There are always kids in preschool and kindergarten who need a little extra practice using scissors. So here’s a perfect activity… making an adorable paper hedgehog! Click here to see the tutorial.
I saw this cute “Thankful Pumpkin” paper craft idea (source) and wanted to make some printables to go with it. I love the idea of helping kids remember what they’re thankful for. Activities like this are perfect opportunities to talk with kids about how blessed we really are!
Materials:
2 Sheets of Cardstock (to print these printables on: Thankful Pumpkin Printable)
Small Hole Punch
2 Brads
Green Construction Paper
Brown Pipe Cleaner
Directions
1. After you print the two printable pages, cut them into strips (cut on the lines).
2. Finish writing the “I am thankful for” phrases on 5 strips of cardstock.
3. Decorate the “Happy Thanksgiving” on the other 5 strips. Get Creative!
4. Make a small hole in the center of both ends of each strip. (Use small hole puncher or another tool to make the small holes.)
5. Stack the paper strips alternating the “I am thankful” and “Happy Thanksgiving”.
6. Stick the prongs of a brad through the holes on one end of the stack with the metal circle of the brad resting on the side with the writing. Secure Brad.
7. Fan out the slips with the writing side facing the table.
8. Pull up one strip and feed the prongs of the 2nd brad through the hole with the metal circle resting on the blank side of the strips. Continue putting strips on brad going in a circular pattern.
9. When all of the strips are on the brad and you have formed a ball, secure the brad by pushing the prongs down in opposite directions.
10. Cut 2 leaf shapes from the green construction paper. Poke a small hole at bottom of each leaf.
11. Wrap the brown pipe cleaner around a pencil to make a spiral shape. Gently slide the pipe cleaner off to keep spiral shape.
12. Lift up the prongs of brad, hold brad in place from below, and slide on leaves.
13. Place brown pipe cleaner next to prongs, push prongs down on top of pipe cleaner to securely attach the leaves and “stem”.
Here’s what it looked like when my friend tried it with her class:
Click here for more fun and free Thanksgiving stuff for kids!
Thanksgiving’s the time to be grateful… for cool stuff like bar graphs! So here’s my free graphing worksheet for your Thanksgiving pleasure! Click here for the PDF: Turkey Graphing
Click here for more free Thanksgiving stuff for kids!
Kids often need reminders to use evidence and support from the text when explaining or writing about a piece of text. Here’s a free printable poster for your classroom (near your guided reading table?) to remind kids to use textual evidence! Click here for the PDF: Show the Evidence Poster
“Sit Down!” is another all purpose game. Kids stand in a big circle. One student is “it” in the middle with a pointer (or just his finger). “It” gets to decide what number we start counting on to count by 10s. He might pick 7. So “It” starts pointing at one child at a time as the whole class counts by tens starting at 7. So we count 7, 17 27, 37, 47, 57, 67, 77, 87, 97 and if you are the student pointed to when it is over 100, you “SIT DOWN”. The whole class says “SIT DOWN” and then the game continues, starting with 7, 17 and so on until you again reach 100 and SIT DOWN. When a student sits down, they just sit in their place in the circle and they continue to help the class count. You do this until the whole class is sitting with just one per son standing. Then the last one down is “It” and you start again. “It” picks a new number to start with and you keep going. This game could be down with numerous concepts (like saying the alphabet, state names, etc.), or skip counting by any number (not just 10). Kids especially like it if teacher plays and has to sit down too.
I recently saw this idea on Mrs. T’s First Grade Class and thought it was awesome! It’s got so many applications in math, I can hardly stand it! Id’s be great for simple addition/subtraction (draw a number line from 0 up). I wish I had known about this idea when I was teaching kids about negative numbers (write 0 in the middle along with positive and negative numbers)!
Hooray for free things! Today’s freebie is a free graphing Thanksgiving worksheet for kindergarten or first grade. Use the pictures as data to help you complete the graph. Enjoy! Click here for the free worksheet (PDF): I Can Graph the Pictures- Thanksgiving 2
Click here for more fun and free Thanksgiving stuff for kids!
This is the final part (part 4) in a series about Dyslexia. The author, Robin, is a mother of 4 boys, 2 of whom have dyslexia. She has been taking her sons to private tutoring and researching as much as she can about dyslexia for the past 7 years.
Famous people who are dyslexic (and these are only the ones whose names I recognized):
Whoopi Goldberg Henry Winkler*
Tom Cruise Jay Leno
Danny Glover Orlando Bloom
Alexander Graham Bell Albert Einstein
Thomas Edison Cher
John Lennon Bruce Jenner
Muhammad Ali Magic Johnson
George Washington Woodrow Wilson
Andrew Jackson Nelson Rockefeller
Hans Christina Anderson Agatha Christie
Henry Ford Charles Schwab
Steven Spielberg Walt Disney
*Henry Winkler, also known as the Fonz from the TV series Happy Days, is dyslexic. He never new until he was an adult and his own son struggled with it and was diagnosed. He had a very strict military father and went to military school and really struggled. He had a talent for acting so that’s how he became a success. Anyway, he got together a few years ago with an author and they wrote a series of books about a kid in elementary school with dyslexia (based on Winkler’s life). They are called the Han Zipzer series. Many teachers haven’t heard of them, but they’re an excellent read. They are funny but bring to light some of the struggles that kids with dyslexia have as well as some of the stereotypes of being lazy or just a bad kid.
I’ve combined all these posts together into a 9 page PDF document so you can print it out easily. Here it is: Dyslexia book.
DISCLAIMER: The medical information in this article is merely information – not advice. If you need medical advice, you should consult a doctor or other appropriate medical professional.
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