Free Thanksgiving Math Center: TURKEY RACES!

Ahhh.. the holidays are coming... 

The air is crisp, the leaves here in Massachusetts are all shades of orange, yellow, and red and most of them have made their way to the ground already!

With all the excitement, I know my first graders always needed high engagement. Anything that could keep my students learning and on-track was a win during these holiday months.

I'm not sure about your class, but my room always loved a good, competitive partner game. I thought I would share a free little math center that you could just print and use in your room:

TURKEY RACES!

This Thanksgiving math center is a fun, addition partner game!

Students will pair up and grab one board, one ten-frame tracker, & one turkey spinner.

Student A will spin the spinner and track that number on their tens-frame sheet. Student B will do the same. Every time a student fills a 10 frame, they may color in one block on their tower on the game board. 

The first student to reach 100 (the top of their tower) wins!

There are colored boards that can be laminated and re-used with a dry erase marker as well as black and white boards that can just be printed and used with crayons or pencils!

There are also 4 different spinners, so students can play many times with different numbers!

As students progress you can also take away the 10-frame trackers and have students add on scrap paper or in their heads!

If you think your students could use this, please click the image below and grab a copy!

Also, if you are looking for some great community building ideas for Thanksgiving, check out my {last post} about Stone Soup!

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Stone Soup: A Literacy & Community Unit

Do your students read Stone Soup around Thanksgiving?!

I have done this unit 4 of the 5 years I taught first grade and both my students and I L-O-V-E it!

I always complete this literacy unit the week before Thanksgiving and we tie in the relation between the holiday of giving thanks and the importance of community and helping one another. I find that these books exemplify the thoughts of coming together and helping one another. Many students can also relate the feasts shown in this book to the feasts they have themselves on Thanksgiving!

There are so many versions of the Stone Soup folk tale, but the four I choose to compare, contrast, and dive into are by the following authors:

Marcia Brown

Ann Mcgovern

Jon J Muth

Jess Stockham

They are each a little different, but share the same sentiments of sharing, caring, and working together for a greater good!

For each book, I included some story responses, writing prompts and read aloud lessons that we have discussed over the past few years.

The story responses touch on sequencing, inferring, vocabulary development, comparing/contrasting, and story elements. While the writing prompts are a mix of opinion and contrasting stories!

There are also a few crafts included as well a recipe and parent notes in case you want to re-create the stone soup experience for your students!

You can grab everything you need for a stone soup mini-unit by clicking the image below:

Download the preview to see a closer look at what's included in this unit!

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Thanksgiving Fun

 It's all turkeys and pilgrims in our room! 

We are getting ready for the holiday with some fun holiday activities.

These crafts & writing are decorating our room:

 (on a side note, these grainy pictures make me really want to take the bull by the horns and learn how to use my new camera!)

Those writing prompts are from Deanna Jump's Thanksgiving unit and the turkeys are actually my number of the day turkey! There is a long story involving printer paper and a RISO and a time crunch... but I won't bore you with that.... 

Essentially it is the sad, sad reason we didn't make these fun turkeys:

 Next year, it WILL happen!

We are also full-swing into turkey themed math games!

  Comparing #s review!

 Ordering #s 1-120

 Addition with 3 addends practice

Spin-a-Story Problem!

All the math games (and the turkey) are available in my "Who's Talking Turkey? Math Centers"

 

We also started diving into the real REASON we are celebrating Thanksgiving! We learned all about the Pilgrims and their voyage and we started recording our vocabulary in this notebook from my pal, Stephanie (Falling into First):

This is just one of the amazing activities she has in her new Thanksgiving Unit! 

Check it out - forrealz.

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A little bit of this... and a little bit of that...

2 more days until Thanksgiving break!

I am hearing that some of you lucky ladies and gents got this WHOLE week off... whaaaat?!

I've never heard of such a thing! (JEALOUS)

We are still trucking through Wednesday - but it's all good because we are jam-packed with fun activities!!

Here are a few snapshots of the past couple school days:

My power-hour group is full swing into all the different spelling patterns for long a! Here we are reading, tracking, and counting the long a words in the passage. The boys are on a word hunt to distinguish long a words from short a words. Both of these activities are from my {Long Vowel Games and Centers} pack.

 

I have been a horrible photographer this holiday season because I swear we've done LOADS of fun Thanksgiving activities!! Above is one of my littles working on some verbs from Katie's {The Busy Teacher's Best Friend - Thanksgiving Edition}. Her busy teacher packets are amazing - I used tons from her Halloween one, as well as Thanksgiving and seriously, they are a teacher's best friend... NO PREP NECESSARY! Next to her verb page is a little Venn diagram we made this morning comparing our lives to that of Pilgrim children.

 Math practice! These short, busy weeks are perfect for some reviewing of essential math skills! On the left, my kids are playing 5-in-a-row using 3 addend addition. I snuck in a challenge dice (with just the numerals 1-6 on them) that way they could move past just counting up the dots. That game is one of many from my {Addition with 3 Addends} pack. On the right, is a fun number line game from The Teacher Wife. It is part of her new {Number Line} pack and really.... you can never go wrong with one of her items!

Okee doke... I am off to plan and finish the packet below! I am sooo close to finishing! I hope to get it uploaded by tomorrow night at the latest... but we shall see!

 Have a happy, happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!!

:)

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All Things Turkey!

2 more days this week.

4 days next week.

2 days the week after... and then IT'S HERE!

