The Polar Express Christmas Activity

Fun Polar Express Activity

If you like the book The Polar Express, then you are sure to love this activity.....

By the time kids get to 4th grade, some are wavering on the Santa thing.  I always like to do a special little activity to get them pondering the magic of Santa.  The afternoon before our Christmas break starts, I put little silver bells in the back of each of their desks.  Then the next day I read them a couple of my favorite Christmas books, one of which is the book The Polar Express.  A short time later, I have the kids clean out their desks (I do this at the end of each 9 week period),  and you guessed it, they find the silver bells.  My fourth graders always love this!  I hear one of them say, "I found a bell in my desk!".... a few seconds later, "I found one too!"... Before you know it, they are all ringing silver bells and saying things like, "It's the first gift of Christmas!"  This year no one even questioned where they came from.  It is such a fun Christmas activity!

 

 

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Remembering Sandy Hook Elementary

There are no words....

 

 

 

Free Christmas Activities

Christmas Word Recognition

Life has been so incredibly busy for me! 
I'm sure your life is just the same.

 

By the time I get home from my teaching, get the teenagers to where ever they need to go, find something to eat for dinner, go to sports events, make sure homework is done, get the toddler bathed and ready for bed, I can sometimes find the time to make a custom lesson or two for my fourth graders.  As far as blogging though, that has taken the back burner.  I have not made it a priority.

 

So, here I am on Thanksgiving break squeezing in a blog post.  And guess what?  You get some free Christmas activities out of this post.  You can't beat free, right? 

 

This is a Christmas activity for the younger kids.  Sometimes I will make something cute for my k-1 friends even though I won't be able to  use it in the classroom.  In this activity, the kids cut out words to glue down and label the picture.  They can then color it.  This will make for a cute center as it gets closer to the holiday break.  You can download this from my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

 

Christmas Activity - Word Recognition

 

 

This next activity I made for my fourth graders.  One of the fourth grade common core objectives is to form and use prepositional phrases.  This is a Christmas themed slide show to introduce the topic to my students.  I hope you can find a way to use it in your classroom.

 

Prepositional Phrase Christmas Activity

 

 

 

If you are interested, I also made an I Have Who Has activity for prepositional phrases.  It goes along with the slide show.  It is Christmas themed.  Get all of the details by clicking the link below.

 

I Have Who Has Prepositional Phrases 

 

  

 

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Election Activities

The election is just a short time away, and if you are like me, you have talked about it a time or two in your classroom.  Actually, I talked about the election today with my students because it was the feature article in my Scholastic News Magazine.  We had a long discussion about the title question that read, "Where do they stand?"  None of my students knew what that question meant.  We then talked about how people typically select who they are going to vote for based on where the candidates 'stand' on issues, such as education, health care, war, and jobs.  This was about the third time Scholastic has printed an article about the election, so my kids have become quite familiar with the candidates. 

Do you all do mock elections in your school?  We are having one this year, but surprisingly, we are not voting for the candidates that are running for the presidency.  I know.... I was a bit shocked too.  My husband, the political science/social studies teacher, was really shocked.  He said we might as well not even have an election if that is going to be the case.  So, who are we are voting for?..... that would be Lincoln or Washington.  Since no one has had time to teach their kids about these two candidates, I guess the kids will be doing 'one potato, two potato' to make their choice.  After all, I have been teaching my kids about the 2012 presidential candidates not two candidates that aren't even from the same time period (I know, seems so strange).  I am not really 100% sure why we didn't go with the real candidates, but I think it had something to do with this being a pretty heated election, and no one wanted to stir the pot with political views.  I dunno.  Regardless, I am sure the kids will have fun, and I know they will cheer if their candidate wins. 

I thought I would share with you a couple of election activities I made for my classroom.  One is a basic election word search that I plan to do for morning work.  Another one is a set of election themed writing paper that is very colorful and would look great  hanging outside the classroom in the hallway. You can find both of these in my Teachers Pay Teachers store by clicking on the links below.  Thanks for checking them out. 

Election Word Search Puzzle

 

Election Themed Writing Paper

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Words and Phrases Alluding to Mythology

Mythology Activity

If you are like me, that is exactly what you thought when you read this new common core objective:

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.4.4 Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including those that allude to significant characters found in mythology (e.g., Herculean).

If one thing is for sure, I could not stand mythology when I was in school, so the thought of me having to teach anything related to it just freaked me out.   Plus, when I went searching for material related to this common core objective, there was absolutely nothing to be found.  Don't you hate it when we get objectives to teach and yet there are not really any lessons prepared to help us out.  I mean, I know we are capable of designing lessons, but sometimes it just makes things difficult.  As in the case of this mythology lesson, I won't kid around, I had to read and search to find the descriptions of these characters from mythology. It took me some time, but I hope you like the finished product.  

This mythology lesson does not really teach mythology itself.  It really focuses on the basics of the common core objective listed above.  I put together some mythological character descriptions to help kids understand that these characters have traits based on their actions in the stories from mythology.  I then put together some common phrases used in today's time that might pop up in literature that make reference to these character traits, such as "opened Pandora's box".  When students see these phrases, they will have a better understanding of the fact that they allude to the characters found in mythology.  In addition, there is a little illustration activity where students take products from today's time and see how these product names actually originated from mythology.  A few examples, are Trident gum and Amazon.com.  

I hope your kids have fun with this lesson.  

Click the link below to find out more info. or to purchase this lesson.

Lesson: Words in Text Alluding to Characters in Mythology

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