We are Thankful

A few weeks ago, our Responsive Classroom committee got together to discuss our upcoming community bulletin board.  This board is something new that we instituted this year.  We wanted a place, on the first floor, to showcase community, diversity, and learning from around the school.  Our first bulletin board had the teachers' "hopes and dreams" for the school year.  Then we took pictures of kiddos around the school performing common routines and procedures, like walking in the hallway and hanging up their coats.

For our most recent board, we invited every kiddo in the school to share what they are thankful for on a half-sheet of paper.  In my own class, I read Splat says Thank You to introduce the idea of being thankful.  I'd never even heard of this great book until one of the other amazing first grade teachers told me about it.  My kiddos loved Splat and Seymour and the story was so sweet!  Plus, it definitely sent home the message about the importance of showing gratitude for others.  

Here are two of my favorites from the firsties:

Throughout the week, teachers turned in their classes' forms to me.  I compiled them onto a bulletin board with the title "We are thankful."  Around the edge of the board, another teacher printed out "thank you" in a variety of languages and fonts.  I love the resulting diversity on this board: some teachers took dictation, there's lots of invented spelling, older kiddos tried out cursive handwriting, and the pictures range from stick figures to full-color sketches.  There is also a lot of variety in what we are thankful for -- many kiddos were thankful for their family, friends, and pets, but we also got everything from candy to football. 

My favorite thing about this board though, was actually putting it up.  While I was in the midst of stapling, a couple of kindergarteners walked by with their moms asked what I was doing.  I explained the project and the kiddos recalled writing their own thankful notes.  They began selecting sheets for me to post up and reading each of the cards.  They were so excited that one of them pulled a notebook out of her backpack and began to create a list of other things she for which she was thankful!  So sweet!

*I ran out of room on the board, so now we have notes of thanks covering the windows to the office and library as well -- what a great thing to see when we walk around the halls! :) 

The Pilgrims and the Wampanoag

Thanksgiving Stereotype

Thanksgiving is one my favorite holidays. Thanksgiving is typically one of the least commercialized holidays, but little guys still tend to pick up a lot of misinformation, especially about the Pilgrims and Indians, from images and stories.  I found an article from Understanding Prejudice which had some great suggestions for talking to kids about Thanksgiving at home and at school.  I also found this site which provides guidelines for teaching about Thanksgiving in culturally sensitive and historically accurate ways.  I used a lot of the suggestions from both articles to guide my instruction around the holiday this year.

In particular, I really wanted to be sure that my kiddos understood the origins of Thanksgiving.  We started by doing K-W-L (What We Know, What We Wonder, What We Learned) Chart.  Not surprisingly, the kiddos had random pieces of the story, including "We eat turkey" and "The Pilgrims had a feast."  However, they still wanted to know things like, "Who were the Pilgrims?" and "When do we celebrate Thanksgiving each year?"  We read the book Thanksgiving Is..., by Gail Gibbons to look for answers to our questions. The book begins by describing harvest festivals from around the world.  We discussed how almost all cultures celebrate the harvest by giving thanks for food and the land.  

Then we went on to discuss the relationship between the Pilgrims and the Native Americans.  For this, my fabulous first grade co-worker put together a SMART board presentation full of facts and interactive lessons about the Pilgrims' journey to America and the first Thanksgiving Feast.  She shared pictures of Native Americans from the past and today to provide perspective for the kiddos.  

Then she explained that the Pilgrims left England to pursue religious freedom but got off track on their voyage to Virginia and ended up landing at Plymouth.  The kiddos learned that the Wampanoag tribe of Massachusetts taught the Pilgrims how to harvest corn, squash, and pumpkins (but no pumpkin pie).  We also found out that at the first Thanksgiving they probably had a lot of seafood, venison, and wild geese, in addition to turkey.  We ended the lesson by doing a comparison of the First Thanksgiving and a traditional modern Thanksgiving.  I am very grateful for thoughtful and intelligent colleagues who are always up for examining new ways to teach old lessons!

Thanksgiving Teacher Appreciation

This year I wanted to do something a little special for my co-workers for Thanksgiving.  I'd seen a lot of cute Teacher Appreciation ideas on Pinterest lately, but none of them were quite what I had in mind, so I adapted a few and created my own idea.  I happened to be watching two of my favorite kiddos (the adorable children of one of my colleagues) earlier this week, and they were very eager to participate in my "secret project."

  

After I explained the idea, the kiddos helped me figure out how many treats we would need for the faculty.  They looked at our staff picture to count all the teachers and also figured out who was absent from the picture so we didn't miss anyone.  The Kindergartener was pretty amused at the idea of making one for the principal!

Then the second-grader calculated how many pages of shipping labels (10 per page) and how many Smarties (2 per treat) we would need for 50 gifts. We set up an assembly line to stick the labels on the index cards, trim and hole punch the "gift tags," tie the candies, and cut and curl the ribbon.  I think they turned out really cute and it was a wonderful way to entertain two kiddos for an hour!

Shipping labels on index cards for the tags

Tie the tag to 2 rolls of Smarties 

Made enough for our entire staff!