Thanksgiving, Fact Families and Winter

So, like all of you I am teaching my Thanksgiving Unit this week. We have 3 1/2 days this week--so that's about all I have for my whole unit. (I snuck in a couple of days last week). I am so lucky to have ALL of next week off--so no complaining.

I had to cut my unit in half, but I think I'm hitting on the key parts.
Part of our Curriculum is to compare Life Now to Life Long Ago. I would say the Thanksgiving Theme fits right into that standard.

We started with Learning about and describing the Pilgrims.

We planned and wrote 3 sentences about the Pilgrims. We did the same for the Native Americans.

The Next step was to Compare. I gave each student a "bubble" to write on. They wrote a fact about either the Native Americans, the Pilgrims or both.

They then attached it to the double-bubble map.

I forgot to take a picture of the finished product--ughh! I will add it tomorrow.

We also used the scholastic Virtual Videos of the Pilgrim Village, Wampanog Village and Mayflower.
I really liked these videos and so did my class.  They kept asking--Are those real Pilgrims?

We are also learning about Fact families and related facts. After our regularly scheduled lesson, we made these cute Fact Family houses. I let each child pick their own "family member" for their house.
It was super easy. They folded the corners, put the 3 numbers in the roof top--and then wrote the facts. 2 addition and 2 subtraction.  It was a great way to extend the lesson and see who can do the facts independently.

I love working ahead and knowing I am prepared. My team and I mapped out the whole 2nd quarter in math so I know what I am teaching every day from now through January 22nd!
I decided I needed to also be that prepared in Language Arts as well.
so I began working on the Common Core standards and Winter/holiday Writing.
I finished my mega Writing unit: Writing in a Winter Wonderland.
It's aligned to common core and has 120 pages of all the writing you could possibly need from November 26th to January 31st (maybe longer)

Preview--this is just a little of what is included

Book Recommendations

Planning for Writing an Opinion Piece

1 example of Common Core Alignments for grades 1-4

Narrative Prompt Cards

Winter Writing--1 page of "Arctic" Themed Informational Writing

1 example of a Book Cover

Take a peek and check it out at TPT here!  and last but not least I found this great blogger exchange going on at : Teacher blogger Exhange   Check it out!