Veteran's Day, Fall, and scarecrows

I can't believe we made it to this point of the year. Thanksgiving is just around the corner! Do you get a full week off or do you have to go Monday and Tuesday like me?
We made a soldier bubble map. My class had to tell me the correct linking word to use. Then I taught them self-correcting strategies by asking, "Does it makes sense?" and "Does it sound right?" when they told me the wrong linking word.

My little solider was inspired by the one Cara Carroll from The First Grade Parade made last year.

We read these two books to build new knowledge about soldiers.

We used our soldier web to write sentences. Using the web they had to tell me what to write then I asked a child to read the sentence. They practiced reaidng with their finger by using the dot marker (love this strategy Fran from Kindergarten Crayons uses). Then another child read the sentence with a pointer.

We made these adorable soldiers from Deanna Jump's Veteran's Day unit. I am dying over how cute these are. We made these last year too.

We read American Soldier from Deanna's unit for shared reading then glued it in our poetry journals. We used the book to learn about sneaky slient e. That sneaky slient e he changes everything- he makes the vowel say its name.

Last week we read a lot of my Fall books. Then we brainstormed words for Fall. Then we did interactive writing to fill up my turkey.

Then we made sentences using our Fall words (another great idea Fran from Kindergarten Crayons posted about). Then we practiced reading with our fingers. Checking to make sure there were enough words, did it match, and did you have any words left over.

Cut a sentence activity using the sentence pattern from above. Each child had to dictate a sentence to me while I typed it. Then I gave them a baggie with the words cut apart. They had to glue the sentence in order left to right, top to bottom, and illustrate it.

Finally finished these scarecrows. A lot of work, but oh they turned out looking so adorable. We also labeleld our scarecrows. You can find the patterns for these in Deanna Jump's scarecrow unit.