Turkey Tuesday!

And I just got an email that I won a new laminator and laminating pouches!  YEAH!  Go boyeee!  It's a great day in the kindergarten smorgasboard!  (Except for I feel like I'm taking my frustrations with my toxic work environment out of on my students....that's not cool.  And it stops NOW Mr. Greg! )

There was an interesting story on NPR that caught my attention.  A new study says that students in the United States give up on a difficult problem after just seconds.  Conversely, students in Japan worked on the same difficult problem for an average of an hour.  I was stunned.  So, my question is how do we get our children to persevere and not give up so easily?  Is this symptomatic of our instant gratification society that's creating students who want to get the answer or solve the problem immediately?  This study has pretty powerful implications for teaching.  Discuss.

So here's how my turkey Tuesday started! Child arrives 15 minutes late. 5 minutes later we are projectile vomiting. Into the bathroom. Poor thing dry heaved so loudly. Moving on. This is how my day ended. "Mr. Greg my eye won't open!" Umm it's crusty and pink. Yeah. All day with a pink eye child. I told mom and she said "oh yeah it was crusted over this morning!" Yeah. Let's see how my immune system protects me. Side note of useful information: do you know how or where pink eye comes from?  I'll share in case you don't.  This comes from my doctor....pink eye comes from contact with an unmentionable body part.  I HAD NO IDEA until I had pink eye a few years ago and the doctor told me!

Today we read the book "'Twas The Night Before Thanksgiving". We made a t-chart about the problem and solution! Theres nothing better thank kids hiding turkeys under their shirts as a solution to a problem! Would anyone volunteer a hiding place for me?! How great would life be if we could hide under a shirt when we are having a bad day!?! You know you're contemplating it! And thinking what shirt you could wear to hide people under! Admit it!

After we read our book we had a great discussion about thanksgiving dinner and feasts. We did a whole class bubble map of food we might eat for thanksgiving. And then (for the very first time). We filled in our own bubble maps!! So proud of them!!! I think they turned out so well!!!  You can get these sheets here!

To end our discussion of our thanksgiving feast, we created our own placemats and dinner plates!!! This is so much fun!! It's hilarious to see the kids pick out food for their turkey day feast! And no, cookies don't count!

It's a simple but fun project!  You need:  construction paper, paper plates, napkins, plastic utensils, and grocery store sale papers that feature Thanksgiving food!  Just do what I do...after you get groceries, casually in nonchalant way, cruise by the paper rack and grab a stack.  AND RUN!  I'm kidding.  They really don't care!

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First, glue the plate in the center of the paper.

Second, we glue the napkin in half and the glue it to the paper.  We glue on our utensils.  LOTS OF GLUE!!!!!  Trust me, the more glue, the better the plastic holds!

Next, students search for their Thanksgiving feast food and start cutting.  The best part:  this gets so messy!  There is paper everywhere!!

Students start gluing their food to their plates!

And the finished product!  Super cute!  I could see this very easily becoming a writing activity also!  (NOTE TO SELF!)

It's two days in a row of silly hats!  This week we do the letters D and R so you are blessed with the opportunity to see me in two silly hats!  And this rascally rabbit didn't turn out reversed like the picture yesterday!!  

And since you're here you should go over to the right side of the page and sign up for my newsletter!  You know you want to!!!

And this is the new kindergarten mascot.....it's how beat up and destroyed we feel as a team...this was my random classroom find today!  Voodoo?  I think so!  I wonder who is voodoo-ing me?!