This week we’ve been learning about holiday traditions and the differences between needs and wants during the holidays. We started off by reading How the Grinch Stole Christmas and discussed how the Grinch learned that Christmas wasn’t about presents. We made construction paper Grinchs and wrote how we would make the Grinch grin.
For social studies the next day, we watched a video on Brain Pop Jr about what a need is, what a want is, and their differences. We sorted pictures into the two categories. For art we made stockings, cut out pictures from magazines, and sorted them into needs and wants on the stockings. You can get a Christmas Needs vs Wants freebie activity here.
We kicked off our Christmas theme by reading one of my favorite Christmas stories; How the Grinch Stole Christmas. After we read the story we made our own Grinch, and wrote how we could make the Grinch grin.
Last week we celebrated Dr. Seuss’ birthday by having a week full of Dr. Seuss related activities! The first day we started by reading Cat in the Hat and Oh the Places You’ll Go. We wrote about what we would do to get rid of the cat in the hat, and took pictures of ourselves and made them to look like the cat. We also made and colored easy readers using the sight word “you”.
We read one of my favorite Christmas stories to kick off our Christmas unit, How the Grinch Stole Christmas. We discussed the problem and solution of the story, created construction paper Grinches and wrote about how we would make the Grinch grin.
Today was Arbor Day so we finished up our activities on sustainability and taking care of the environment. We watched the modern version of The Lorax movie and wrote letters to mother earth. We also made our own truffula trees out of tissue paper.
To help celebrate Earth day we’ve been learning about recycling and how humans impact the environment this past week. We read the story about the Lorax and how the Once-lers actions hurt the land and the animals around him. We then also talked about the R’s of recycling, and sorted items based on whether they were trash or things to recycle.
We also brainstormed ways that we could help take care of mother earth by making a list and then writing sentences.
Today for Earth Day we took our list and made a poster as a class pledge to take better care of our earth. Then we joined up with the 2nd/3rd grade class to do a Shaktoolik clean up! Since it is still wintery and snowy out here in the arctic the clean up ended kind of short, but we still had fun!
At the end of the day we made our own “mother earth” mascots that we will eventually hang up in the classroom once they are finished!
We read How the Grinch Stole Christmas and discuss the problem and solution of the story. Then we discussed the problem and solution. Then we brainstormed ways to make the Grinch grin and wrote about our ideas on handmade Grinches.
Last week we celebrated our last reading buddies. Since we had a year long of Dr. Seuss we had our last reading buddies with our K/1 class reading our Dr. Seuss books to the 2/3 graders to show how far we’ve come over this year!
Also as one last art activity both K/1 and 2/3 classes made hand prints with tempera to show their mother’s how small their hands used to be when they were little. The students also wrote a little thank-you note to their moms, thanking them for being their mom!
Continuing on our unit about learning about communities and community helpers we’ve been learning about jobs not only in our community but elsewhere. We started out talking about how students can go wherever they choose to go and be who they choose to be and we reread Oh The Places You’ll Go. Students colored, cut, and glued pictures of community helpers; and matched them with their related mode of transportation. For writing students wrote about what they wanted to be when they grew up.
This post is a little late, been busy with lots of things around school with basketball and Spring Break. At the beginning of this month we celebrated Dr. Seuss’ 110th birthday for a whole day of fun Seuss activities!
K-1 Class paired up with their 2nd and 3rd grade reading buddies and we made green eggs and created a whole graph illustrating whether we like green eggs or not.
Then the whole school (Preschool – 12) met in the gym and older students read Dr. Seuss books to our younger students for Read Across America.
Finally at the end of the day our K-1 class read the Lorax and made tissue paper Truffula trees and wrote about how we would speak for Mother Earth. This is also a great Earth Day lesson but I decided to do it for Seuss Day this year because of his special birthday!
