edwards and I carved 6 pumpkins by ourselves and I told myself I would never do that again ask for parents to help from now on.  Several parents volunteered to help, so when they came after our Music class, I put a few students with each parent to carve a pumpkin.  Lowe's had donated carving kits and the students picked out a design to carve on the front.  (Funny how they wanted to choose the hardest designs in the book - these parents were serious troopers!)  Several of the students weren't interested in touching the insides of the pumpkin, but everyone participated and enjoyed.  As they finished up, we had several decorations sitting out on my reading table for them to choose from to decorate their small pumpkins.  The parents and myself hot glued their decor on to the pumpkins - they turned out SO cute!  Finally, we had a snack.  Each student made a sugar cookie with icing and sprinkles and then they had Cheese Puffcorn and Orange Jello Bites to go along with them.  This is the first time I have ever devoted an entire day to Halloween activities (between this and the Rotations) but the kids were wonderful and really enjoyed all of the activities.  I will definitely revisit a day like this!  Thanks again to my WONDERFUL parents - we could not have done this without you!!  Here are some pictures from the afternoon:

Hannah enjoying a snack.

 

 Brooke enjoying her decorated sugar cookie. 

Yummy snack!

Kameryn and her little pumpkin.

 

Katelyn and her little pumpkin.

Brooke and her little pumpkin.

Cute pumpkin!

  

 Hannah's precious pumpkin!

Kevin's sweet pumpkin.

Isaac's tiny pumpkin!

Ray'shawn is proud of his pumpkin!

One of my awesome parents with Jyrah, Brooke, Hannah, and Kevin!  

 Miss Z (my fabulous intern) choosing a pattern with Nick, I'Dereis, and Karma.

 Another awesome parent carving ghosts with Kameryn, Eli, and Joshua!

 

Nick didn't like the insides, but Karma didn't mind!

 Another fabulous parent helping her group clean out the inside of their pumpkin.

 Everyone in this group gave cleaning the inside out a try!

 Kevin taking out some of the insides!

 Emily cleaning out the inside of her group's pumpkin.

I think the best part of this activity was watching my kids work together while being led by the parents.  I am so blessed to have wonderful students and parents!

Halloween Rotations

I realize I am a little behind, but it has been a crazy few weeks with assessments and report cards :)  Our school is crazy big (11 Kindergarten Classrooms) so when we do things, we usually split our grade level down the middle.  We decided to do Halloween Rotations this year for the 1st time to give the students the opportunity to do different fun activities pertaining to Halloween.  For rotations, each teacher stays in her room and teaches the same lesson 6 times and the students rotate from room to room with the Teacher Assistant.  In my room, we talked about sorting on the SMART Board and then sorted a few Halloween shapes by kind.  I printed and laminated some basic sorting mats (by color) and the students sorted Halloween Rings.  Thank goodness for my wonderful parents - they sent in at least 1000 rings!!  Each student had a bag and had to sort them by color.  When they finished I asked them to sort another way.  At the end each student got to keep a ring for themselves, which they loved.  The other activities they participated in were: Halloween Bingo, Making a Jack-o-Lantern with bulletin board paper, musical chairs with Halloween Music (courtesy of Pandora!), Making a Spookley out of a graham cracker and orange icing and 5 Little Pumpkins in Spanish!  They enjoyed themselves and it was nice to work with other children for 20 minutes and send them on their way.  Thanksgiving Rotations are up next - I'll be making an edible turkey!  Here are some pictures from the rotations:

Ray'shawn, Nick and Katelyn showing me their bling!

Emily showing me her ring.

Hannah and Aaron showing me their rings.

 

Kameryn and a friend sorting rings.

 Katelyn and Nick sorting rings.

 Tristan sorting. 

 Making Spookley's - yummy!

 Putting icing on their graham crackers.

 Learning how to make a jack-o-lantern with bulletin board paper.

 Halloween Bingo!

Filling up their cards!

I am so thankful to work with an awesome group of teachers - I couldn't imagine things running so smoothly without them!