A Thanksgiving To Remember...

Hey Kinder Friends,

I can't believe it is that time again. Thanksgiving time is one of my favorite times inside a Kindergarten classroom. All the hustle and bustle getting ready for a Kindergarten feast and talking about all things that make us feel so thankful inspires me to want to create a classroom where...

Being thankful is something to remember.



As we prepare for our celebration in Kindergarten we share the stories about our own customs, celebrations and traditions. One of my favorite stories to tell my class is how I remember preparing for my Kindergarten Thanksgiving when I was five. And we talk about what we are all looking forward to this Thanksgiving.



The story of the first Thanksgiving is something we talk about in class. We use this event in history and put the events in chronological order, discuss the similarities and differences in family customs and traditions and retell the story of the first Thanksgiving.

One sure fire way to get the kids retelling is through story retelling bracelets. This way they have the visual reminder of each part and it makes remembering a lot easier. We always have fun making these in class and wearing them home. This activity and lesson is by far one of my favorites and it is a great way to begin the season of all things thankful.

Standards Addressed:
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.K.10 Actively engage in group reading activities with purpose and understanding.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.K.1 With prompting and support, ask and answer questions about key details in a text.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.K.2 With prompting and support, identify the main topic and retell key details of a text.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.K.3 With prompting and support, describe the connection between two individuals, events, ideas, or pieces of information in a text.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.1a Follow words from left to right, top to bottom, and page by page.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.3a Demonstrate basic knowledge of one-to-one letter-sound correspondences by producing the primary sound or many of the most frequent sounds for each consonant.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.3c Read common high-frequency words by sight (e.g., the, of, to, you, she, my, is, are, do, does).
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.4 Read emergent-reader texts with purpose and understanding.
CCSS.Math.Content.K.CC.A.3 Write numbers from 0 to 20. Represent a number of objects with a written numeral 0-20 (with 0 representing a count of no objects).
CCSS.Math.Content.K.CC.B.4b Understand that the last number name said tells the number of objects counted. The number of objects is the same regardless of their arrangement or the order in which they were counted.
CCSS.Math.Content.K.CC.B.4c Understand that each successive number name refers to a quantity that is one larger.

TEKS Objectives:
Language Arts
K.2(B) identify syllables in spoken words.
K.2(H) isolate the initial sound in one-syllable spoken words.
K.4(B) ask and respond to questions about texts read aloud.
K.8(A) retell a main event from a story read aloud.
K.10(B) retell important facts in a text, heard or read.
K.11(A) follow pictorial directions (e.g., recipes, science experiments).
Reading/Comprehension
(B) ask and respond to questions about text.
(E) retell or act out important events in stories.
Science
K.10(B) identify parts of plants such as roots, stem, and leaves and parts of animals such as head, eyes, and limbs.
Social Studies
K.3(A) place events in chronological order.
Math
K.2(A)  count forward and backward to at least 20 with and without objects.
(B)  read, write, and represent whole numbers from 0 to at least 20 with and without objects or pictures.
(C)  count a set of objects up to at least 20 and demonstrate that the last number said tells the number of objects in the set regardless of their arrangement or order.
(D)  recognize instantly the quantity of a small group of objects in organized and random arrangements.

This 138 page Print & Go Download Includes:
Classroom photos and directions
4 Blackline turkey headband printables with and without writing prompts
6 Color and blackline printables for a class big book I Can Set The Table
1 Blackline printable What’s Missing number line
1 Blackline cut and paste I Can Label The Table Setting
26 Blackline printables for creating Story Retelling Thanksgiving Placemats
1 Color printable for Thanksgiving Story Retelling Cards
1 Blackline printable for Large Thanksgiving Story Retelling Cards
1 Blackline printable for Small Thanksgiving Story Retelling Cards
8 Color printables for The First Thanksgiving Big Book
6 Blackline printables for student sized The First Thanksgiving emergent reader-The Pilgrim…
6 Blackline printables for student sized The First Thanksgiving-Alternate version
7 Blackline and color printables (different versions) of Thanksgiving Story Retelling Bracelets
1 Colored printable recipe card directions for Thanksgiving Snacks
6 Colored printables for I Can See The Pumpkin Parts Big Book
6 Blackline printables for student sized I Can See The Pumpkin Parts emergent reader
3 Colored Syllable Sort printables
1 Blackline Thanksgiving Blessings writing prompt stationary printable
1 Blackline Thanksgiving card printable
3 Blackline printable number line What Is Missing pages
6 Blackline cut and paste I Can Label The-Pumpkin, Indian Girl, Indian Boy, Pilgrim Girl, Pilgrim Boy, Turkey
4 Blackline printables for Beginning Sound Matching
4 Blackline printables for How Many counting with a ten frame
3 Blackline printable Roll Cover 3 versions/levels
Please note...MANY of the printables are Print & Go but some do require a little teacher prep!
Native American/Indian alternate text included...
Thanksgiving Blessings!

