Veteran's Day

Friday in our classroom we celebrated Veteran's Day.  This is a super important holiday for my classroom because one of my student's dad is on his way home from Afghanistan and another student's dad is a veteran.  Of course everyone else has grandparents etc. that are important to celebrate too.  But, since it is so close to home for some of the kids, I really wanted to make it special for them.

I asked parents to send their child in with a name and/or picture of a veteran they would like to honor.  We made Veteran's Day stars with the names/pictures of these men and women and hung them up on the wall.  The students also got to stand up and tell us a little bit about their special person.  It was really neat to hear all about them.  I even had one boy bring in a picture of his great grandmother.  She was in WWII.  I'm guessing she was probably a nurse.  The picture of her was so pretty.  I just love how women always had their hair all done up pretty back then.

Anyway, I had seen somewhere in the past, a bulletin board that had a turkey with the kids' handprints as feathers that said, "We are Thankful for our Veterans."  I thought this would be perfect for our classroom, so I did the turkey and then hung our Veteran's Day stars up.  I'm excited to keep it up for a week until Thanksgiving!

Speaking of Thanksgiving, I am going to take on the task of a Thanksgiving Day Reader's Theater!  I just love Reader's Theater!! I've never done it with students as young as mine, though, so we shall see how it goes! 

Election Day in First Grade!!

I have been bad about posting all the neat things that have been going on first grade!  Tuesday was Election Day and I knew I wanted to teach about the election process, but I also knew I didn't want to get too political.  For one, I am not a political person and for two, I had overheard the children arguing previously about Mitt Romney and Barack Obama (yes, they are only 6 and 7!).  I came across the book, "Duck For President."  I liked how the book talked about the process (ex. ballots, campaign, recount, etc) while still remaining fun and age appropriate.  After scouring the internet, I stumbled upon a great unit put together by Angela Rubin on TPT.  She had cute election activities to go along with "Duck for President" as well as literacy ideas.  The link to her packet is here: Duck For President.

We also used Time For Kids to read some non-fiction election facts.  Teaching and learning about the election was fun, but I am glad my students aren't old enough to vote!!  We all agreed in class discussion that Farmer Brown would be a better president because he was hard working and took care of his farm.  Once we voted on Duck or Farmer Brown being president, though, Duck won by a landslide just because "he is cool!"  Hahaha... Oh, well!  See pictures below of election fun in First Grade!! :-)

Campaign Poster for Duck

Campaign Poster for Farmer Brown

Voting Booths set up

Happy Teaching!!  On to Veteran's Day activities tomorrow!! :-)