A little December and A LOT of November

Well better late than never for me to share all of the fun activities that we did in November!  It all started with Election Day in our class.  I read My Teacher for President, Duck for President, and Grace for President to the class.  Afterwards the kids filled out their voter registration card and then got to vote for their teacher, Duck, or Grace.  We set up a private voting station and even had a helper there to tally the results.  I'm happy to report that the TEACHER won!  We had fun graphing the results.  Woo hoo!

The Scotia Glenville Traveling museum visited our school and presented the program, All Along the Mohawk.  The students learned about Native Americans and got some hands on experiences with real Native American artifacts.  They had a great time!

Back in the classroom we continued our learning of Native Americans.  The students learned about the symbol and meaning of the totem pole.  They described their family members as if they were Native Americans on their family's totem pole.  Then we made our very own totem poles! 

We also discussed the Pilgrims and the history of the first Thanksgiving.  We created Mayflower paintings using our handprints, which represent the Mayflower ship.  The students wrote about an important item they would take with them if they rode on the Mayflower.  They had some great ideas!

  

Since Thanksgiving was right around the corner, we began discussing what we were thankful for.  We used the macbooks to type our ideas.  The kids LOVE using the macbooks! We printed out our papers, glued them to a feather, and stapled the feathers to our Thanksgiving turkey bulletin board!  

You may notice some of our disguised turkeys on the bulletin board.  The kiddos did a fabulous job disguising their turkeys so that they wouldn't get eaten on Thanksgiving day!  They were all so creative! There was a nerd, a superhero, a football player, a ninja, a bride, a princess, a cheerleader, a monster, a Santa Claus, etc... Afterwards, we did a writing piece trying to persuade people to eat something else instead of turkey on Thanksgiving.  The writing came out great, so I am sure we saved a few turkeys! 

Finally, it was time to prepare for our First Grade Thanksgiving feast.  On our preparation day we took part in 4 fun centers.  We told the story of Thanksgiving by making bracelets in which each colored bead represented a different part of the story.  We learned about Squanto and made Squanto's snack, which was fish (sweetish fish) and corn (candy corn) planted in the ground (dirt made with crushed oreos).  We made our pilgrim or Native American hats.  And we made our cranberry relish using my grandmothers old fashioned food grinder.  Thanks grandma!!  We had a great time preparing for the feast and we really enjoyed ourselves during the feast.  We were very thankful for all of our parent helpers!

My little Pilgrim loved his first Thanksgiving as well! 

 

And then it was December...

In order to kick off December, we began preparing for our Holidays Around the World unit.  Before we could begin traveling the world, we had to do a few things:  We needed to learn about maps and practice our map skills and we had to apply for our passports so we could travel.  First, we read the book called Me on the Map.  It is a great book that really helps the young learner to understand the map and how it relates to them.  Then we created our very own Me on the Map books.  On each map page, the students found where they live.  At computer class we used Google Maps to find our very own houses.  That was a blast! 

Then we applied for our applications and created our "suitcases."  On order to fill out our applications, we needed information like our addresses, birthdates, height, weight, pictures, etc.  Thank you to Mrs. Heritage for all your help with this!  The students handed in all of their applications and they were all approved!  Their passports were distributed just in time for us to begin traveling!

Take a look at some of our friends decorating their suitcases.  Yes, someone is smelling his suitcase.  Smelly markers are our favorite!!!

That's all for now!  Stay tuned for more December fun soon (ish)!