Fairy Tales

Our classroom story last week was Cinderella, which meant that all other ELA activities revolved around fairy tales. In addition to reading many versions of Cinderella, comparing and contrasting them, and writing our own fairy tales, the students did an activity in which they read a fairy tale of their choosing, completed a story map about their fairy tale, and then created a brown paper bag puppet. The puppets turned out wonderfully and the students did a great job of presenting their mini book reports through their puppets. What a fun and creative way to study fairy tale elements!

Flat Stanley

About a month ago, we began to read the story Flat Stanley. In this story, a boy gets flattened by a bulletin board and is able to go on tons of cool adventures, such as traveling to California through the mail. We tied this story into regions and friendly letters and sent out our own Flat Stanley's about two weeks ago. We waited very patiently for our first Stanley to return, and he finally arrived on Friday morning!! Needless to say, the kids were beyond excited (and I was, too!!!). This Stanley came from the distant land of Charlotte, NC (47 miles away, FYI) and the kids were SO interested in all Stanley had done while away. We're keeping track of our travels on our region map and will then make a book out of our adventures. I cannot wait to see where else our Stanley's travel!

UPDATE: After the kids left today, I got another letter and a big box addressed to my students. I can't wait for them to open it tomorrow morning and see what's inside!!

TALL Tales

We studied tall tales for the past few weeks and the kids loved learning all about the adventures Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, Johnny Appleseed, and John Henry went on. To finish up the unit, the students got a chance to create their own tall tale figure and write their own tall tale about their figure. There was one catch, though - when drawing their figures, they had to actually be TALL!! The kids came up with some creative ideas and it was a lot of fun to read all of their stories!