This is the our classroom door that my student teacher made this year.

My December bulletin board, we used "The Grinch" to teach both reading and English skills.  We ended the unit with a writing assignment "I Would make the Grinch grin by..." Didn't they turn out cute?

W

We read "Legend of the Poinsettia" by Tomie DePaola and finished our unit by painting these beautiful poinsettias.  I cut a petal shapes from sponges bought at the Dollar Tree.  Attached a clothes pin to the top and had my students stamp the petals in either red or pink and even mix the two.  The white spots left showing made them even better.  We finished them by tracing the flower with glue (3 dots in the center too!) and then added the gold glitter.  I think the glitter really makes them pop!  Didn't they do a great job on these?

These cute little elves are actually glyphs.  I made a pattern for the head, body, shoes, mittens, hat and the collar.  My class actually traced them and cut out the color according to their likes and dislikes.  I'm really into glyphs this year!

Columbus Day Activities

Did you ever have an idea for a lesson at the last minute that turned into a treasure?  Well, that's what happened to us the week of Columbus Day.  We read some nonfiction books about Christopher Columbus, made the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria...probably just like every other third grade class.  Nothing too noteworthy, pretty standard until....  we decided that my class needed to do a little creative writing assignment.  We read the book You Wouldn't Want to Sail with Christopher Columbus!  We discussed as we read what it would be like to discover a new land.  Then I gave them the topic of writing a letter to a loved one telling them that they had been shipwrecked.  What would we need to tell our mothers, dads, grandmas?  We talked about what were the things that we really need to survive, using the T.V. show "Survivor" as an example.  They came up with food, clothing, shelter, water, and fire!!  Awesome!  Then we talked about how we could signal our rescuers.  The results were awesome!!

American Symbols

My third grade class is finishing our unit on American Symbols.  We have read several non fiction books about the flag, the Liberty Bell, the Statue of Liberty, the bald eagle, other American symbols.  Here are a couple of books that we have used.  

The Bald Eagle is a wonderful book seems to be written on around a third grade level. The story is told by a man who is the bird keeper, he tells many facts throughout the book, including the debate about whether to have the wild turkey or the bald eagle as the national bird.  

The Story of the Statue of Liberty has wonderful illustrations that show the different stages of the statue being built.  It give a lot of information about the building, raising money, and delivering the statue.  The story moves quickly and kept my students engaged while listening.  We then filled out a graphic organizer with six different facts about the statue and finished with a short report on The Statue of Liberty.

I found a link on youtube that had an art teacher that taught kindergartners how to draw the Statue of Liberty.  I love to draw and incorporate art if I can, so I taught my students how to draw the statue.  Don't they look adorable???

We also studied about the flag, Betsy Ross, etc. So we colored some flags too.  I can't wait until our bald eagle reports are done, so that we can put all of this up on the bulletin board!  Although, to be honest, I may be a little sad to take down those cute pirates.  My class go so into drawing the Statue of Liberty that they keep drawing me pictures of her.  

They even have started drawing pictures of my student teacher and me!!  I see more art in our classroom in the future.  

We traced one of our shoes on a piece of brown construction paper.  Then we traced both hands, cut them out and curled them around a pencil.  We glued the wings on the sides of the shoe print we traced.  Then I found a clipart of an eagles head, we colored the beak and eye, cut it out, and finally glued it to the heel side of the shoe print.  We cut orange feet, no pattern just what they thought they looked like.  This is what they turned out like, what do you think???  

After the holiday we will finish our unit and I will post the bulletin board picture.  Until then have a great holiday!  

Story Mapping!

We are getting ready to learn about story mapping, so I sat down and created some simple, no themed maps to be used with my third graders all year long.  Click on the picture if you want to download a copy of your own.