I know I am a little late to the party on this one, but I wanted to post about our President's Day celebrations (just in time for Casimir Pulaski day - oops!).

One of the things I am trying to work on more is the "research" aspect of the Common Core Standards. Students are supposed to be gathering information, organizing it and discussing it. We took the opportunity to do so when we discussed Abraham Lincoln and George Washington for President's Day.

Here are the steps we took:

1. Read 3 books each about Lincoln and Washington.

2. Used post-it notes to mark facts (discussed fact/opinion).

3. Organized information in a Venn diagram as a group.

4. Wrote about it ourselves.

 5. ...and then we of course added some color to make it exciting! The kids did a really great job, even if they were just copying from the list, everyone helped to organize.  Some even expanded on their ideas and write their own.!

SO proud of my little ones for not only researching, but organizing the information and expanding! Not to mention all the "chopping" they had to do to sound out unfamiliar words.

We are going to try to do this with a number of other subjects... so stay tuned! :o)

President Centers II

Have I mentioned that the K teachers (there are 5 of us) at my school ROCK?! We all work so well together and I couldn't ask for better teammates. That said- we share everything.

Mrs. Jakusz down the hall made these cute President's Day number match cards where the kids have to match the number, number word, and pictorial representation of the number.  She included a little cheat sheet to help the kids self-check.  

The kids have to organize the cards and make sense out of the numbers - and it goes up to 20! Whahoo!

Did I mention I love my K team?

Parents- If you want a copy for home, please let me know!

President's Day Centers

Ok, so we may have started our President's Day centers last week because we had Lincoln's birthday off instead of President's Day-- but we finished them today and the kids rocked them out!

 

Last week, we worked on the venn diagram comparison between Lincoln and Washington (pictures on that tomorrow). This was the second time we made a venn diagram and it was a little rough, but we did it!

We started by brainstorming (tangent: I have to be better about taking action shots of our work in process - apologies!) facts about Lincoln and Washington - I was pleasantly surprised by relevant ideas we brainstormed!

Then we transferred our ideas in to similarities and differences in the venn diagram.  The kids then worked on their own venn, either writing their own ideas, using the ones we brainstormed, or wrote their own sentences.

 And...here we are working on roll and stamp - President styleeee

 and again...

 ...and here's a nice lil sharing shot for good measure!

TPT and President's Day

Uh oh. I did it. I crossed into the dangerous, possibly addicting world of creating materials and selling them on TPT. Here's my first mini-pack for sale.

 It is a President's Day Literacy pack and it is FREE right now.  Parents and teachers alike can download and use at home, school, tutoring, etc. I know this is small fish kind of stuff, but I feel like if I am making things that should be acceptable to sell, then I will end up making better resources for my classroom as well.  Hopefully as the years go on, my materials will be more and more differentiated, expansive, and FUN!

I would love to hear if anyone has suggestions for the pack or how I can improve my materials! Thanks, thanks! :o)