Thanksgiving Fun and a PLETHORA of Stone Soup stuff!!

Happy Wednesday, Blogging Buddies!! Kerri here...
Hallelujah! We are finally on our Thanksgiving Break! Don't get me wrong, I love my little chitlins, but I am happy to get a little break-a-roony! Of course, what do I do on my first day of break? Blog stalk, blog write, and make stuff for my classroom. What a nut I am!!

I will be making up for it later when my bestie and I take our kiddos to...Haus of Pizza! If you live in my area, and you know who you are, then you know this pizza is MUY DELICIOSO! The perfect pre-thanksgiving meal, if you ask me!! My husband is still gluten-free, so he doesn't get to come. Too bad for him, but yay for Girl Power!!

I wanted to share what we have been doing in regards to Thanksgiving and Stone Soup making. We learned all about the first Thanksgiving and made these circle maps...

Then we used our maps to write about the First Thanksgiving. I was so proud of my little kidlets' writing...

Apparently, the Pilgrims caught sharks off the side of the Mayflower. Who knew??!

Did you know that the Mayflower stopped at Plymouth Rock??

We also made Stone Soup this week for our Thanksgiving Celebration and all the kids brought an ingredient to share. After reading the story, we worked on this Stone Soup re-telling chart together...

My kids favorite part of this activity was labeling each thing on the chart. They were SILENT the entire time and did such a great job spelling the words phonetically!

After we made the chart together, we filled out a flow map with the order that each ingredient was added. This we did together as well, but we focused on spelling each ingredient correctly...

We ran out of time, but I was going to have them write a "How To Make Stone Soup" story as well. Oh pooh...maybe next year!!
If you would like a copy of the Stone Soup flow map and story writing paper to save for next year (or later this year! Stone Soup can be made ANYTIME!), click on the soup bowl below to access a copy via Google Docs...

 I also found some other AWESOME resources on the internet for Stone Soup! Scholastic has a mini-book that we read together... (click link to download)

http://minibooks.scholastic.com/content/collateral_resources/pdf/46/0439773946_e011.pdf

We read a Stone Soup Poem and circled all of the ingredients with our HALLOWED highlighters...

http://www.dltk-teach.com/t.asp?b=m&t=http://www.dltk-teach.com/fables/stonesoup/bposter.gif

And... we watched the Chinese version of the story on You Tube!

I guess you could say my kids were totally Stone Souped out, right?? What I loved about all of these activities is that they are all different versions of the story,  so we were able to compare and contrast them!

We also made Mrs. B's Turkey Rescue turkeys last week and we all thought of what we could eat instead of  turkey (being a vegetarian myself, this made my heart smile!!)...I LOVED their responses!!

They seemed to have a candy and chocolate theme going on, but whatevs...right??? BTW, that IS my bearded dragon from last year sitting on the counter. He is GINORMOUS now!!

Welp, that's all I have for now. I hope you all have a blessed Thanksgiving with family and friends, and please know how thankful Lindsay and I are for all of your support and for being such loyal followers!!

XOXO Kerri B

Thanksgiving Art, a couple freebies, and a CUTEY CUTE Holiday Craft!!

Whew! Can I just say how stoked I am that I get 5 whole days off for Thanksgiving!! YIPPEE!
Hi Friends! Kerri here...
I know this is AGAIN too little too late (just like my Haunted House post!) but here are a couple of art projects my firsties did this week to get into the Thanksgiving spirit...
Check out Mrs. B's Turkey Rescue...

Eat more coconuts?? WHAAT?? I love it!

This guy's waddle is fabulous!

We made these little guys after we read this super cute, vegetarian friendly (like me!!) story...

We also made Pilgrim and Wampanoag Portraits, and wrote a poem about their first Thanksgiving...

Have I already talked about how much I love First Graders' artwork? It is just so authentic and charming!


Click the pictures below to get your own copies of the "Save a Turkey" paper and the Pilgrim and Wampanoag paper (for next year!!)...