I don't know how it happens, but year after year I am always surprised by the holidays!

This year, I am tryinnggggg to be more prepared. We are starting our turkey talk early!

We just started reading our new Magic Tree House book, Thanksgiving on Thursday, and my kiddos love themselves some Jack & Annie. Then we jumped into my Who's Talking Turkey? Thanksgiving math centers this week and created our number of the day turkeys:

 

I kinda let my students roll with it by themselves when they were creating them because I wanted to see how they were doing anddd I must say we need some work on 10s frames, yikes! They had to draw their own, which was difficult for them, but all in all I think they came out pretty darn cute!

In the upcoming weeks we will be completing lots of turkey and Thanksgiving themed activities and I thought I would show you the goods:

First, Ashley, at {The School Supply Addict} has just come out with these fabulous Thanksgiving vocabulary cards that are SO cute. I think I will be using them as a center - I see loads of sorts and spelling/vocabulary games in our future :)

Next, Lori, at {Teaching With Love and Laughter}, has some fun language activities in her Thanksgiving pack. We will be doing som of these games next week! I am especially loving the parts of speech sort because we are just finishing up our nouns, verbs, and adjectives units right now!

This last one is not turkey themed, but it is so great I had to do it! Sandra, at {Sweet Times in First}, has just come out with these word family word wall books and activities and this is just perfect for my students to review before the holidays! There are so many fun activities for centers or homework and she even included the adorable word wall cards. 

I am nosy and I like knowing what everyone else is doing, so I figured some other nosy people out there might want to know what I'm up to as well!

Happy hump day!

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Turkey Malurkey & a Bundle!

Turkey day is one of my favorite holidays! 

Random fact about me: I used to call it Mashed Potato Day when I was a kid because I hate, hate, hated turkey... but I tell ya, I loved mashed potatoes. Garlic mashed potatoes, buttery mashed potatoes, cheesy mashed potatoes, sour cream, chives, and bacon mashed potatoes. Oh-em-gee are your mouths watering yet?! That is right... I wouldn't eat turkey, I wouldn't eat stuffing, I wouldn't eat cranberry sauce, just a whopping pile of mashed potatoes. What can I say? I was a weird kid.

Well now, as a much more mature adult, I have learned to like turkey. Not love, just like.

Anyways......

I finished my Thanksgiving literacy centers this past weekend and while I say they are for Thanksgiving, they are mostly just TURKEY themed!

Here are a few of my fave parts from my new pack:

 Turkey Races!

It is no secret that I love games. This one is easy-peasy and fun to play! Students roll a die and find the corresponding sound. Students can move their marker to the closest word that has that sound in it. If students roll a turkey, they get to move their partner's marker all the way back to start - BOO YAH! The first one to the finish line wins! If they make it there too quickly, I make them race to the finish and back to start!

I made a separate game for short vowels, long vowels, digraphs (above), and blends. My kids are all working on different spelling patterns right now so this will help differentiate!

Next, I can't help but make another turkey craft! I made this one to resemble the cute little turkeys all over this pack (from the ever-fabulous Jessica Weible)

These are just some of the activities in my "Turkey Malurkey" literacy pack! If you'd like to check out more, just click on the picture below and download the preview at my TPT store :)

I also decided to bundle these ELA activities with my math centers to create:
Hip hip hooray - it's Turkey Day! Bundle!

***They are all the same activities, just bundled for a discounted price :) ***

On a side note:

Parkster and I just got back from an amazing little 3 day getaway here in Vegas and I am exhauuuusted! I was too busy having fun to take any pictures!! I did snap this little ditty of our crazy HUGE, but crazy delicious dinner at Hash House A Go-Go!

(Ignore the goofy faces)
Nomnomnom.

Have a great week!

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Who's Talking Turkey?!

Don't hate me, but....

I'm already thinking about Turkey Day!

I can't help it - I booked my tickets to my mother-in-law's house for the holiday and I just love visiting good ole Chattanooga, TN for Thanksgiving!

My "Who's Talking Turkey?" Thanksgiving math packet has been sitting on my computer, staring at me, begging me to finish it for the past few weeks. After 11 and a half hours of sleep last night (heavenly) I awoke refreshed and ready to work today and that is exactly what I did!

My kiddos LOVE playing math games and I have created some fun ones to keep them engaged and learning during those hard-to-stay-focused holiday months. This packet includes 6 different math activities that directly correlate to the common core math standards.

Here is a little sneak peak at some of my faves:

Spin-a-story problem:

We work a lot on story problems in my class - solving them, dissecting them, creating them, etc. This is a fun little activity to get their brains workin' and their creativity flowin'! Students use a paper clip and pencil to spin 2 spinners. The first one gives them what their story is about and the second spinner tells them if they are writing an addition or subtraction story problem. Students write their problem, draw their problem, and solve it with a number sentence! I have students do this with their partner at their seat and they have a lot of fun challenging each other to solve their problems.

Number of the day turkey:

I see a lot of turkey crafts during the holidays, but I wanted to add a little something to it. My kids usually complete a "number of the day" where they show me the different ways to make a number, so I thought I would take it one step further and have them make their number into a turkey! Students choose their number and write it in the middle of their turkey. On each feather they will show their number in different ways (tens frame, picture, number word, tallies, base 10 cubes, and sentence). I included all the templates for this little craft in my packet.

If you'd like to see more, just click on the image below and you can check out the preview at TPT!

Have a great night! :)

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