Thanksgiving and more fun stuff from the classroom!

Sorry it has been so long! Between work and taking classes for my literacy masters, getting the stomach virus on Thanksgiving with both of my twin girls, it has been a little crazy.
I was able to take some pictures though!  Here are some pictures of what we did during the month of November!

Turkeys in disguise!

They wrote about what their turkey was dressed up as.

We learned all about Native Americans, Pilgrims, and the Mayflower.

 A Native American Mind Map

Bats and Owls

All about Bats

Main Idea Anchor Charts

Amazing Adjectives

Our MANY class books that we wrote

How to cook a turkey! Funny stories!

More Anchor Charts

My Skill Board

Can't wait for December! I love to do Polar Express, Holidays around the World, Gingerbread Man, and so much more!

Happy Teaching!

Alyson Hennessy

Frankenstorm!!!!!

Well, to say that this past week was crazy is an understatement!
My school was closed for a week! We had no power at my house for 3 1/2 days! But, I am very thankful that my family is okay-there are many people out there who lost everything, some even losing their lives.  My heart goes out to everyone affected by the hurricane.
My girls did get to dress up for Halloween and we went Trick or Treating for a few houses in our neighborhood.

Once we came back, the hurricane was all my class could talk about-so, a teachable moment occurred! For writing, my lessons included teaching about statements.  The Treasures theme for this week is PETS/MASCOTAS and they were supposed to write statements about pets or animals that they had or wanted to have.  I decided to have the same objective, but go with a different theme. The students wrote about how the hurricane affected them.  They drew amazing pictures and wrote great sentences!  Here are some samples:

 Nothing happened to my house.

 I have a roof blown off

My door fell. (She was talking about her fence)

 My pool cover fell in the water.

 There is no gas for the line of cars.

This one is my favorite-He said, "Mrs. Hennessy, nothing happened to my house-the hurricane did not find my house".

During the hurricane, my lights went out.

The hurricane broke the fence.

During Hurricane Sandy

 I see a tree fell.

My dad has no gas. My dads window cracked.

My neighbor lost a tree.

The tree fall down outside.

I see a tree fall down.

My mom said we did not lose electricity-This student also said to me, "Mrs. Hennessy, my mom said we are very lucky".

I see in the part a lot of water.

The lights went out.

During the storm, I lost gas in my car.

My fence fell down during the storm.

During the storm, my dad got a generator-Her lights just came on yesterday!

During the hurricane, I lost power.

  

These kids did an amazing job! They wrote/drew all of these stories with a smile on their face.  Many of them had no power/heat for days, still have no gas and sit on lines with their parents for hours waiting for gas, or had to leave their homes.  Their strength today amazed me!

While also trying to get back into our routine, we talked about Election Day! We watched "Duck for President" and the kids loved it! 
We then discussed who was running for president and the job of a president.  The kids had great things to say!  One asked, "If the president does not come back (we were talking about being reelected and how a president can only serve 2 terms), does he just disappear and die?" Another one asked, "What happens if the president does not do his job?"  We looked at a map to see the USA and pictures of Obama and Romney.  We also talked about the rules of only voting once in an election.  This worksheet came from primarypractice.blogspot.com.  The kids loved doing this activity today!

One student also wrote, "If I were president, I would kill all the bad guys!".  
We have off tomorrow for a conference day/training.  Can't wait to start teaching bats, spiders, and dia de los muertos! I love Fall! So many great topics to teach!

Happy teaching!

Alyson Hennessy