January wrap up!

We made it to February! Oh how I love February! Here are a few of my favorite books to read in January and some of the literature response activities we did.

Here is just one of the activities we did with this book. We worked on building oral language for winter clothing. Then we made a circle map of winter clothing. 

 

Mittens or gloves pictograph

We discussed how animals stay warm in the winter. Here is one of our anchor charts. We circled the animals the kids thought hibernated. Chart inspired by First Grade Schoolhouse.

Hibernation chit-chat message to review what we learned.

Martin Luther King chit-chat message to review what we learned.

We made snow caps and wrote about what we like to do in winter.

Winter bubble map

Have you ever played in the snow graph.

When we returned from Christmas break we made these new year kids and wrote our resolutions. Idea inspired by Julie Lee.

We made snowmen and wrote about what our snowmen would do at night. Idea by Deanna Jump. Love how these turned out.

 

January happenings

Oh my it has been so long since I updated on all my classroom happenings. Can you believe January is almost over?

When we got back to school in January we started with this craftivity. We talked about new year resolutions and wrote what we wanted to do in the new year.

 Then we graphed what time everyone went to sleep on New Year's eve.

 We read The Mitten and graphed which character is your favorite.

 After reading The Mitten we completed the story map on this large mitten cut out.

We retold the story using my retelling rope, story props and a mitten. We discussed the setting, characters, what kicks off the story, the beginning, middle, end, and what ties up the story.

 

On to Martin Luther King . . .

We read Martin's Big Words and leaned about his life by watching a Brain Pop Jr. movie. Then I had the kids tell me words or phrases that described his life. They made this cute TLC style art projects and unscrambled the sentence, Dr. King had a very important dream.

 

Dr. King

We learned so much about Martin Luther King last week. We watched a movie on BrainPoP about Martin Luther King. You can watch it here. My kids have been singing this song over and over and over again. They love it! Sung to the tune of he's got the whole world in his hands.

We charted all our new learning from the books we read and the movie we watched in the circle map. We also made TLC art. They turned out looking so good.

idea from the first grade parade

We did this writing activity last year. I had them write/illustrate about dreams in their heart to make the world a better place. I love this one. It says, "No drunk drivers."

click to download or here

 

Martin Luther King

I actually had a walk through during this lesson. Good thing it was a good one. We read Martin’s Big words. Then as a class we brainstormed a list of dreams to make our world a better place to live in. We recorded our ideas on chart paper. Then each child wrote and illustrated their dreams. They did a great job. Inspiration by Primary Perspectives.

Click to download

I can dream like Dr. King