REINDEER REMINDER

Keep on expecting Good Behavior even during this exciting season.  You need brown Kraft paper, red, white, and black construction paper, scissors, glue, black marker, a plant pot, dirt, a tree branch, and tape.  Place the plant pot in an area of the room where your reindeer mascot can observe the class.  Enlarge the reindeer patterns, trace them on brown Kraft paper, and cut them out.  Trace and cut out two eyes from white paper and add black eyeballs with the marker.  Next, trace and cut out a nose from red construction paper and reindeer hooves from black paper.  Glue the eyes and nose to the reindeer head, tape the reindeer body to the front of the pot, and attach the reindeer head above it.  Cut out two long strips of Kraft paper for the legs, accordion-fold the strips and glue a hoof to the bottom of each strip.  Attach the reindeer legs to the body, allowing them to dangle.  Use one large tree branch or two smaller ones to serve as the reindeer antlers and push the branches into the pot that has been filled with dirt.  Hang candy canes from the antlers and encourage children to name their new mascot.  Your reindeer is now ready to share its candy canes with all the "good little girls and boys" in your classroom.Some adadptations I made to the above directions:  movable eyes, a pom-pom nose, and planted the branch in cement to have less of a mess.

LESSON ON CINQUAINS

http://okscribbler.blogspot.com/2009/11/seasonal-cinquain-and-fingerprint-art.html
 http://okscribbler.blogspot.com/2009/02/cinquains-for-primary-students.html 
http://okscribbler.blogspot.com/2009/11/easy-turkey-cinquains.html

Cinquains are one of the easiest poetry forms to teach.  This project can be put in Journal/Memory Books and on your class website.    

POETIC LICENSE

Once you start working on poetry in your classroom, make up a license for the students to present when reading or writing poetry.  Cute idea.

KEEP A POEM IN YOUR POCKET

This is one of my favorite poems.  I hope you enjoy it and can find some activity to use with it.

WRITING FOLDER

See Personal Narrative Focus:
http://okscribbler.blogspot.com/2010/11/personal-narrative-focus.html

Pages that were put in one folder for students to access while doing a writing assignment.

WILD WORDS VOCABULARY

 Teachers are always trying to get some vocabulary work into their week, but time is so tight that trying to get an entire vocabulary program fit into the curriculum is tough. One option is to have fun with vocabulary while doing it once a week.  Print off enough copies of the worksheet to put in the student's booklet.  I copied front and back to save paper.  Make the booklet and present the concept to your students.  I had them look in the dictionary for words they didn't know.  As a class we chose one we were all interested in.  We did it together to show the class what was expected.  Now depending on the ability of your students, you could continue doing words together for awhile or assign it Monday Morning and then collect Friday Morning.  I allowed this to go home if some students seemed to have trouble during the week.  I tried to set a time frame for

the assignment to help the students: Monday- choose word and begin; Tuesday-make sure the word, part of speech, and definition was written in the booklet;  Wednesday- begin detailed drawing to show what the word means; Thursday- complete the work, ready to hand in Friday Morning.  Of course, the booklet could be handed in whenever the job was completed.  If I questioned the word spelling, part of speech, definition or wasn't able to understand the drawing, the students would have to explain it to me.  If they were correct, they received a treat, if I was correct, they had to change the work in their booklet to make it right.  To add to the fun, if a student used one of their words in their booklet, I let them choose a treat from the treasure box.  Try this - it's fun and the words chosen will surprise you...You might just learn something!

A MOTHER'S WORK IS NEVER DONE - POEM

This makes a great addition to a Mother's Day Program that you have in your classroom.  Divide the poem and assign each student two lines to learn and to bring in items to show what it means.  "Wipe the nosed, wash the faces" could have kleenix and wipes.  As the students recite their lines they would who their items they brought.  Try to make it cute.  If you have more than 14 student - who doesn't - then one could state the title, one could be a program announcer, some could serve the moms your prepared treats...Be creative.

www.techingheart.net/mompage.htm

This year I decided to make a classroom cookbook for my helpful and supportive moms. I began by asking each child to tell me something their mom makes that is one of their favorites. Some kids are great observers and will give me great detail of how their mom prepares their favorite meals. But most of the time, I had to practically drag the answers out of them by asking them questions like, "Where does she get ____? What does she do first? What does she do next? Describe how it tastes?"

