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I am not a big fan of Black Friday - I don't do crowds, but I LOVE Cyber Monday. In honor of my favorite shopping day all items in my shop are an extra 20% off!!!! Start filling your carts now - I am!!

Five for Friday - End of a Crazy Week!

I cannot believe it is already Friday! Don't get me wrong, I am not complaining but this week flew by and now we are only one week (and two days) away from Thanksgiving Break! Thank you so much to Kacey at Doodle Bugs Teaching for hosting such a fun way to share!

 Last week we talked about Native Americans and I shared with you some of the cute projects my class and the other K teachers did. However, I left off my favorite project. Our directed art Native Americans. I have done this for years and got it from another teacher friend that has now retired. I am unsure of its origins so if you know, PLEASE let me know where to give the credit!

 This is a directed art lesson my teacher neighbor did, she found it on Learning with Mrs. Parker's Blog.

This week we talked about Pilgrims. We had a lot of fun learning about the Mayflower. We decided we would not have wanted to travel on such a crowded ship for 66 day!

Pilgrim Anchor Chart - in progress

Mayflower Anchor Chart

My across the hall neighbor made this super cute graph!

 Love these directed art pilgrims (also from Learning with Mrs. Parker). I think they turned out super cute!

 Liebster Linky

Have you received a Leibster Award? Would you like to check out some amazing teacher blogs that have?  The super sweet Kathleen Wright from Kidspeople Classroom has created a place to link up with other Liebster Award blogs. Check out the linky {here}!

Thank you Kathleen for doing such a great service to help connect more bloggers and teachers.

On a personal note:

 I just have to take a minute to share what is going on in my personal life. Previously I mentioned that we are selling our house so that we can build a new one. I have been hesitant to say anything on here before for fear of things not working out but I feel led to share. We are getting custody of my beautiful nieces in December!!! My little family of 5 (me, hubs, and 3 fur babies) is growing by two! As much as I love my house and our neighborhood we are going to need more space. I said it before, this is definitely a God thing. Our house has been listed for a little over a week. We had asked our realtor to give us two weeks to spruce things up and get it ready. Well less than 24 hours after we listed the house someone wanted to see it. I was very disappointed when that showing fell through. BUT Tuesday when I was off (and painting a bedroom I should say) we got a call that someone wanted to see the house that day! I had four hours to get my house clean and back together. And although that family picked a different neighborhood, my realtor called the next day to say that she has someone wanting to see the house today. I love how things just keep working themselves out! I am ecstatic! I have never sold a house before so maybe two showing week one is not as great as I think it is but considering we were thinking it would be a much slower start, I couldn't be more pleased. Please continue to pray and/or send positive thoughts our way - every little bit helps!
Also, any house selling tips are appreciated - just leave a comment below!

What has been going on in your classroom / life this week? Leave a comment and head over to Doodle Bugs Teaching to link up and read about other amazing teachers!

Five for Friday - Native Americans

I am so happy it is Friday and time for another wonderful Five for Friday from Doodle Bugs Teaching!

 This week began our first ever grade level Project Based Learning unit on Thanksgiving. 

 This week we began our unit with our essential question: Is it better to be a kid today; or, a kid during the time of the first Thanksgiving long ago? I then asked who they thought participated in the first Thanksgiving. I was shocked that they had NO clue. So I turned to my trusty friend Discovery Education and found an image and a short video clip about the first Thanksgiving. 

Answers in green were from before watching the clip, answers in red were after.

We then made our schema chart about Native Americans. Before showing them the chart I asked what they knew about Native Americans. I was very worried when no one had anything to say until I showed them the chart and they made the connection that Native Americans are Indians. So the first thing they added to the chart was that Native Americans were called Indians. 

Native American Legends

There are so so so many amazing Native American legends that it was really hard to narrow it down to two. In the end I went with the projects I liked the most! 

We watched The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush on Discovery Education and made these cute Native American vase and flowers.

We also read Arrow to the Sun and made dream catchers.

Here are links to the books on Amazon if you are interested. 

Part of a PBL is to have driving questions that you ask to drive your instruction. We decided to focus on four main parts of Native American and Pilgrim life. Homes, Transportation/Communication, Food, and clothing. Here are two of our driving questions and how we worked to answer them.

Driving Question for homes – How can we, as illustrators, draw a picture that shows the types of homes Native Americans lived in at the time of the first Thanksgiving compared to the types of homes people live in today? 

One of my Kindergarten team members made a really great and basic Promethean flipchart about Native American homes. They could not believe that all Native Americans did not live in teepees! We did make teepees from cone shaped water cups - I forgot to take a picture before sending them home but there are pictures from my other classes at the bottom of this post.

Driving Question for transportation – How did Native Americans travel from one place to another compared to the types of transportation we use today?

We looked at many different and images (from DE of course) about different methods of transportation Native Americans used. We made a venn to compare means of transportation from today with means of transportation from the time of the first Thanksgiving. And because we love art projects, we made these really cute canoes - and kiddos!

 Here are some of the cute projects my amazing teacher friends did with their classes!

Have any of you ever taught a PBL unit in Kindergarten? I would love to see your examples!!!!

Leave a comment and head over to check out more Five for Friday posts at Doodle Bugs Teaching.

Wordless Wednesday - Halloween!

Happy Wednesday! Thank you to Miss DeCarbo for this fun and quick linky!

This year we have cut back on the number of "parties" allowed in class. The only "parties" we can have are at Christmas and the end of the year. During other holidays we can have a special snack during our 15 minute snack time. As hard as it was for me to let go of all the fun games treats I have done in the past, I think it turned out really nice!

Halloween Special Snack - A+ to the amazing mom that made these too cute cookies for the kiddos to enjoy during snack time!

Halloween with my beautiful nieces!

Love spending the weekends with these girls!

How do you celebrate special days in your class?
Leave a comment and then head over to Miss DeCarbo's blog Sugar and Spice and check all the amazing Wordless Wednesday posts!