Thanksgiving in First

Like I said, I start my student teaching in January, so for now I am spending my time getting some extra classroom experience by volunteering in a first grade and third grade classroom every day. Most of my classroom experience has been in the younger grades- kinder and first- so it is really interesting for me to work with the third graders and see all that they can do. The teacher for that class, Mrs. C, is AH-MAZING, truly one of the best teachers I have ever seen in action, and I will have to dedicate at least one post to all that I have learned there. My first grade class is adorable and taught by Ms. S, who I was shocked to learn is a first year teacher this year- I never would have guessed, as she is so effective and engaging!

Anyway, this week we worked on thanksgiving crafts, and the kidlets put together these cute turkeys and acrostic poems. Ms. S does a really cute thing with poems in her class (more on that in a later post), so they were already familiar with the concept. They wrote drafts of their poem and we corrected their spelling so they could rewrite it with their best handwriting and publish a clean copy. It worked better with some students than others :) Some wrote some pretty hilarious things to be thankful for- knife, which we changed to knife to cut the turkey, nom nom nom was pretty popular, and killing, which we decided meant killing turkey- that student was asked to find a new word. Then they cut their turkeys out and glued it together. I was pretty surprised at how good they were at cutting and gluing; everyone was being safe and following class procedures with little redirection, not to mention that they didn't get materials everywhere! Easily impressed? Maybe!

While they were working, one student began to sing a song they learned in music and the whole class chimed in. It was an adorable version of a little chain gang. By the way, I have no idea if I am referencing the right group of people that sing while working. It was either that or the dwarves like in Snow White, although on second thought that is a much more appropriate reference. Anyway, the song goes like this (to the tune of Frere Jacques):

Turkey Dinner

Turkey Dinner

gather round

gather round

who will get the drumstick

yummy yummy yum stick

all sit down

all sit down

Super cute. Thanksgiving is a great holiday, and the kids seem to really understand what it is all about. Well, except for one kidlet who told me today that this is the most boring holiday because all you do is eat, so he doesn't see the difference between that and every other dinner. Ha!