All this week we were studying timelines and focusing on the vocabulary words of past, present and future. I created a freebie with all the activities in this post so CLICK HERE to get your own!
To start the week we talked about what a timeline is and how to make one. We created a class timeline together where we brainstormed events from our year so far. Then the kids illustrated it and we hung it up in the classroom:
The next day the kids got to make their own timelines! We started by writing down six events from their life. For number one they put their birthday and then chose five more events to write about. We talked about how the events needed to be in order of when they happened.
Next they illustrated each event on their own timeline. I taped their pages together to create their finished timeline. They turned out so cute!
Next we did a president timeline activity where we put 6 presidents in order of when they were president.
Our final activity was a past, present and future book. We talked about how the past is something that has already happened, the present is happening now and the future is what will happen. The kids chose an event for each word and illustrated it.
(was in my mom's stomach)
(started first grade)
(celebrated Valentine's Day)
(am at school)
(am writing the book)
(am working on a book)
(get baptized)
(go to a fancy dinner)
(do Halloween)
Hope you enjoyed our social studies learning from this week! Make sure to go HERE to get your own copy of these activities for FREE!
Halloween is coming! Less than 2 weeks away! I'm so excited to do fun Halloween activities with my kids the next two weeks. Last year I used a lot of activities from my Halloween Math and Literacy unit. Click on the picture below to check it out!
I created a new, smaller Halloween mini-unit related to trick-or-treating! I included a reading book about costumes and a writing page where students can design and write about their own dream costume. There are several writing pages where students can write about safety while trick-or-treating. There is a fun Trick-or-Treater craft where students will create their face and add costume accessories. Finally, there is a graphing project where students will collect data related to Halloween questions and create a bar and picture graph to go along with it! Click on the picture below to check it out!
This year my team and I have planned on doing an author study each month and so far it has been a huge success! As I wrote about in an earlier post, in August we studied Kevin Henkes! In September we read tons and tons of books by Mo Willems and had tons of fun doing it!
Here are the books we got to read together last month and I recommend every single one!
After reading each book we would do different activities such as discussing our observations, wonderings and connections or responding in our journals. Here are a few examples:
(My favorite character is the pigeon)
(They shared the hot dog)
(likes hot dogs, shares, angry, loud, funny, silly)
(When Trixie said, "Glaggle, Aggle Plaggle")
(I like the part where they lost knuffle bunny and went to the Laundromat and ran past)
(Gerald is funny because there's a bird on his head)
We also watched several DVDs of Mo Willems' books and many of the characters (including the pigeon) were voiced by Mr. Willems, himself! We also watched some interviews with him and the kids really enjoyed learning about him as an author.
We did several crafts throughout the month including a pigeon hat:
and a Gerald and piggy craft:
At the end of the month we wrote about our favorite characters and books. Here are some of my favorites:
Just like with Kevin Henkes, I really wanted to share at least one book by Mo Willems in Spanish. This time I attempted to read it to my kids and my sweet bilingual kiddos said I did a pretty good job (They are great liars!) La Paloma encuentra un pedro client was an excellent read!
I have an author study unit on TpT that can be used with any author. I just added some nonfiction activities so make sure to check it out by clicking the picture below!
My goodness I have so much to share with you! Sorry for being MIA for the past month....I have been on fall break AND I was moving to a new apartment so life has been crazy! Before we went on break we did so many wonderful things that I can't wait to share with you: Mo Willems Author Study, fiction writing and learning about good citizens. I won't bombard you with all of that today so I'll start with our citizenship unit.
After I saw the AMAZING clipart from Melonheadz of so many amazing heroes from our country's past, I knew I wanted to make a citizenship unit. I wanted to first talk about how we can be good citizens and then move toward learning about good citizens from our country's past.
First we brainstormed ideas of what good citizens can, have and are. I wrote down the kids' ideas and they were able to use these or add their own to their own recording sheet:
On the back they filled in a web where they wrote (or drew) about what makes a good citizen:
The next day was Tuesday, September 17th or Constitution Day! It was perfect timing for talking about good citizens from our country's past. I got a wonderful ideas from Deanna Jump's blog on celebrating Constitution day.
First I read the kids the book John, Paul, George & Ben by Lane Smith. No, this is not a story about the Beatles where Ringo's name is Ben...it's about some of our founding fathers! :) We talked about what each of these men did to help start our country and this led into talking about the constitution. We talked about how the constitution was a list of rules are country created that we were to follow.
Next, I had the kids brainstorm what we would write on our own classroom constitution. I wrote down their ideas and they drew a self portrait that I used to decorate our room with. It turned out adorable. Thanks Deanna! :)
And we ended our lesson by watching School House's Rock Preamble video...which I can still recite perfectly thanks to the catchy music!
The rest of the week was spent reading books, books and books! We read books on some of the presidents, Eleanor Roosevelt, Amelia Earhart, Harriet Tubman, Neil Armstrong and more! Some of the books we read all the way through while in others we just skimmed and mainly looked at pictures. The kids enjoyed learning about new people in history. On Wednesday I had the kids choose one example of a good citizen and illustrate them:
On Thursday the kids filled out their book about good citizens by writing why each example was a good citizen. On the last page they got to choose their own example:
(he was a president)
(he was the first man on the moon)
(he was a good inventor)
(he stopped slavery)
The Friday before we started this unit, I sent home a little homework project for my kids to complete. They could choose a person to research and present to the class. I gave the kids different graphic organizers to choose from and they could do one or more by the following Friday. I was BLOWN AWAY by how hard my kids worked. Many of them chose to do all four pages. The week after our unit was over, I had four or five kids stand up in front of the class and teach us about their person. We learned so much!
We had a variety of people chosen including President Lincoln, Harriet Tubman, George Patton, President Theodore Roosevelt, Neil Armstrong, Rosa Parks, President Washington and many more!
The first choice of activities I gave was to fill in a web:
The next choice was to write about their person's childhood and adult life and include real or drawn pictures:
Their next choice was to fill in a timeline with five key events:
Their final choice was to simply write about their person and include a picture:
Hope you enjoyed our learning! If you are interested in this unit, please click on the picture below! First three people to comment with their email will get a free copy!
