We had a lovely week at school with some beautiful weather and lots of fun activities. It’s Thanksgiving this weekend so it was a short week, but it was full of great centers!

Our sight words loose parts center asked students to build sight words with different materials. Some things that were included: wood letters, rock letters, and sight word books (these are from the Dollar Store, I add the sight words that we are learning as we go). Students had a great time finding all the letters for sight words, and  I hope to keep adding different materials to this center to make it even more engaging.

On the other side of the table, was an invitation to create letters using loose parts. We always set out a variety of materials for students to use, and this time we used: rocks, buttons and gems. I included the book LMNO Peas to give them some inspiration.

To celebrate Thanksgiving, we painted our own turkeys. We used the instructions from Deep Space Sparkle for our directed drawing. I love how they are all unique and I am blown away by our students’ ability to follow directions. We are a month into school and they were able to sit for an hour to complete their paintings, and none of them needed redirection. Some of the paintings look more like turkeys than others, but I think that’s what made this project so great. I love doing these with students and teaching them new drawing skills and showing them just how amazing they are. We also allow them time to use paint to be creative in their own way, but I think it is also important to give them some direction and guidance to show them different techniques.

* The best part about this activity: not a single student knocked over the water cups when we were using the watercolor paints! Can you believe it? That’s never happened to me before, there is always one kid who hits it with their elbow and destroys their painting.

As we started a new month this week, students had a chance to add their first monthly page to their Memory Books and Journals. We do these at the end of every month and we keep them until the end of the year. Then we put the books together and send it home to their families so they can see all the progress that was made throughout the year. I love looking back and showing students how much they have improved every month too. It gives them a feeling of accomplishment and they can see their hard work paying off. You can get your Memory Books or Memory Journals for my store.

    

Come back next week to see more activities and center ideas! You can also follow me on Instagram to get a daily peek into the classroom.