Some additional sites for ideas:
http://www.allfreeprintables.com/mother/index.shtml

http://www.perpetualpreschool.com/mother_songs.html

http://www.thevirtualvine.com/MothersDay.html

I AM A __________ PERSON WHO...

Great project for Catholic School's Week - January.  Students can copy off of a form or you can make the document editable on the computer (see below) and students can type their responses.  You might add some art work to go with this writing or have it framed in black construction paper.  It looks very striking in the hallway.  These can be posted on your website, made into a class book, and finally put in the Journal/Memory Books.  (Of course the title could be I am a child who or I am a student who...)

  

I AM A CATHOLIC PERSON WHO…

likes ___     

hates  ___    

can  ___    

cannot ___     

would never  ___    

would rather  ___    

loves to   ___   

wants to learn  ___    

used to be afraid of   ___   

would be better off if   ___   

is really good at   ___   

gets really angry when   ___   

bugs other people when   ___   

has the good habit of   ___   

has the bad habit of  ___     

wishes I could change the way I  ___    

wishes I could change the way people ___     

will someday ___     

by: ___  

http://tltgroup.wordpress.com/low-threshold-applications/25-creating-editable-forms-in-microsoft-word/
Teachers often need to provide documents for students to respond to a structured set of questions.  This technology provides a way to create a document for your students where it may be important to maintain some consistent format, or where there is a need for a structured response.  In a typical assignment, an instructor may distribute in paper or electronic format, a list of required questions to answer, but when 30 students freely compose their responses, you end up with 30 different kinds of documents to read.

Some advantages of this type of technology

• No special software beyond Word required
• The information returned is consistently formatted
• The amount of text returned can be limited
• The document can have portions locked from changes by the student
• Students can save the document to their hard drive and go back at any time to finish theirr work. (PDF forms read in Acrobat Reader do not save content)
• Students can save a copy of their document and/or e-mail it to an instructor
• 
  

Steps

1. Create an approximate layout of the document, leaving room for the answer spaces. You can use formatting borders (Format -> Borders and Shading…) to put boxes around these areas.
2. Display the Forms Toolbar (View -> Toolbars -> Forms)
   
3. Move the mouse to the location where an answerbox should be. Click the ab| icon on the Forms Tool palette to add a text form field (a place for someone to type text).
4. When you have added all of the desired form fields, lock the document by going to Tools -gt; Protect Document… In the dialog box, click the radio button for Forms.
   Then enter a password and click OK. You will have to re-enter the password as a confirmation:
   
5. Save the document. Keep the original in a safe place (in case you need to make changes) and make a copy of the document to try as a user might see it. Students can tab from field to field, print, email, and save the modified version of the document.

Then when students are done filling in the blanks, save to their name.

Teacher can then go unprotect and print OR

Print off the student copy without saving and let them use it as a sloppy copy to write a final draft.

This is a FORMATTED EDITABLE FORM for student use.  

I LOVE POETRY

This is a simple way to make sure your students are exposed to poetry even though you have a full curriculum and very busy days.   Gather some poetry books and them put on a shelf or in a crate.  I actually put the books in a picnic basket and then stored them that way when we were not using them.  Make sure you have all of the Shel Silverstein books.  Children love that poet.  Copy at least a weeks worth of the worksheet and put out near the poetry books or where you put papers for your students to access. Do one with the students to show what you expect of them.  I would always demonstrate with one of my favorite childhood poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: 'The Swing'.  Below is a sample with out the student drawing.  Expectations for students:  neat handwriting, detailed drawing, and neat coloring .  This could be worked into a great center area if you wished.  I assigned one a day during the month of April - National Poetry Month.  This gave my Third Graders extra penmanship practice with cursive handwriting.  You might end up with 20 completed for each child at the end of the month.  This makes a nice booklet to send home or even a nice Mother's Day Gift.

SPECIFIC FORMATING

 Often you can take a worksheet and make it specifically for your class.  See the additions to the writing paper.