 



Thanksgiving Time FREEBIE!

Hey Kinder Friends,

Well the Thanksgiving work is finally winding down and we still have part of next week to go! But we were happy to be able to stay inside today and have our Feast For 10! This was one of those rare times that I was actually able to participate and even listen from afar as the play based activity was taking place. As you can imagine our conversations were lively and it was interesting to see the different roles that the children tried out as they prepared for the feast. I almost wished that I had a checklist with me as the children were working because they covered a lot of the things that have been discussed in class from Language Arts to Math to Social Studies. It was a real joy to hear several retellings of Feast For 10, tons of how many, one more and two more and how different children celebrate at their own homes. Since we have incorporated more books into our home center, it has been interesting to see how they use them in this area. I asked why they were on the table and at their feast and the children told me that they needed them... Everyone that came to their feast just needed a book to read! I suppose they now know that reading is a part of our daily lives and reading has purpose... What teacher would not want that message to be loud and clear even in a home center?

One of my new favorites this year has been our I Am Thankful For... writing activity. We generated a simple list of the things we were thankful for and used the word and picture list to complete our feathers for our turkey headbands and a card we made for our families.

Like I said, this was super simple and it gave us a chance to talk about making lists as a writing choice and we were able to use this to help with making cards for our families. As we were talking and discussing Thanksgiving and our families the children continued to come up with things that they were thankful for and I will be excited to revise this list because we are getting better and a little more descriptive...

Our new list will include our new thinking after much discussion!

I Am Thankful For...

Warm coats when it rains.

Hot buttery cornbread.

Sleeping with my dog.

TV when it rains.

Teachers who help you learn.

Friends when you are sad.

And as I was driving home from school one day I thought about...time. Sometimes I think we are in such a hurry to teach it all that it is hard to allow for more...time. Time to let things simmer in our heads and time to rethink and revisit so that we get to a deeper understanding. During one of our last discussions I asked why many of us were thankful for trees. And with a little help of a sentence stem the list all of the sudden became a lot more interesting and descriptive.

I am thankful for ___ because ___.

I am thankful for trees because they give us apples.

I am thankful for trees because they give me shade.

Wow, what a difference time has made.

Considering we still go to school next week we have time to work on more writing with more detail. Sometimes, it just takes a little more, time. I will let you know how it goes!

And before our rainy day was over we had a chance to make a gift for our families. We made simple hand print turkeys. You would be surprised to know just how many descriptive words were used during this simple project. I heard squishy, wiggly, cold and wet to name a few! Maybe this follow up activity needs to be a shared writing activity and we could make a list of those words! Hmmm...

  

If you are in school next week and need a little Thanksgiving free fun just click on the images to get yours just to make your classroom Thanksgiving a Thanksgiving to remember...

To every teacher near and far...Happy Thanksgiving Kinder Friends!

The other printables come from the unit A Thanksgiving To Remember.

Thanksgiving Feast Freebie!

Hey Kinder Friends,

We have been having a little fun getting it all together for our Thanksgiving feast this coming week. It is one of my all time favorite events in Kindergarten. We have slowly been putting together our Thanksgiving Story Retelling Place Mats and I have to say that we all can retell this story like we have known it all along. Hand motions and all, we have it! And as we have been discussing family traditions and customs we have had a lot of fun in our home center. In fact, a hot mess of fun!

We are going to keep this image small...for obvious reasons! Seriously what is a Kinder teacher to do when looking at this at dismissal? I say pick your battles my friends. Just shut the door and walk away because it is too upsetting to look at. I shut the door and my eye twitched all the way home... Between here and there I had to make a plan and quick because the mere thought of looking at this again made me light headed.

So, casually the next day we started talking about family celebrations again. And we learned that most every family celebration includes some kind of food. And I pulled our home center into the center of the room and asked if this were our "home" would it be ready for any kind of celebration.

