Thanksgiving Stuff

Woohoo!  Got the week off!  Unfortunately three of the days are furlough days so no pay:(.  My son comes home from college tomorrow night!  Woohoo for that too!  
I did some directed drawing for art last week that you might like to do if you still have school this week.  Here's the pics.

How cute is that guy!!!????  He is done with black ink and a chalk stain.  If you haven't done a chalk stain here's how:  Don't let the piece of chalk touch the art.  Use a scrap piece of paper and rub the chalk on it to make dust.  Wrap a tissue around your finger and dip it in the dust.  Rub the color onto the picture to stain.  First graders are AMAZED!  He look great matted on black:-)  Here's a little peek at how the display looks with some of the little guys and a big scarecrow pal.  The display is out in the hall and I keep hearing peeps say they make them smile.  Awwww!  That makes me smile!

Have your read Tomie dePaola's "The Artist"?  It's all about him drawing as a kids.  Super cute!  At the end of the book he draws a Pilgrim man and woman with a turkey.  My class did tried it too.  Here's how they look:-)  

This is a super easy one to do just using crayons.  Some years I get out the colored pencils and that's always a treat:-)  

Moving right along.....
Have your read the book "Who Will Carve the Thanksgiving Turkey" by Jerry Pallotta and David Biedrzycki?  Totally cute book:-)  After reading it my kiddos wrote their own ideas about who could carve the turkey at their house.  Check these out!

Super animals and dogs carving turkeys!  How cute

 is that!  By the way...Faith is the little author's sister:-)

And even more fun was had last week!  We dove into my popcorn unit (available at my tpt store of course).  Favorite activity was popcorn tasting!  We tasted four kinds of popcorn and then interviewed 12 classmates to see what their favorites were.  Here's a sample of the tally chart, bar graph, and data sheet.

We also did a fuuuuun rhyming activity.  Lots of my little struggling readers are still lost when it comes to rhyming.  After doing the activity, we made these fabulous popcorn boxes with rhyming words.  It was another fan favorite!

Stop by my tpt store and check out the popcorn unit.  It works well in October, which is National Popcorn Month, or I like to use it the week before Thanksgiving. "The Popcorn Book" by Tomie dePaola is a great read aloud!  I also like "The Popcorn Shop" by Alice Low.  

OMG! I need to stop talking and let you move on;-)  Thanks so much for stopping by!  Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Parent/Teacher Conferences Scheduling the Easy Way!!

Here's the link to the web site I'm using to schedule my Parent/Teacher conferences.  It's awesome:-)  On Tuesday I'll be sending notes home to parents to give them the link and a code that leads them to my scheduling page.  If I have any problems come up I'll let you know.


http://ptcfast.com/

Hooray for three day weekends!!  

Popcorn Party!!

WHAT!  It's November??  How did that happen?  Check out my new little goody on tpt.  It's a popcorn unit:-)  I love doing this the week before Thanksgiving break.  I pulled out my date book today and realized that is next week!

I love the popcorn graphics.  Who knew popcorn could be so cute??  My favorite part of the packet is the colorful popcorn box rhyming craftivity.  

Have I mentioned lately that I LOVE Daily 5 and CAFE??  How did I ever teach without it??  We had a visitor from the School Board and she was crazy about it as well.  She wrote notes as fast I could talk to explain the awesomeness of the whole thing:-)  I'm hoping my team can inspire other grade levels to jump on the D5/CAFE train.

Speaking of love....CGI!!  Holy Cow!  Amazing!!  I adore listening to my kiddos explain their thinking into the microphone while they demo under the doc cam.  It's breathtaking!  I have a November packet of CGI word problems available in my store.  Check it out!  

I'm trying something else new this year.  Our AP showed us a web site we can use to have parents sign up for Parent/Teacher conferences.  Soooo cooooool!  I put the schedule in, send home a letter to the struggling/at-risk kiddos, parents use the code from the letter to access the schedule online and sign up for the spot they want.  Hooray!!  No phone calls!  No notes back and forth!!  I will post the web address after I get mine up and going and make sure it is as easy to use as I think it is going to be:-)