Thursday, December 29, 2011

Happy New Year!

We've been out of school since December 20th and I have been itching to get back into my classroom because I have had a running list in my head of all the things I want to have done before next week.  Luckily the teachers go back a day before the students.  Well, yesterday I spent a few hours in my nice, quiet, and clean (it won't stay that way for long) classroom and thought I would share with you all the plans I have for the three days that the students will be at school next week.
We will be learning about New Year's traditions and doing activities from Kim Adsit and Brooke Perry's New Year's units.  I emailed the parents from our class and shared with them what we will be doing when we return to school and asked them to talk with their children about their family new year's tradition.  I also asked them to email me back and let me know about what time their child went to bed on New Year's Eve because we will be graphing that information.  I wanted to make sure the students would have some help in this department because some of them might not remember.
The students will return on Wednesday.  We will start the day by talking about our class rules and reminding each other of the discipline dozen.  After we do our calendar activities, we will discuss that we have started a new year.  I will read the book The Night Before New Year's by Natasha Wing.

In the book, the author talks about sharing fond memories of the year past.  We will be doing the same about our school year so far.  We will use the tree map in Kim's "Hooray for New Year's Day" unit. We will list the student's favorite events from each month of the school year from August to December.  After we finish that, we will do the 2 math pages from the same unit all about the number 12.

On Thursday, I will read the book New Year's Day by David F. Marx. 

We will be using Brooke's unit and will graph the times the student's went to bed on New Year's Eve, make party hats according to a glyph, and work together to write words we know that begin with each letter of Happy New Year.

On Friday, I will ask the students what they think a resolution is.  We will do a shared writing activity and write about some of the answers.  After reading the book, Squirrel's New Year's  Resolution by Pat Miller.  I will ask the class about the meaning of the word resolution again. 
Once we have established the real meaning, I will help the students decide on their own resolution. The students will write their resolution or goal unto a speech bubble.  We will make a face to go with the party hats we made on Thursday and put the two together and add a party noise maker blower kind of thingy. We will add their speech bubbles that have their new goal on it and make a hall way display.  
I hope everyone has been enjoying their break!  I can't believe the first semester of the school year is over!  



4 comments:

  1. Lots of great information, where can I find Brooke's things (graphing and glyph?) I clicked on the link to her name but was unable to find the resources.

    ReplyDelete
  2. LaTasha, go to her blog and look on the right hand side for her archives. Click on 2010. The unit is on one of her last entries of 2010. Just keep scrolling. Hopefully you can find it. Let me know if you can't. Thanks for leaving a comment!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I love this idea, Thanks! Brooke Perry's blog doesn't seem to exist anymore...at least I can't find it using google's help. If anyone finds it please let me know!

    ReplyDelete