Red Ribbon Week

Recently I received a free copy of the book, Charlie and the Curious Club, by Erainna Winnett.  The book addresses an important issue DRUGS.  Now I know most of you are thinking my kindergarteners or first graders don’t need to worry about this, however that is not what the book is about.  It is about mistaking drugs for candy.  This could happen to anyone.

Now that is a situation that all children may find themselves in.  I read this book to my little first graders and they were very interested in the story.  I could see in their faces they were making connections.  After the story we had a wonderful discussion.  I was surprised with how many of my students said they saw medicine at their grandparents or babysitter’s house. 

We also discussed taking things that do not belong to us.  That was a really good discussion.  We also talked about only eating things that our grown ups say is ok.  We have several students with food allergies so it is really important that we always check with a grown up before we eat something. 

I even tied this book in with our Religion lesson.  We are learning about how much God loves us.  So we talked about how important it is to take care of ourselves. 

 

free copy

I had the children draw a picture and then we used our thumbs to make hearts.  However your students may be older or you make be looking for other ideas, you can look at the website:  CelebratingRedRibbonWeek.com.  There are other resources and lessons you might be interested in. 

I mounted the pictures on card stock and I plan on hanging them around the school to remind the other students in the building to make good choices.  

A First Grade Time Line

source

A couple of years ago I pinned this amazing time line of the school year.  I just loved the idea of hanging up the events that happened throughout our school year as a reference.  It is the perfect way to teach about time lines.  

I created my own squares and printed out the months.  As the year went on I hung up pictures of our events.  However I noticed that the children really did not look at the pictures.  They were just taking up wall space.  AND why would they look up high at some of the months.  We all know that  children like to touch and look so I decided for this year to change this same idea a bit.

As I was de-cluttering my basement I found a scrapbook that I have nothing in,  PERFECT IDEA!

My original squares fit perfectly into the scrapbook.  I think the kids will like this better.  They will be able to take the book to their desks or a cozy corner and look and touch all they want.  The first page will be a class picture of the first day of school.  

Then at the end of the year when we learn about timelines in Social Studies I will just take the pages out of the book and line them up.  Wow!  This will be a great lesson.  I can not wait to get started.  

Happy Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year Idea

I had lots of plans for the Chinese New Year however; we have had so many days off of school because of cold weather I have had to pick and choose what was important.  So I really did not get to everything I wanted to do. 

I read several good books about the Chinese New Year but these were our favorites:

Lion Dancer 

Zen Shorts

The Chinese New Year

 

Tikki Tikki Tembo

Then we made Chinese Lanterns to hang up in our classroom.  

  We tried to write Chinese numbers on our lanterns.  We had a speaker from the local Chinese restaurant to explain paper cutting to us.  She gave each child a fortune cookie.  They loved that. 

MLK Week

Martin Luther King Jr.

My first graders spent the week learning about MLK.   There is so much to learn and so many ways you can tie Dr. King's message into your daily lessons.  For me the perfect place I find to relate Dr. King's message is religion.  Even though Dr. King was not Catholic, he still believe and lived in life in a positive way spreading the message of Jesus.  

We read my favorite two books about MLK for first graders:  Happy Birthday, Martin Luther King Jr. and Martin's Big Words.

We wrote down all the BIG WORDS MLK used and tried to used them in our writing too.

We also read:  Every Child Deserves a Better World (I think this book is out of print.)  I told the boys and girls how when I first saw this book I thought it might be silly because Kermit the Frog and the muppets where on the cover.  I judged the book before I read it.  That was just like what Dr. King was preaching to people not to do.  Don't judge on what you see on the outside.....look to the inside.  Then when I read the book I understood what the author's message was and now I love the book.  

And then we wrote Our Dreams for a Better World.

Baby It's Cold on Our Earth

No School Monday and Tuesday

 

Can you believe this weather?  -14 in the actual temperature and then if you add in the wind it is – 35, This is crazy!   There is no school because it is too cold to go outside.   The only thing I can do is enjoy the peace and quiet and get some house cleaning done.   

Our Earth

In Social Studies this week we be reviewing that a continent is a very large area of land.  We will discuss that there are seven continents.  To help with that discussion I have found these cute boxes from Target.

I found some images of the continents on the Silhouhette.com site and made covers for each box.

Then I found things from my travels to go into the boxes:  stamps, money, postcards and little things from the continents.  I did find a couple little things at World Market as well.  I filled up by boxes and I will share them with the children as we review each continent.

I also found some amazing books to read and for the children to look through on their own.

There is a book in this series for each continent.

This is such a cute about about two friends searching for each other around the word.

Great Non-fiction book with lots of facts.

There are several books in this series about different parts of the world.

I hung up this world map above this area so we can point out places as we read.  

Season Poem Book

Changes in the Year

Years ago I found a poem by Jill Eggleton about the seasons in a book, unfortunately I did not save the name of the book.  Anyways I thought of this project a couple weeks ago when our first grade social studies unit was about the weather and seasons.    We watched videos on the seasons on Brain Pop Jr.  and then brainstormed what kinds of clothes we would wear and activities we would participate in during that season.  

Brain Pop Jr. 

 Then the children completed the pages for the parts of the poem.

First the children made the cover and we watched the season video.

This is just for first introduction page.  

 On the summer page the children painted the leaves and drew flowers.

I love this Fall page.  The little girl drew herself trick-or-treating on Halloween night.  We used sticky tape for the leaves.

 On the winter page the children made a picture of themselves in their winter gear and made a snowman out of sticky tape.  Then they painted white snowflakes with q-tips.

 This is the Spring page.  We used green tissue paper for the buds and pink tissue paper for flowers.  We used the blue paint with q-tips for rain.  

This is my favorite spring page.  The little boy who made this loves baseball.  There are so many great baseball details here.  I love the super big score board and the speech bubble that says, Rain Delay!

If you would like a free copy of the poem Click Here