Letters here, Letters there....

Letters, Letters everywhere!

I'm linking back up with Chrissy at First Grade Found Me, to share our letter exchange

                                                             
Schools from all over the United States and Canada decorated letters of the alphabet and mailed them out to sharing school.  Here is what they look like on my word wall.

We are still missing the letter F (I am going to need to make my own).  Our Class Made the letter B--We read the Berenstein Bears B Book. Then, we brainstormed a whole Bunch of B words. The class then decorated their B's with all things B.  Our Classroom B is a sky with hot-air "Balloons" floating in it.

I think 'I' was a class favorite for "ice-cream", although they loved them all and loved to guess what letter was hiding in the envelope.

Some more great letters came from the end of the alphabet: a glittery Queen, a Superhero S, a Tiger in a Tutu, Umbrella U, Xavier the Pirate and real zig-zagging Zebra!

You can see how I put each letter under the ribbon on my Word Wall.  I was so glad I had these letters, when I first hung my paper, my ribbon was too short and the paper too long. 

It really was a great experience for my class. I love having "original" works of art hanging on my wall.

 In addition to the letter exchange, my class wrote real letters to soldiers, seniors and a classmate.
A former colleague's husband is on an army base in Texas so we (first grade and second grade teams) are sending letters to the soldiers there.  We used this great freebie from A Cupcake For the Teacher.

Next, we are Writing for A cause. My Friend up in Queens, NY let me know about a great service Project.  Students write letters to the homeless and elderly in NYC. This group delivers meals and the letters to them on Thanksgiving. Our Class and my first grade and second grade pals, wrote these letters and we are going to be mailing them off this weekend.
This is the link to the Thanksgiving writing idea project through Scholastic if you would like to do this with your class.

http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/top-teaching/2012/10/celebrate-thanksgiving-%E2%80%93-write-cause
 

Last by not least, we made Get Well cards for my student Julian.

Julian, is an amazing little boy who is battling cancer. He is my son's buddy and one of my students.  A few weeks ago we got to skype with Julian since he is not ready to return to school. He is going in for a treatment tomorrow and has to stay overnight in the hospital. There is nothing more purposeful than writing to a friend in my mind. We put band-aids on the cards and the kids wrote and drew really nice sentiments. 
Thanks for reading and
Enjoy,