Happy New Year Freebie!

Grab this off my TpT page!

I am going to use this the first week back to school in January!  I’m sure the children will be hearing the term “resolution” and will be wondering what it means…   It’s a great time to discuss goals with your students… do they want to be more organized?  Become a better reader?  Read more?  Play outside and spend less time on the computer or in front of the television? 

1.Select the appropriate writing page for your class.

2.Copy off the face shape on appropriate skin color paper. – enough for two students per page.

3.Copy off the hats on various colored construction paper. – enough for two students per page.

4.Copy off the lined paper on different “hair” colored paper.  This is a good starting point for your students.  They can cut it to whatever length they would like, curl it, accordion fold it, or cut the ends into points like I did on my sample.  This will give each project a unique look.

5.Use crayons or markers to complete the face details.

6.Add a hat topping and a blower.  I bought my blowers at the dollar store.  The hat topper can be streamers or a pom-pom.  I used glitter glue for the confetti. 

7.Have Fun!  

Grinch Day!

Today was Grinch Day!

The students and I dressed the part today either by wearing green or dressing like a Who from     Who-Ville!  It was a great break from our normal routine.  I had music from  How the Grinch Stole Christmas soundtrack playing as the kids entered the classroom.   We started the day by reading the Grinch - it amazed me that so many of my students  never had the book read to them before.  We talked about the illustrations, the great use of adjectives, and how the author repeated words to emphasize certain things.   The students then helped me come up with adjectives that would describe the Grinch and I wrote them down on a large piece of paper.  I had drawn a picture of the Grinch on the paper the night before.  

I told the students that we were writing  informative letters  to the Grinch.  We were going to give the Grinch some ideas on how to make his heart grow bigger.  I challenged the students to pick two of the adjectives off our paper to use in their writing.  We made a Grinch to display our letters.

You can get a copy of the writing paper and the face and hand pattern here.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BynoRTQzFyS0cG9MUDVYdUozU0k/view?usp=sharingG9MUDVYdUozU0k/view?usp=sharing

I put their writing on a 13 by 9 inch paper that I cut down from a larger paper.  I cut the legs from green paper approximately 2 by 9 inches, and the arms were approximately 3 by 5 inches cut from red paper.  The students folded the legs accordion style, added the face and hands, and created their own shoes and hat for the Grinch.  I walked them through creating the Grinch's facial features.  The last thing they did was add cotton.  It was time consuming but they loved it!


You won't find any Dr. Seuss things for sale on TpT  because of copyright issues.  Most of the papers I found were free from different Blogs.

If you follow the link at the top of this page and go to my Pinterest page under Grinch Day you can find all the links to these fun math and literature pages plus a ton of other great Grinch ideas.

We ended our day completing a Venn Diagram after watching the How The Grinch Stole Christmas cartoon.  It has the students compare the book and the movie.  I sent them out the door with some Grinch Pills.

It was a fantastic day.  We worked so hard today with our writing and problem solving and yet the children will simply remember that it was fun,

We need to have fun while we're learning - especially in the first grade!

Rudolph's Flight - more fun with prepositions!

I hope you are having a fun filled December in your class!  Today we did some more work with prepositions but we did it with some reindeer flair!

The students once again picked prepositions from a bowl (as we did in our Journey's Cupcake Party story)  but this time it was all about Rudolph's Flight! The  Rudolph paper plate craft creates a little pocket to hold the student's book.

 

Once again - the students had a blast and it gave them a hands on understanding of prepositions.

You can get this lesson on my TpT store for $1.75  - You will love it!  :)

These are some fun books you can read with this project!

Up next is Grinch Day!  We are having our Grinch Day this Thursday ... time for some green fun!