Happy New Year!

Ringing in the new year when the students return in January is always a favorite of mine. I have been making these new year kids for years. When something is good you just can't stop. 

This is one of my favorite books to read before we start writing our own resolutions.

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I'm sure most of them do not even remember, but it is still fun to graph if you stayed up until midnight. The ones that do stay up are always so proud of their accomplishment.

We also surveyed our friends!

This dot art looks good on lockers, windows, or your door. 

I updated everything for 2020! Hard to believe the new year is only a few months away. It will be here before you know it. 

Grab the unit here!

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.

 

Wintery fun

From the time the bell rings to about 8:30 we do morning tub stations at our desks. This is my time for intervention and housekeeping. I have five tables so the activities rotate five times. Here are some of the things we worked on last week.

Counting by 2's

Winter clothing matching

sight word practice

All of the above station activities can be found in my Wintery fun unit.

We made a bubble map of things we see in the Winter and then made sentences. This is also a station activity. I cut the sentences up and had them build the sentences and match the picture cards. The already made words, pictures, and recording sheet are also in my Wintery fun unit.

Snow schema chart

Winter clothing circle map as a follow up to The Jacket I wear in the Snow (also in the unit).

The first day back from break we graphed what time we went to sleep on New Year's eve. I downloaded the fun title and party hats last year. It is from Brooke Perry at Primary Perspective.

Enjoy your week!