Thanksgiving and Veterans' Day

This week we began a two week unit on Thanksgiving.  This is one of my favorite units of the year.  The students always enjoy learning about the pilgrims and the indians and the many traditions that began at the First Thanksgiving.  

The students played literacy games that were Thanksgiving-themed at the computer center this week.

 Next Friday we are hosting a feast in our classroom.  We made some decorations for our classroom.

 We read the book, "The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush", this helped the students understand about the Native American culture.

 An indian flower based on the book, "The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush". 

 Indian crafts

 On Thursday, the cafeteria made a Thanksgiving feast for us to enjoy.  The students all wanted to enjoy the feast dressed as the Wampanoag Indians, just like at the first Thanksgiving.

 On the way to the feast.

 We spent much of our week learning about the first Thanksgiving.  We read books and used great Internet resources, like scholastic.com and brainpopjr.com, to help us learn.  We learned that the Pilgrims came from England on the Mayflower.  There were 102 pilgrims and the journey lasted 65 days.  The students are full of Thanksgiving facts!

We made a Mayflower of our own!

 The Mayflower is sailing outside of our classroom, all the "pilgrims/students'" are taking the voyage to Plymouth Rock.

 The letter of the week was Bb!  What a Brillant letter!

The students wrote a sentence in their journals about things they liked that began with the letter Bb.

"I like baboons."

 "I like bacon."

 "I like my brother."

 Bb "Show and Tell" - fooBall, Butterfly, BaseBall

 Bow and Arrows

 The first grade students performed their Thanksgiving themed-musical for us on Friday.  We enjoyed watching them, they did a wonderful job!

 We also celebrated Veterans' Day on Friday.  We had a wonderful veteran, Mr. Howell Purvis, visit our class.  He served in the Navy as a pilot and was also a secret service agent for five U.S. Presidents!!

Watch the video to see some of this special visit. 

 Happy Birthday, Austin!

 Student of the Week: Houston

Coming Up...

Phonics: Uu

Math: Larger Numbers, 11-20

Thematic Unit: Thanksgiving

Friday, November 18 - Thanksgiving Feast - Our class will enjoy a Thanksgiving feast in our classroom on this day.  The students have also been practicing a short play about the first Thanksgiving.  The fun festivities will begin at 12:00 PM.  We hope to see you there!

November 21 - 25: Thanksgiving Holidays, No School

Blog Password: Squanto

Veterans' Day, Indians

This week was learned about the importance of the Indians at the First Thanksgiving. We also celebrated Veterans' Day. A veteran and special friend of our class, Mr. Howell Purvis, visited us on Wednesday. We made cards and a hand-painted flag sign. We enjoyed learning from him and glad he came to visit us!

This week we also learned the letter Kk. In phonics we read a few new books with many new words with the letter Kk. One of our favorite books was "Pink Milk." A cute girl named Kit had a great snack of pink milk and cookies. So after reading this book we had pink milk and cookies for snack!

While learning Kk this week we also made our own kites!

Last week we learned about the journey of the Pilgrims. This week we learned about the importance of the Indians and the special friendship they had with the Pilgrims. We made edible tee-pees! We used flour tortillas, pretzel sticks, and chocolate icing! We all enjoyed making these wonderful creations, we used food coloring to create our own Indian art.

Everyone looks great with their headdresses!

We learned that one of the very important crops was corn. Both the Pilgrims and the Indians used corn in many of the foods they made. And we were surprised to learn that they even had popcorn at the first Thanksgiving!

Zach brought a great book for us to read as we learned about the Indians. "Good Hunting, Blue Sky" was a great Indian story!

We also enjoyed the book "The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush."

Indian Corn!!

Making wonderful music with our Indian drums

What a wonderful week learning about the Indians! Now that we have learned all about the Pilgrims and the Indians, next week we will focus on the great feast of the First Thanksgiving!

We also made up Indian names for ourselves, these are pretty funny!

• Tripp - Silly Mountain
• Elizabeth P. - Pretty Queen
• Austin - Story Night
• Ty'Kwan - Running Star
• Cade - Howling Coyote
• Faith - Big Chief
• Lillie - Bright Star
• Elizabeth M. - Warrior Princess
• Lexie - Big Bear
• Zach - Blue Sky
• Carolina - Mountain Stars
• Andee - Bright Star
• Avery - Squanto
• Ty - Running Bull
• Ethan - Heavy Rain
• Zella - Blooming Rose
• Briana - Fluttering Butterfly
• Keoki - Warrior Hunter

Student of the Week: Zella

Coming Up Next Week:

Phonics: Bb

Math: Topic 7 - Geometry

Thematic Unit: Thanksgiving

Blog Password: Gobble, Gobble!!!