Creative Gingerbread

Last week we wrapped up our week long unit on The Gingerbread Man. Each day we talked about the different elements of the version of the story read and recorded them on our big Gingerbread House. After working on this as a class a few times, I gave the kids this recording sheet and it was their job to record each part of the story we had been talking about. They did a great job!

On Friday we finished off the week making our own creative Gingerbread Man (or Girl!).  First students had to design their own creative version of the gingerbread man, then we used a tree map to construct 3 sentences about our creations:

I am impressed with how easily this group has picked up on the concept of the tree map and how to use it to create sentences. This is not something we have had much practice with this year and everyone did a wonderful job with it!

Elf Antics: Day 5

Sorry I didn't get around to posting this last night!

Yesterday when we came in the room we found Dash having a grand old time in the treasure box. 

It was funny to see the kids' reactions! Some of them felt that it was cute and we should let him take a prize. Others, however, felt that he was being very naughty and trying to steal from us. haha

You never know what Dash will be up to next!

Elf Antics: Day 4

Everyone got quite a laugh when they saw Dash this morning!

What a mess! In his letter to us, he explained that he couldn't resist playing with the band-aids because he had never seen band- aids made for giants. Apparently in the North Pole they only have elf sized band-aids! Who knew? haha

Later at recess one of the kids spotted a lone band-aid stuck to the sidewalk and wondered aloud if maybe Dash had left it there. I'm not sure about that one, but I definitely wouldn't be picking band-aids up off the sidewalk either way haha.

Elf Antics: Day 3

This morning when we came in we didn't see Dash at first. Upon a closer inspection of the room we found him camped out by our book boxes on a little table. It appears he had some fun coloring Christmas pictures last night and left a bit of a mess with the crayons!

We talked about what he was doing and everyone agreed that he must have borrowed the crayons from me, but the pictures must have come from the North Pole. One of the students wondered aloud if he could bring us some fun coloring pictures like these ... guess we'll have to wait and see!

Elf Antics: Day 2

Goodness we have a naughty little elf! Look where we found Dash this morning:

He blocked off our classroom library with caution tape! Where did he even find that?!? If you look closely you can see that he is reading The Night Before Christmas. Good choice for a little elf! I just love watching the kids come in each morning with so much excitement! They are literally breaking down the door to get in and find Dash to see what he is doing. Such sweet innocence. I love my little firsties!

In our note from Dash today, he told us that last night he ran into Nutcracker, Ms. Stookey's elf, last night! Some of our friends knew about Nutcracker, but some of them were very excited to hear there was another elf in first grade. Of course we got right to work recording what we found Dash doing today. As you can see some of our friends decided to write about him playing with Nutcracker last night.

I can't wait to see what Dash will be doing tomorrow!

Elf Antics: Day 1

Boy were we in for a surprise this morning when we got to the classroom! Look where we found our crazy elf Dash!

 The kids were quite literally shrieking with excitement! As each new student walked into the room the ones already there were shouting out to show them where to look. I love seeing that excitement in their little faces!  Dash left us a note on the computer (which I totally forgot to take a picture of, sorry!) explaining that he was excited to be here, reminding everyone he cannot talk to them or move but is happy to listen all day, and that he hoped I didn't mind but he took the liberty of moving all the clips up to green to start the day. Hey, who can argue with one of Santa's magical elves?!?

We got to work right away on our morning work journal. One of the kids suggested that Dash was on a zip line (good schema!) so we included that in our description of what we saw:

The rest of our morning was spent diving in to our week long gingerbread unit. Today we read the original version of The Gingerbread Man. After reading we added cards to our gingerbread house to describe the different elements of the story. Each day this week we will be reading a different version of the story and adding to this chart.

To finish the morning off the kids used pictures of the story to sequence and write sentences. We sure are getting good at using our sequencing words to write sentences!

Check back tomorrow to see what trouble our crazy elf gets himself into!

A Package from Santa!

Today was a VERY exciting day in first grade! This morning, while we were completing our morning work, Ms. Coburn stopped by our room with a large package wrapped in paper! She said she was up at the office checking her box and saw it had been delivered to us so she brought it back.

We gathered around on the carpet and read the tag.

Can you believe it?!? We got a package from SANTA! There were cheers of excitement all around! :)

Upon opening the package, we found a letter from Santa himself on his official Santa letterhead.

The letter told us that we were going to have one of his special elves joining us starting tomorrow. It told us our elf's name is Dash, and he got his name because he is in charge of taking care of the reindeer Dasher at the North Pole. Also in the package was a book for us to read explaining a little more about the elf.

In his letter Santa told us that our elf, Dash, wanted to send each student a gift before he arrived. Inside the box we found a package of Elf Kisses for each student!

Also in the box was a stack of Elf Journals, one for each student. This will be our morning work each day and help us record everything our elf does from now until winter break. We got right to work designing our cover and filling out the first page about our elf.

Everyone is VERY excited to see our elf in our room tomorrow. He will be here watching over us each day, and at night will fly back to the North Pole to report to Santa. Santa told us that each day we will have to look for him, as he will be hiding somewhere new in our classroom. Elves are known to be a little mischievous, so check back soon to see some of our elf's crazy classroom antics!