Lost...and Found!

Another busy week!  I love this time of year and so do my students but there are so many awesome activities we can do and never seem to get them all worked in.  Next year, I will be ready!

We concluded our Gingerbread Man study this week.  On Wednesday, one of my co-teachers made a huge gingerbread cookie and offered to share it with our class.  But at lunchtime, he disappeared!  The students were so concerned, we made lost posters and posted them in the hall in hopes that someone had seen him.

We also discussed why we thought he always runs away.  I loved some of the reasons they came up with!  (I think a little text to self connection was going on :-))

When we came back from our Encore classes, we found our custodian, Mr. Garry, reading a note he found from the Gingerbread Man and the chase was on!  Our reader, Tyler, would read us each clue and then off to find the next one!

The students chased him all through the school and we finally cornered him in the office where Mrs. Renfro snuck up and grabbed him!

Run, run, as fast as you can...you can't catch me! I'm the Gingerbread Man!

What a week!  Monday and Tuesday we were busy practicing for our Christmas musical, "Forty Winks 'til Christmas".  It was amazing!

We then jumped head first into our Gingerbread Man theme.  First, our Gingerbread house that goes over my and Mrs. Renfro's rooms and greets our students and visitors each day.

Our Art Center project for the week

During the week, we read several different versions of the Gingerbread Man and made a comparison chart that focused on our state standard of identifying story elements characters, setting and problem/events.  I modeled mine after one I saw on http://babblingabby.blogspot.com.
We used the stories to practice retelling (see the Retelling TV post) and to discuss the idea of setting.  The students pretended they were the Gingerbread Man and wrote about where they would run.

 Some of our Draw A Rhyme gingerbread men

One of our phonemic awareness review activities that went in our literacy work stations--syllable counting with buttons.

 

As our Fun Friday activity, the students decorated gingerbread man cookies then we graphed where we took the first bite.

 

As with everything else, there was so much more we wanted to do with this theme.  So.....we're going to continue it another week!  YEAH!!!