A Weekend Break

   My teammates and I had a crazy week last week. We have a couple of challenging students this year and the moon must have been aligned a certain way because boy were they off. And not in a good way. Needless to say I needed a break...a mental break. So I spent the weekend doing absolutely nothing school related, Booksource related, or even TPT related...well until about 5 minutes ago. I spent the weekend taking a break from it all to cleanse my mind. I got to visit with my nephew who was visiting from Florida Friday night...

He may not look too thrilled here, but he was a happy camper.

   And then my kiddos got to spend the weekend with my mom, AKA Nana, so the hubby and I got to go to dinner and a movie...ALONE. It was so strange go to an 8:45 pm movie. And then today my kiddos and I joined Nana and my brother for lunch. It was a perfect weekend of no stress. I promised myself on Friday that I would not do one ounce on work, but I had to share my First Thanksgiving Reader's Theatre. My writing kiddos will be learning about the struggles and successes of the Pilgrims and Native Americans the next two weeks. We will be using Scholastic's First Thanksgiving resources and my Reader's Theatre. You can use the FREE Scholastic resource below and get my Reader's Theatre by clicking on the image.

 



Where Are All of the Turkeys?

   So I feel like the time change could not come at a better time. I feel totally recouped from the Halloween craziness. I spent Friday afternoon putting all of my Thanksgiving themed math and literacy centers out and updating the writing tools and resources in my writing center for the kiddos to use. I wanted some more Thanksgiving themed stickers and headed out to the stores yesterday. Can you believe that all of their "fall" items were already on clearance and I couldn't find anything turkey?!?! Did I sleep for more than that extra hour last night and Thanksgiving already passed us by? I love Christmas, but come on...I want to celebrate Thanksgiving too! After five stores I finally found my stickers for my kiddos sticker stories.
   Here are the resources my kiddos will be using the next couple of weeks before fall break and our pumpkin life cycle writing unit from a couple weeks ago. Click on the images to get a copy for yourself.

   This upcoming week we will begin our Persuasive Letter writing unit. Our kiddos are having a Thanksgiving feast the Friday before fall break so we are writing letters to our awesome superintendent  about why he should come to our feast. We will be using three stories this week to help guide us in our persuasive writing.

   Sophie Peterman Tells the Truth is one of the funniest stories I have ever read so I am excited for my kiddos to hear it. This was one of the books I have worked on for Booksource. Another reason why I am so excited to be creating teacher resources for them as I get exposed to books I can use in my classroom! We will be using an anchor chart from KinderGals to help brainstorm our thoughts as cooperative groups to create two groups letters as practice before we will work on our own persuasive letter. You can click on the anchor chart image below to be taken to KinderGals to download the anchor chart for FREE.

   In math we will be using ads from local businesses and restaurant menus to add together items we want to purchase if we began with $5.00. We will be doing ALOT of whole group purchasing before our kiddos begin purchasing on their own. Pictures to come later this week! I am also so excited to see our benchmark and advanced kiddos from our Walk to Read room present their readers theatre during our literacy intervention block. I think it is going to be so motivating for my intensive kiddos to see and hear their peers reading so fluently and with accuracy.
  Have a great week and keep an eye out for those turkeys!