So Much To Be Thankful For!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!! This week Tuesday, we culminated our Thanksgiving experiences with a Firstie Friendsgiving Feast! Look at all of these friends (52 of them to be exact) gathering together to enjoy a Friendsgiving Feast!! We have been talking about all that we have to be thankful for....we are truly blessed.... and were ecstatic to walk in from recess on Tuesday to a giant table set up with tons of food to share! Our friends enjoyed trying turkey, mashed potatoes, corn, corn bread, cranberries and even salmon! They also enjoyed a piece of pumpkin pie for dessert! It was a huge hit! Without all of your donations, this event would not have been possible. THANK YOU SO MUCH for all of your food and utensil donations and the time you took to make/purchase those items. We love carrying on this tradition each year and it is not possible without your support!

Cora's mom and brother came to help us set up and serve food so he got to sit down and join our friends too! Izzy's mom also came to help set up and serve food. Thank you very much!

After our feast, we talked about what our favorite Thanksgiving Foods were (some might even be things we tried today for the first time) and then we wrote about them! We used our writer's checklist to make sure we were using CAPS, ends, finger spaces, our best handwriting and to make sure that our stories made sense!

Tuesday afternoon also brought Reading Buddies! This was our first time getting to meet our fourth grade buddies. When they come to visit, we spread around the room and take turns reading books to them and having them read to us. It is so fun to get to know the older kids and spend time with them! We will meet with them again sometime next month to read again!

Last week we began a new unit in reading. We are starting to listen to various fairy tales and folktales and compare/contrast them. Last week we started with an oldie but a goodie and one that I would have thought would have been known to all of our kiddos. We started our unit by introducing a fairy tale from France called Cinderella. When talking about the story initially, it was interesting to see some shrugs and looks on faces that showed some may not know what I was talking about.

When asked if they had seen or heard of Cinderella before we found out that 7 of our 25 kiddos had never heard of it before! WOW! I was blown away, thinking about how that story is such a classic! We continued our discussion about the story and then introduced the read aloud - new to some - and discussed the story! Some students knew the original story well and we even spent some time comparing the read aloud to the movie! The read aloud was pretty close to the movie, with a few differences.

Our second fairy tale story was called The Girl in the Red Slippers. This story had some similarities to Cinderella and yet was special and had its own unique qualities. This story originated in Egypt and was about a slave girl named Rhodopis. You can watch the story below (this is very close to the story we read).

Our final story in our fairy tale comparison was an Irish born story called Billy Beg. Our class really enjoyed this story as it was similar to the other two yet very different. In this story, the main character was a hard working prince who received 3 magic items from his loyal friend, a bull. With the three magic items, he became very strong and could not be defeated. Therefore, when the time came, he was able to defeat a dragon and save a princess.

Our class is doing a fantastic job at picking our important information within these stories and using that information to compare and contrast the stories to find similarities and differences! Next week we will be moving on to folktales that all contain main characters no bigger than your thumb!!

At the end of the day on Wednesday we received a visit from a couple of 4th grades who informed us of our upcoming Bucket Wars. A letter will be sent home on Monday, giving you more detailed information about our fundraiser but here is a preview!

In keeping with our current theme of being thankful for what we have, we know that there are often situations where we can give back to our community and provide support to those in need. One way that we did this was through our food drive this week. We collected tons of canned goods that were donated to families in our community who needed a little extra help. Another way that we can give back to our community is by helping raise money for Project Christmas. This has been done in the past in a variety of ways and we are continuing this year with a tradition of a coin drive. All of the money that is raised will be used by our 3rd and 4th grade students to buy hats, gloves, mittens and toys for 8-10 year old boys and girls in Wexford County.

This is going to be a great opportunity to instill in our kiddos that Christmas is a season of giving, not just receiving. If you are willing and able to help please consider sending in any loose change that you may have floating around and your child can put it in our class bucket - the class with the most money raised will also receive an incentive from Mrs. Paulen, although we know that that is not the only reason to give! We already had one friend who said that she wants to donate her school store money to the coin drive instead of spend it on herself - what a generous and thoughtful friend!

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving and a lovely long weekend! I am truly thankful to see each and everyone of these Firsties each day and am looking forward to seeing their smiling faces again next week.....after I take some time to enjoy some much needed family time and probably too much delicious turkey that is! :)