Polar Express Day

Image from here.

Every year, I show my students the movie The Polar Express. It is one of my FAVORITE holiday movies!

About two weeks ago, I had one of those LIGHTBULB ideas!  I texted my-amazing co-teacher in the evening and said, "I have a wild and crazy idea!  Let's do a Polar Express room transformation and we will tie in the movie and book with fun academic activities!"  She went right along with my idea and were texting ideas back and forth the rest of the night!  We met the next day and planned out some awesome activities!

Two different kinds of math "snowball fights" with these snowballs from Amazon.  On the snowballs, I wrote two sets of the numbers 1-10.  For one of the math activities, the students caught the snowballs (thrown by me and Mrs. Racosky," and then had to write the doubles fact for that number.  You can find that activity here. 

The second math activity, they caught two snowballs and had to write one number in the tens spot one in the ones spot.  Then they illustrated that number with base ten blocks.  You can find that activity here.

Another activity was learning how to make snowflakes (which are hung up in my room as you'll see further on in this post.)  After making them, the students wrote out the process of creating them using the words first, next, then, and last.  They did the same thing with evergreen trees.

Then we read both The Snowy Day AND The Polar Express.  After reading the books, the students completed a venn diagram to compare the stories. The students also wrote their own version of the The Polar Express.


We even made edible Polar Express trains!

For those of you wondering what we used: graham crackers, chocolate chips, M&M'S, skittles, peppermints, sour patch kids (conductors,) and whipped cream!  They were SO yummy!

The whole time this was going on, Mrs. Racosky and I were busy creating scenes for our walls.  I can't truly explain the magic that went into this so I will let you see for yourselves!


This is what the students walked into this morning...
First, a video tour.


Next, the pictures:

The door to my classroom.

To the right of my door.

To the left of my door.

The entrance into my room - complete with train tracks and the "seats" on the train...

As I turned my book corner into the Polar Express train.

The scene with the wolves.  The ever so talented Mrs. Racosky made the wolves, I did the rest.

These are the snowflakes the students made!

Our hot cocoa corner!

Door to my closet covered with "snow."

The Northern Lights

This is my favorite part so I wanted a second picture of it.

One side of the bridge.

The other side of the bridge!

Festive decoration.

My stage - covered with snowballs, tinsel, tea lights, and Mr. Snowman.

The trees made by the students.

The beautiful mountains (complete with train in the top right,) made by the talented Mrs. Racosky.

The kids were AMAZED when they walked in my room this morning!  They couldn't get over it!  We didn't watch the movie until this afternoon.   While they were at lunch, I decorated some more...

I got the floor set up with blankets and pillows!

The snack table is ready!  (Pirate's booty, powdered doughnuts, M&M'S, and graham crackers.

Finally, the students were able to watch the movie, eat their yummy snacks, and drink hot cocoa!

What a truly magical, wonderful, amazing day!  The students loved every minute of it!  Special thanks to Mrs. Racosky for all of her help and hard work!

I hope everyone enjoys their holiday - no matter what you celebrate!

Happy (almost) New Year!

~Mrs. Lynch~

Rock Your School Day Pirate Fun

 

Image from here.
(Please let me know if you need me to remove this image.)

If you've been following my blog for awhile, you know how much I idolize Hope and Wade King, teachers at the Ron Clark Academy who I met in March.  Early in the summer they, and other amazing educators I follow, announced that that on September 20th, they were going to have the first ever ROCK YOUR SCHOOL DAY! Their goal was to have teachers think outside the box and do something different.  I immediately knew what I wanted to do....

International Talk Like a Pirate Day is every year on September 19th.  I've celebrated it the past few years.  (You can click on the "Pirate" tag on the right hand side to see what I've done other years.)  We didn't have school on 9/19 this year, so I figured I would celebrate it on Rock Your School Day - but make it completely different!

For the first time ever, I did a room transformation!  I transformed my room into a PIRATE SHIP!  I knew I couldn't do it alone so on Tuesday, I had three mom's and one grandmother help me while my wonderful co-teacher took my class to another room and worked with them.

 

 

For a video tour of my room, click here.

I couldn't WAIT for my students to arrive this morning!  I wish I had recorded their reactions as they walked in!  They couldn't believe it!

During the morning, the students rotated through four stations.

Station one was with me.  We played a game called Dozen Doubloons.  Students could add up to three cards together to make 12.

 

 

 

 By the way, I promise you they have smiles on their faces!

For our second rotation, my co-teacher, Mrs. Racosky, turned my pirate addition center into a fishing game!  I filled up her water table with jewels, gold, shells, marbles, and popcorn kernels!

The students had to fish for an addition problem and the answer to that problem.  Then, they recorded their answers on the answer sheet Mrs. R. created!

 

 

Rotation three happened quite by accident.  I was at Dollar Tree and found the CUTEST little skulls!  I quickly turned that into a fun addition center.  (If you are wondering why I focused so much on math today, it's because it is the focus of our School Improvement Plan.)  Here is the worksheet I created for them.

 

Students were going to use the skulls to help them figure out ways to make numbers one through eight.  For example, if they were going to make five, they would take five skulls, and drop them on the yellow work mat.  They would see how many are on each side and write an addition problem on their blue recording sheet.

 

The final rotation was with Mrs. Racosky.  They played a Pirate themed game with context clues.  You can find that game here.

 

 After lunch, the students completed the STEM project from Deanna Jump's Pirate unit.  The students used clay to build ships. 

We were going to see how many pennies it would take before our boats would sink, but.....every single one of their boats, including mine, sunk right away!  OY!

 

They still had fun!  Oh well, some lessons just go that way sometimes!

Next we played a version of the Hot Lava game - pirate version of course!  The students had to use the items to "build a bridge," to help them get from their pirate ship (still in the "water,") to land.  It was hard, but they enjoyed it!

 

Then it was time for my favorite activity.  We played a LIFE SIZE VERSION of Hungry Hungry Hippos!  I have to thank Hope & Wade for the inspiration for this one.  Now, I had every intention of having the students complete work with this.  I even made a worksheet for it.

 

Each balloon had a number on it.  They were going to take two of the balloons, write the numbers down on their sheet, and add them together.   However, that part didn't happen.  They had a BLAST!

 

 

 

 

We also did a Pirate photo shoot.  Here are a few of the pics:

 

 The students had fun with two Pirate brain breaks!

Here is the first one.  Here's the second one.

 

I was playing pirate music throughout the day. You can find those songs on this playlist.  At one point, two of my students linked arms and started dancing.  It was SO CUTE!

 

The students had an AMAZING day!  Thank you to everyone who made this day possible!  I truly appreciate it!

~Captain Lynch~