President's Day.Patriotic

 I started the week by showing the students some skip counting puzzles I found on TpT.  I ran it like a power point, and I used these images to introduce the students to the presidents and some fun facts including: Obama is our president now (some still think Romney based on our "election" in the fall, kind of funny) the president works in the oval office, Mount Rushmore has four important presidents on it (**We had a guess that Justin Beiber was on Mount Rushmore and another guess that it was Obama's family),  and George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are dead and they lived a very, very long time ago (but no, I was not a baby when they were president.... I AM 25!).  Kids say the darndest things, but based on conferences, they did come home with some of the facts....

We did a coin flip activity (Found on TpT) in which we flipped a penny, and noted if we saw Lincoln's face or the Lincoln Memorial (tales).  The graphed this data and then counted the times they saw each. 

Students then did a coin rubbing of the coins, brown for pennies, and gray for quarters.  


We read the book Presidents Day. We learned about the Presidential Seal, which is on the floor of the oval office, Mount Rushmore again, Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt (and national parks), and Thomas Jefferson (and the declaration of independence).  I feel a lot went over their heads, but I am glad I could expose them to this history at this age.  
Students worked on following 2 step directions and patterning by doing the stripes on their flags (start with red on top and then pattern red, white, red, white).  


They then followed more directions: fill the box with glue and put the blue box in that one.

Finally, students counted and worked with 1:1 correspondance putting the stars on.  We worked on following directions of a row on top of 6, then 5, 6, 5, and so on.  My goal was to get all 50 on there.  The rows got further apart than intentionally thought, so there most likely isn't 50, but they did follow directions of 6 and 5 and get practice counting and following directions that far.

We played President's Day Bingo (©Ashley Hugheswww.theschoolsupplyaddict.blogspot.com)  This worked on listening skills, following directions, and working on listening to describing words.  Student did well with this and enjoyed playing!  I love using BINGO in my teaching because it gives me time to teach about little things that come up on the boards.  This gave us the opportunity to tell about the pictures and why they are on the board.  It helped make some of the connections.  Some students got to play twice and it was cool to say, the Lincoln Memorial, and they remember what that is the second time around!

We read the Scholastic book: My Teacher For President and discussed all it would take to make a good president.  We made a list on the board, sounding out the initial sounds of the words.

Snow, Elf on a Shelf, & The Grinch

Our theme was Snow and winter.  

We read The Elf on the Shelf and introduced Herbie to the class on Monday.  Students were told they could write a letter to Herbie while he was watching and it would get to Santa.  I saw more students writing than I had ever seen before! They were trying to sound out words, write letters they had never written before and more!  It was amazing to see!

In our small group we worked on patterning with snowflakes.  We started with an AB pattern and if students were able to complete that we moved onto an AAB or an ABB pattern.  Students are doing very well with patterning. This product was not mine, but can be found at the following link: Click here for source of snowflake patterning.

Tuesday we read The Gingerbread Man.  We began practicing the role playing of the skit and showing how a story can be made into parts.  Students were very enthusiastic about it!  On Wednesday we assigned parts and began practicing.  Students are very excited.  We are doing this in a reader's theater style, I read the stories and the students in those parts reenact it as I am reading.  

We read The Grinch that Stole Christmas on Wednesday focusing on the first two pages; The Grinch hated Christmas because his heart was 3 sizes to small.  He needed to learn about love before it could grow.  We then made a large Grinch for our classroom and are going to write the kind things we see our friends doing that made our heart grow and showed us love.  So far it is off to a slow start, but as we talk about it I feel they will get the hang of it.  I will encourage this to be a writing activity as well, brining in letter sounds and seeing if they can help with any of the letters while writing it out.  We also watched the cartoon movie of The Grinch that Stole Christmas.  Children enjoyed the change of pace.  

They also began a measuring unit with snowflakes. We measured how many "big snowflakes" tall we were, and measured how many small snowflakes a variety of objects were in our room. We then wrote these numbers on our data sheets.

Freebie available on TPT

Through out the week, students come into the room looking for the trouble Herbie got into during the week.  He was hiding in our drop bucket (where we put a drop in when we made good choices) on Tuesday.  He must be looking how many great choices we had made thus far to tell Santa all about them!  On Wednesday, I caugt him coming into the classroom when I turned on the lights and he had to hang from a rope on or window all day until we went home.  Thursday, he must have gotten hungry, he was sitting in a bowl full of home living food!