Big Idea and Connections with Folktales

    We began by reading Goldilocks and the Three Bears and discussing and charting the big idea of the story. Then we made personal connections with the big idea and characters.

    Then we read Goldie and the Three Hares which is a story about what happens to Goldie after she runs away from the the three bears. We discussed and recorded the big idea and personal connections.

    Then we made connections with Goldie by writing how Goldie was a bad guest and a time we were a bad guest. Then we created hares to go with our responses.

For teachers who are interested, you can find these activities in my Bunnies, Eggs, and Chicks Learning Fun unit.

Making Connections with The Mitten

    We read The Mitten by Jan Brett. We retold the story with our partner. As we read,  I modeled making my own connections to the story. In the story, Nicki looses one of his white mittens in the snow. I talked about how earlier this week, I lost one of my earrings and how Logan (my kindergartener) found it and brought it to me. When we finished reading, the students shared with each other I time they lost something or had to leave something important to them behind. Then the students went back to their seats and I gave them a white mitten. They wrote and illustrated about a time they lost something important to them.

Making Connections with Snowmen

We read Snowmen at Night and then created a Venn Diagram to compare and contrast our class with the Snowmen. Then we made these cute snowmen as art response to our poem Little Snowman.

Snowmen and Text to Self Connections

    We've been working on making text to self connections. We read My Snowman by Deanna Jump, and then wrote and illustrated in our reader's notebooks a time we counted down to something we were excited about.

    Then we read Snowmen at Night and wrote a way we are like the snowmen and a way we are different from the snowmen. Then we illustrated a picture of ourself and the snowmen.

Mr. Grinch

We read The Grinch who Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss. We used the story to focus on characters and motives. 

We used it to review text to self, text to text, and text to world connections.

We wrote our text to self connections about what makes us grumpy and happy.

We also wrote about what we would do to make the Grinch grin and made the Grinch.

Veteran's Day

On Veteran's Day, we had a big assembly and the student's invited their friends and relatives that are Veterans. Logan and I were so proud to have my dad their. We played an ordinal positions line up game using military themed pictures. We also illustrated connections we made between ourselves and the Veterans. We also labeled a hero and talked about the purpose of each part of their uniform.

Halloween is for Learning

We read Where's My Mummy? and wrote text to self connections about what we do when we're scared. We also discussed characteristics of circles and ovals and compared/contrasted circles and ovals on a double bubble map. We cut circles and ovals from squares and rectangles to create Baby Mummy.

We read The Bumpy Little Pumpkin and wrote text to self connections about how we are special.

We My Friend Frankie by Deanna Jump and then discussed characteristics of good friends. We created a bubble map about Frankie and used our bubble map to write poems about Frankie. We collected and analyzed data about class by making a Frankie glyph, sorting our ourselves by answering the questions, and then graphing the results.

It Looked Like Spilt Milk

We read It Looked Like Spilt Milk by Charles Shaw. Before reading, we talked about looking at clouds and how we can see pictures in them sometimes. Students talked with their partner about what clouds looked like. After reading the story, we painted with white paint on one half of our paper to make a cloud. Then we folded our paper on top of the white paint and smoothed it with our hand. Students were given a few minutes to study their cloud and think about what picture they saw in their cloud. Then we came to the carpet and shared our cloud and the picture we saw.

Snowman Skills

This week we had a lot of fun integrating snowmen into the concepts and skills we worked on. In Language Arts, we read The Smallest Snowman and Snowmen at Night. Then we wrote and illustrated text to self connections. We also read There Was a Cold Lady who Swallowed Some Snow and created a story by writing and illustrating the characters, setting, problem, and solution in our reader's notebooks. We also played a word wall game where students found the word I told them written on a snowman. Then they swatted the snowman with the sun to "melt" him. We sequenced the pictures and sentences from our big book The Snowman. We made paper snowman lanterns to response to our poem Little Snowman.

In Social Studies, we talked about put events in chronological order. We talked about what happens to snowmen when the sun comes out. Then we illustrated a snowman melting. Then students used their pictures to tell the order of events to their partner. We also looked at pictures of snowmen from the books we read this week and talked about the different clothing items they wore. We discussed how those items meet our need for protection from the cold. The kids made an prediction that when the sun comes out, the clothing would probably help the snowman melt faster.

In Math, we read There Was a Cold Lady who Swallowed Some Snow and created a flow map of events. Then we used ordinal language to help retell the story events. We also illustrated and labeled the events from the story using ordinal numbers. We The First Day of Winter and then created snowmen glyphs in Pixie 2 about our winter activities preferences. We also analyzed and graphed our data from the glyphs in Excel as a class. We made and drank Snowman soup. Then we created a flow map of events. We wrote the ordinal numbers interactively and retold the steps with our partner.
There Was a Cold Lady who Swallowed Some Snow

Snowman Soup



Making Connections

We have been learning about the importance of making connections when we read. We have worked on personal connections when something in a story makes us think of something we have done before. We have also practiced making text to text connections which is when something in a story reminds us of something in a different story. We read Goldilocks and the Three Bears this week and we made connections to The Three Little Pigs which is a story we read before. We created a double map to compare and contrast the stories.