Fall Semester iPhone Dump

I try to keep my camera with me at school if we're doing something that I want to document but it's not always practical. I always have my phone though and snap pics of my kids and their work all the time. I wanted to do a quick post with some of my favorite activities from the first half of this year just for the sake of remembering.
Back to school-
I got this idea from Pottery Barn and seriously considered purchasing their whole Hungry Caterpillar line for any of my future children.

This is the original. I think mine turned out pretty good!

Source: potterybarnkids.com via Lee Ann on Pinterest

One of our first math units is place value with tens and ones. We use these tens/ones mats throughout the unit but one day we changed it up a little bit with pretzels and cereal. I gave them a number and they recreated it on their mat.

Fall-
We always do a pumpkin patch bulletin board but this is my favorite ever! The kids loved posing for the picture like they were popping out of the pumpkin and it just turned out cute. 

"Pumpkin pumpkin fat and wide. Open the top and _______s inside"
We got this idea from this pin

Source: fpcrr.com via Lee Ann on Pinterest

and this pin

Source: mrsstewartsclass.com via Lee Ann on Pinterest

These were our entries in the school pumpkin decorating contest. Each pumpkin represents a table color and they used scrapbook paper strips and diluted school glue and worked together to cover the pumpkin.

This was one of my favorite fall stations. In one of our pumpkin books we read that pumpkins can be many different colors and that sparked a lot of conversation for the rest of our pumpkin activities. Some friends colored every pumpkin blue for the rest of the unit. I think I have a sentence building station for every season and they are some of my favorites.

 

This is a shot of the first annual first and second grade Thanksgiving feast. We rolled white butcher paper down the hall and each friend snacked on popcorn and no bake pumpkin pies. They also wore traditional head wear and brought a few crayons to decorate their place. This was so loud and fun! 

Christmas-
A lot of my Christmas pictures have student's faces up close so I'm not going to post them but we had fun with a gingerbread man unit, a Grinch unit and a Polar Express unit. We got most of our resources from TPT and pinterest of course. My favorite day was when we finished our Grinch unit and watched the video and drank Grinch Punch. We mixed lime sherbert and lemon-lime soda in a big green bowl and served it during the show. It was a hit and definitely a new tradition.

This is our Grinch that hung on the board with our Grinch survey and Grinch story map for the week. I got the pattern and activities here.

In case you're interested here are a few links to just a few of my favorite downloads from this year so far-
Gingerbread Man Math and Literacy  
Polar Express writing packet
Fall Noun sort
Santa on Vacation Math game