Back From Break Activity: Happy New Years Freebies

Can you believe Christmas has come and gone already? 

I hope everyone had a great one!
I awoke to this scene this morning...

Very unexpected and very pretty...but just about 5 days too early!

I will be back at school next week so the prepping and planning has begun. 

I love starting the first day back with something that will make my kids smile...and think a little too.  One of my very favorite children's poets is Kenn Nesbitt. 

Nesbitt’s poetry for children is “irrepressible, unpredictable, and raucously popular,” in the words of former Children’s Poet Laureate J. Patrick Lewis. 

Kenn Nesbitt has created a site especially for kids called Poetry4Kids.  I have it on my students' class website and they love visiting it.  You can check it out here: 

Poetry For Kids

I will be using one of his fun poems on our first day back after break. We will glue the poem, 

Hooray!  Hooray! It's New Year's Day inside our poetry journals.  My students can work on their fluency by reading it three ways and then can illustrate and label their visualizations. We'll add some pizzazzy words from this poem to our word wall .  Words like: galore, distant, wondrous, anew all help to expand my kids' reading, writing and speaking vocabularies. 

I created a quick poetry follow up to go along with this poem.  Students will dig back into the text to locate proper nouns, compound words, etc. 

After reading all of the ridiculous resolutions listed in this poem, we'll have a more serious discussion about more realistic goals that my kids can make for themselves. By third grade, students are better able to understand that they are in control of their future.  We've been talking about mindset all year long and add a new mindset message each month.
You can find these in my TPT store.


Monthly Mindset Messages

Goal setting is an important part of  our third grade day. 

I'll give my students time to think and write about some attainable goals for the year ahead. 

I'll have them fill it out on this balloon shaped paper.  Add a string to the bottom and it makes a great display. 

I'll keep the New Year's theme going during math center time.  Students continue to need practice in reading and writing six digit numbers in standard, expanded and word forms. 

I'll have them work with a partner on this activity.  That way they can help "coach" each other. 

We'll end math time with a problem solving partners session.  Here students will answer a two step word problem, work on elapsed time and rounding.  These are all skills that have already been taught but that kids need extra review and practice with. 

I've updated my New Year's File on Teacher Pay Teacher.  You can access all these activity pages there. I've made it a FREE item so just click the link below if you are interested. 

Be sure to follow my blog / store.  I'm working on new files that will be upload soon!

New Years File: 2018

Please visit me at my Youtube channel where I will share more from my classroom!

Youtube Channel

Virginia SOLs and Ancient China: Learning About the Past

Third graders in Virginia now will learn about the ancient civilizations. Much of our social studies time will focus on a look at how these people lived and the contributions they made.  We started with Ancient China and my students are loving the learning connected to this unit. Of course we are starting with books....lots and lots of books! I checked out a ton of both fiction and nonfiction.

Here is our nonfiction browsing wall: 

And our classroom library: 

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We began our unit by recording our prior knowledge and then questions we had about this ancient civilization. 

Students are reading and researching during their "Read to Self" or "Read with a Partner" reading rounds during my small group time. 

We are dividing our learning log into sections for each of the Ancient Civilizations that we will cover. 

Students cut and glue note sheets that correspond with a teaching slide show I use.

Our learning gets documented along with maps we make and vocabulary word cards that students can use to study with.


We will work on some craft making this week and I'll be back to post how that fits into my day.
In the meantime, those interested in checking out the materials I use to teach this unit can head here:

Ancient China Bundle