Pirate Family Literacy Night

Arrr you ready for Pirate Family Literacy Night?    Ha! I crack myself up. Every year we host our families for a fun night of reading and writing activities in a theme.    Pirates is a fun theme with tons of possibilities.   I mean, think about it. There are hook hands and peglegs and  ships with huge sails.    There are treasure maps and jewels and deserted islands.   You can say Arrrrr! a lot, and wear scarves and hats. What's not to like?   So how do you put together a family literacy night, a la pirate?   Well, here you go!   About a month before Literacy Night, I start the planning. I figure out what stations I'm going to have, what materials I need to make and copy.    I also find out who will be able to help out at a station or at the front of the school.   

Event planning form from my Instructional Coaching MegaPack

I cut, stack, and laminate (or I have the lovely volunteers at our school help with it.)   About a week before Literacy Night, I start putting samples and materials together. I go shopping and buy everything we need. I put together the bags for the door (including a bookmark and a reading pledge). I talk to our librarian to make sure we're ready with the free books we give away - one to each child. And I put together the snack station.    This year's snack was this adorable craft:  

  To make it, I stuffed plastic snack-sized bags with a popsicle stick (for spreading frosting), a mini chocolate doughnut, a pretzel stick, and a handful of goldfish. I also cut up little pieces of white paper for the sail and purchased the little paper plates and frosting.  

I downloaded How I Became a Pirate to play in the background while the kids were working on their snack.

At the front door, our librarian handed out books to our kids!

This was the Treasure Map station: a fun word family game. Kids made the pieces by cutting them out of yardstick and then put them in a paper bag. The kids and parents took turns drawing cards to fill up their treasure maps!

Kids and parents read these fun pirate partner plays with their hats and hooks on!

This was our reading station: Pirate Cove. We set up comfy chairs and spots to sit and read and provided baskets of books. Our super art teacher made this ship, too!

This station was a huge hit: Digging for Buried Treasure. I took two plastic wading pools and had some helpers fill them with balled-up butcher paper in yellow and brown (to represent sand).

Then I copied these gems and coins on cardstock and mixed them up in the paper balls.

Teachers read a card  with a prefix (at the big kids station) or a rhyming word (at the little kids station) and kids dug through the pools to find the matching words!

At the last station, kids wrote adorable stories about how they became pirates and then they made a paper plate pirate!

 

 

Want to learn more? Check out my How to Plan an Awesome Family Night video!

 

  Looking for fun pirate ideas? Check out my Pirate Theme Pinterest Board full of pirate inspiration.    You can get everything you need to run your own fun pirate family night at TPT! And now it's available in English and in Spanish!  

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Makeover! Made-over Product Giveaway!

So everybody can use a makeover sometimes, right? Honestly, if someone credible walked up to me and said, "Girl, you need a makeover," I'd say, "Yes, please. I don't know what else to do with all this." and then I'd let them be in charge.   That's probably not going to happen.    So instead, I did a product makeover! I mean, someone should feel pretty, right?  

I made over one of my dumpy old products. It was from my first year on TPT.  It was sad. So sad.

And now it's not! Now it's happy and shiny and new! 

It includes this adorable craftivity (which my kids loved)  

  If you already downloaded my Government Pack, please download it again for the nice, new version.    I also made over my hideous Genre Study Book from four years ago. I'm so excited with the new design! 

 

If you've already purchased it, please download it again for the nice, new version!   And if you haven't bought it yet, here's your chance to get it for free! Just leave me a comment with the which product you'd rather win: the Genre Study Book or the Government Pack. I'll choose three winners over the weekend! Good luck!      Pin It

Our latest book of the month: One Tiny Turtle!

Throughout the year, we've had several school-wide Books of the Month. Each month, every teacher receives a copy of the book and uses it to teach reading and writing lessons. This month (April), the Book of the Month is One Tiny Turtle by Nicola Davies. This book is the charming story of a Loggerhead Turtle's life and represents an incredible story of survival and instinct. It's a great book to integrate life science concepts, too.  Whenever we have a new Book of the Month, I create a bulletin board to introduce the book to our teachers and students. This was our bulletin board this month.

To share the story of the turtle's life, I included sea turtle facts all over the board.

I was especially happy with the 3-D elements of the board, including the seaweed and the border. To make the ruffled border, I cut strips of butcher paper. I staple the end down onto the board, made a ruffle and stapled above it. Then I made another and stapled, and so on. It added some wavy-oceany-texture to the board!

Our first grade teachers were responsible for putting together a display to represent their student responses to the book, and they really rose to the occasion. It's a tall order because our display cases are large and take up an entire section of the main hallway - that's a lot of space to fill, but the teachers did an incredible job! Below are some of the adorable products they created with their kids! Each class made a special product to respond to the book!

These turtles feature life cycles on their shells!

Tissue paper turtles must have been so much fun to make!

The spirals include little cards where the students sequenced the events of the story, and below are 3-d dioramas of the sea turtle's nest.

The kids retold the maine events of the story in an accordion fold.

How cute are these 3-D shells? The teacher did a beautiful job of creating a realistic environment!

These turtles are hanging on strips of box tape back-to-back to make them look like they're swimming through the space!

That's a lot of display case!

The teachers did a beautiful job responding to our Book of the Month! Pin It

Book of the Month: Ruby's Wish

Why did I spend half an hour making Chinese lanterns out of construction paper?

Because this month, our school-wide Book of the Month is Ruby's Wish! 

Ruby's Wish is a great story about a little girl who lives in China in the past. She is part of a large family with many, many children. The boys in the family are treated specially and allowed to go to school with no other responsibilities. But Ruby wants to go to school, too! She shows her grandfather how much she wants to go. I always get choked up at the end, even when I read it to the teachers (so embarrassing). 

So this month, to display the Book of the Month, this is the bulletin board I put together.

The curtains and the "introducing..." part are always up for the Book of the Month board, but we change out the cover and the other materials on the board with each new book. This time, I opted for some fun facts about Chinese New Year (which Ruby celebrates in the book. 

I found my facts here: 18 Top Facts about Chinese New Year

I decorated each fact with adorable clipart from Creative Clips

And I learned to make the Chinese lanterns from this TPT freebie from First Grade Hip Hip Hooray!

Will you teach your kids about Chinese New Year this year? What will you do?

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Hats off to a New Year Craftivity, Bulletin Board, and Freebie

I love winter break. I can stay up as late as I want, and when I know I can stay up till two thirty, I seem to get more done during the day. I'm a night owl. I'm envious of people who are morning people but my natural time clock says stay up till two thirty and sleep till eleven.  That's so not going to fly next week when I go back to work.  Maybe I should make getting up early one of my New Year's resolutions.  Ehhhhhhh nope. Tonight in my keyboarding frenzy (with a glass full of chocolate vodka - thanks, Mom for the gift- and Dexter on Netflix) I worked and worked on a cute idea I had for a bulletin board display to help kids think about their goals and resolutions for the upcoming year! 

For only 2.00 at my TPT store, you get materials for the craftivity and a bulletin board display! And if you'd like a little taste in the form of a freebie, check out my Countdown to New Year's Goals freebie on TPT! 

Happy third day of January! Pin It