Oh the Little Wonders: What a Whirlwind!

There is no way we're half way through term 4 already....where has the year gone?!

I've been a very slack blogger lately, with uni assignments, reports and a job interview, I've struggled to find a second! But I've collected quite a few photos over the last month or so of things I want to share with you all, so I thought I'd sit down on this 30°c day and finally do it.

So let's get stuck in!

For the first 4 weeks of this term we focused on persuasive writing. I started looking last holidays and found so many AMAZING resources on Pinterest. My team also purchased some super cute picture books that help teach persuasive language and techniques.

We got:

The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt

The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Joe Scieszka

I Wanna New Room by Karen Kaufman Orloff

and Hey, Little Ant by Phillip Hoose

My little wonders loved reading the stories and did a great job of identifying the different ways people persuade and the reasons behind it. Some of my favourite activities we did was for the book 'Hey, Little Ant' came from a pack by Casey Hallett at Mrs Hallett's Happenings called Opinion Writing and Graphic Organisers - Hey Little Ant. If you're teaching persuasive writing to grade 1 or 2, I highly recommend you check this pack out!

The following activity came from The First Grade Parade. After we read the book I asked the children what they thought the kid should do. I was actually surprised to find that they unanimously agreed that he should NOT squish the ant. As a class we wrote the kid a letter outlining the reasons why he should not kill the ant. They then used these ideas, and some other ones they came up with, to write their own response. They accompanied it with this SUPER CUTE little ant and shoe (click here for the template). I was very impressed with the effort my little ones put into their presentation, they look fantastic!

This next one is one of my favourite library activities that we've done. Whenever I hear or say the word 'craftivity' I immediately think of Jennifer at First Grade Blue Skies. She has THE BEST craftivity packs in my opinion! We used her Little Red Hen Book Companion pack to create these adorable Little Red Hens. The children had to write why they couldn't help the Little Red Hen, needless to say their reasons were very creative. They were making their own bread, having a sleepover, going on a holiday and practicing their dancing.

Sooooo I went a little Halloween clipart crazy this year. I went from having nothing, to about 5 sets of clipart, all of which are from...you guessed it...Krista Wallden :) I cut out and laminated some to use as inspiration for our spoooooky halloween stories. Mind you, I had to tell the kids what candy corn was.

During the week leading up to Halloween we read 'Froggy's Halloween'. Having read 'Froggy's First Kiss' on Valentine's Day this year the kids were excited to read about Froggy's next adventure. I got the template for this activity from Rhonda at Classroom Fun. It's no longer available in her TPT store but if you contact her (like I did) she might be able to send it to you!

I got the idea for this next activity from Lindsay at 'For the Love of First Grade'. My little wonders had to write clues about who was hiding under their ghost sheet. We showed them at our assembly and had the crowd guess what who or what was underneath. I was glad to see some of them using the information they had learnt about bats to write some clues.

Here's a photo of the bat tree chart we made to write our information report about bats(inspiration from Kristin at A Day in First Grade). We then used a template from Jodi's Nonfiction in October pack for our writing.

Keeping in the spirit of Halloween we created these bright spider web drawings using chalk pastels. We use pastels a lot in our class so the little wonders know how to use them well, aka don't lean your arm on the page, use sparingly and smudge, blend complimentary colours, keep one hand clean for holding the page, and blend with your fingertips. I showed them how to draw the spider webs (this took a few demonstrations) and spiders. They did such a good job, all of their webs turned out great!