Save a Turkey

Pilgrim & Wampanoag Paper

We also made Stone Soup as a class after reading the story, retelling it as a class, and sequencing a Stone Soup poem...Here is our Stone Soup chart that helped us retell the story. I let the kids label our chart this time (you would have thought I let them have a puppy for a class pet!!) and they did a great job!

All of the kids brought in the ingredients and we cooked the soup all day today in crock pots. Of course, we HAD to have pumpkin pie with it!! The pumpkin pie went over a little bit better than the soup, but the kids had a ball making it!! :)

And...Here is a SUPER SIMPLE, uber-adorable Holiday craft that I cooked up with the help of my daughter, Katie Bug! The wooden plaques are 5x7 from Michaels ($1.29 plus my 15% off teacher discount), and I used white, blue, green, and red acrylic paint, and OF COURSE, my favorite teacher's helper of all time, MOD PODGE!! (Please excuse the smudge next to the snowflake...I was being impatient and the paint was not all the way dry when I started to mod podge on the snowman. DURNIT!)

TADA!! I am so proud of Katie's artwork!! And, it is so simple and old-fashioned, which I also LOVE! Hope you can use this idea, if you are in need of a Holiday gift for your parents from your kiddos!

One more thing...don't forget to enter our giveaway for one of these beautiful hand-crafted prints and frames made by Karen at 

Wishing You Happiness... (click under the first picture to enter!)

link to giveaway

I'll choose a winner tomorrow morning, after I sleep in! YAY!!

Happy Thanksgiving, Friends! Hope you have a blessed Holiday!

Roll A Turkey - A Thanksgiving Freebie

Greetings blogger buddies! Lindsay here . . .

How many of you can remember back to your first year of teaching?  I can clearly remember being so young, so clueless, and so POOR!!  Man, waiting for that very first paycheck seemed like forever!!!!  In the meantime, I was super resourceful and creative . . .In fact, I used to make a lot of hand-drawn or self-created worksheets, charts, etc. because the price was right . . . they were free! 

Well, next week I will be celebrating Thanksgiving with my kinder kiddos and I needed one more fun Thanksgiving center. I found an idea for a game online, and harkened back to my teaching roots . . . (drumroll please) . . . I created this one-of-a-kind, handmade "Roll a turkey" game template.  Here's how you play:

Students play in groups of two or three, each with their own "Roll a turkey" mat and something to draw with.  Students take turns rolling a 10 sided dice, and whatever number they land on, they get to draw the corresponding turkey body part.  If they already have rolled a number, they draw nothing and lose that turn. The first one to complete the picture wins.  This is a fun way for my kiddos to practice number identification and have fun too! I will probably laminate the playing mats so they can use wet-erase marker to play again and again.  For older students, you could create mats with math facts for each body part (such as 4+6 = beak).  Students would have to look for the math fact to correspond to the number they rolled.

(Click on image for link to worksheet)

Hope you have lots of super fun Thanksgiving celebrations planned with your kiddos as well!  If you decide to have your kids "Roll a turkey" let me know how it goes! :)

Lindsay



Word Ending Sort on TPT! and a Writing FREEBIE!

Happy Saturday, Peeps! Kerri here...
I am OVER MY HEAD in paperwork and assessments, trying to get ready for Conferences in 2 weeks. Add to that short 4 day weeks for the whole month of November and there is like NO TIME to teach! How will I have time to teach all of the fantabulous ideas I get from all of my bloggy friends!! NEED...MORE...TIME!
Because I am a procrastinator...(I don't wanna do report cards yet!!) and because we are learning about word ending this week (-s, -ed, and -ing), I just uploaded this little word ending center to TPT...on sale for only $2! And..it has ADORABLE furry friend clip art, if I do say so myself. Perfect for Fall...and very kid friendly~check it out!

Click on the picture above to go to my TPT store. It will be on sale until Wednesday!


And...here is a writing freebie for those of you who would like to have your kiddos write about what they are thankful for...or whatever else that is Thanksgiving themed! We will be making "still life" bowls of fruit for art this week to go with our "I am Thankful" stories. Pictures forthcoming!! Click on the picture to download your copy!

Have a great weekend, friends!