The children decided that it would be a good idea to spruce up our home center because it was not ready for...anything! But we have had some fun sorting and organizing and actually deciding what props we wanted in our home center.

It did not take long for us to get some momentum and the conversations were lively as we organized and made decisions on what to keep and toss. It was interesting to see the different roles that each person took on for this project. Who knew problem solving could be so much fun?

We still are working on gathering some props because we decided that we wanted to create a Feast for 10! We had to borrow a few items and I am gathering a few more but by Monday we begin creating a Feast for 10! I seriously can't wait.

As I was thinking about the next week I remembered that a few of the children were talking about the place mats we have been making for the feast. They wanted to use the mats in the home center when recreating a Feast for 10. I decided to make some smaller place mats so that the children could use them in the home center.

Just print these on colored cardstock and laminate and you have a quick and easy prop for your home center too! If you need a copy for your friends just click on the image above and grab your freebie!

For more information on our Thanksgiving fun just click on the image above to get more information! Happy Fall Y'all!

November Number Talks Picks!

Hey Kinder Friends,

Just had to share our favorite Number Talking book picks for November! These are super simple and pretty cheap to come by so they are on the top of the list for our Number Talking fun. I ordered them through Amazon because I wanted to be able to have extra copies for the class. Considering Number Talks are an ongoing routine in the classroom I am always on the hunt for anything and everything that will add to this routine to get us all excited about this part of our day.

First up is the One Little, Two Little, Three Little Pilgrims book. It is super simple. But what I love about it most is that it serves as double duty for me. We read it and discuss the three ways to read a book and discuss retelling the story through the pictures. This is a great book for that because on most of the pages the children can read each word on the page but on some they must use the pictures to retell that part. It also incorporates one of our sight words "little" so the children see it in print many times throughout the book. And we all love counting the number on each page just to make sure 10 really is 10... To incorporate this into Number Talks, we add tools such as the Rekenrek or Magnetic Ten Frames to represent the number we see. And we are getting pretty good by now because we see numbers in different ways which lends to a richer Number Talk. This week I heard a lot of talk about one more because sometimes it was hard to find that last one on the page which gave us a great opportunity to talk about counting and recounting.

After our Number Talking routine, I was able to use the book to discuss counting and recounting with the class by using the same book as a starting point. After looking at my monitoring notes I knew that there were still children that do not use an organized method for counting objects. This gave me an opportunity to connect some of the things that I heard in Number Talks and help me plan for instruction for small groups of students or the class as a whole. So, in a sense, our Number Talking routine serves as an assessment of what the children know because the focus is communicating mathematically during Number Talks and you have the opportunity to hear and record the thinking of the children. And the benefit of this routine also gives the other children the opportunity to hear and see the thinking or applied strategies of other children.

As we strut into the last week before Thanksgiving we will be reading and incorporating 10 Fat Turkeys into our Number Talks because you have to have a little fun, right?

And it just would not be complete if we didn't countdown to Thanksgiving too! Oh my word do we ever love a countdown! Seriously, don't ask twice because we "got" this countdown thing! I swear we could countdown from like a million to any important event. WAIT, let me go make an assessment checklist for that...got ya!



The Thanksgiving Story!

 

Happy Thanksgiving Kinder Friends,

We have finally reached our Thanksgiving break and we are all excited for fun, food, family and friends! As we approached the final hours of school before our break we had to squeeze in just a bit more of some Thanksgiving fun! This year we have worked hard on story retelling. And I always wanted to try the Thanksgiving Story Retelling Bracelets that I have seen for several years. So I thought we would start with a story retelling chart.

 

 

And since we had the chart posted and laminated this week I thought we might be able to use it to discuss a little capitalization, review the difference between a letter and a word and review and practice some sentence segmentation. All in all, the story retelling chart was worth the time spent making it and provided a lot of opportunities for not only story retelling but some much needed review.

 

 

Like I said, I have never made the bracelets before but I know this will be a tradition for me from now on. The bracelets we super easy for the children to put together and the room was silent as I read each part as each bead was placed on the pipe cleaner. This was the perfect ending to all of the Thanksgiving activities we have worked on. And the bracelets were the perfect visual to help the children retell all of the key events.

 

 

And if you want to see what we made for a Thanksgiving Snack just click on the picture above!