A Thankful Plate Full

I am so Thankful to be a first grade teacher, and to build relationships with the children I teach and their families! Speaking of being thankful, a project my class has done each year is the Thankful "Plate Full". The kids take home a large plastic plate, and they decorate it with items for which they are thankful. I love seeing how different each plate turns out! One of my students last year said he was thankful for Nick Saban (in case you don't live in the South...he's the Coach for Alabama)! So funny! {Me too, little buddy.} Anyway, here are some of the wonderful plates created by my fabulous first graders:




On Monday, the first grade teachers presented Thanksgiving activities by rotating in and out of each classroom. The kids made butter, popped popcorn, created indian headbands, and the activity I had the kids make was Mayflower Story Bracelets like the one below:

I found this adorable poem on Dr. Jean's website. The poem goes with the colors on the bracelet!

As I was retelling the story of the first Thanksgiving, I used the picture magnets above! This also helped the kids remember the order of the colors for the bracelets.


We also created a new class book called The Turkey Hid. The kids had to think of a place a turkey would hide to escape being Thanksgiving dinner! This is a lift-the-flap book. The turkey is hiding underneath each drawing!

We also went shopping at the Thanksgiving Store!

The kids used this list to help them shop for items:


Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!!!

Graph-tivities and Give Me Five, Turkey!

You can't be 7 years old and not make a hand turkey--it just wouldn't be right! This week we have been practicing counting by 5's, and of course, we needed an anchor chart to help us practice! The kids traced their little hands and colored their very own hand turkeys, and they loved it so much I have been seeing hand turkeys all over the place! Thanksgiving is such a fun time to create themed activities for math! I have seen some really cute turkey graphs out there in "blog world" that I can't wait to try next week. Here are a few of the graphs we have done lately:





We have been learning a lot about bar graphs! Hmmm--seems like most of my graph ideas are about food!



This tally chart shows that most of us like pumpkin pancakes! Yum.

Totally "Turkified"

Our school is totally "turkified". There are unique turkeys everywhere! Big ones, ones in disguise, handprint turkeys, sparkly turkeys, turkey glyphs, turkeys with real feathers, and turkeys with paper feathers. My class has done the same little turkeys every year, and I will probably do them every year until I decide to retire--coffee filter turkeys! I just love these little guys! This year has been the first year I tried them with googly eyes, and they turned out just as precious as always. To make the coloful feathers, the kids color all over a coffee filter with washable markers, then dip the coffee filter into a cup of water and let the marker colors run together. Next week I'm going to have the kids tell me how they would cook a turkey and compile their answers into a turkey cook book...should be hilarious!