Monday Made It...December Edition!

It's the first Monday of the month, so it's time to link up with Tara, over at Fourth Grade Folics
 for Monday Made It!

Monday Made It #1

Today, I'm going to show off an anchor chart I made to go with a cute gingerbread activity.

I don't usually make cute anchor charts because, if I can't create it on the computer, it's just not going to be cute at all! This anchor chart went with the activity you see below. Just click on the image and you can download it for yourself.

First, I gave each child a gingerbread cookie to sample. We brainstormed descriptive attributes and wrote them in the bubbles. If they were synonyms, we wrote them in the same bubble. We also brainstormed strong verbs that mean the same as ate and wrote them on the chart, as well. The children chose their favorite descriptive words and wrote them on their own chart. Then, we ate another cookie and mapped out the order in which we bit into the cookie. We colored a gingerbread cookie to show the order in which we ate it. Finally, we used our coloring sheets, strong verbs, and descriptive attributes to write an essay titled "How I eat a gingerbread cookie." Year after year, this activity is always a favorite and is talked about for months.

Monday Made It #2

Another gingerbread activity I like to do with my students is to have them trace a gingerbread pattern on brown paper and use fabric paint to decorate it. They love the way it dries all puffy and the colors are brilliant. Here is my example:

Monday Made It #3

My class is addicted to the game Scoot. I guess you can say that I am, too! I even blogged about it here. This weekend, I made two new Scoot games to help practice and assess my students' knowledge of contractions.

And, a fun contraction matching game with a winter theme.

Since I don't teach grammar in isolation, I have to make sure to teach all the standards during my writing mini lessons and station time. I try to create fun games and activities to cover every single grammar skill so my students can practice them each week.