Pete the Cat Saves Christmas Inspired Activity & FREEBIE

This week we kicked off our Geometry unit by learning about plane shapes. I LOVE teaching about plane shapes because first graders LOVE manipulating them and there are just so many hands-on activities to do. And, of course, if you can throw in some seasonal activities it just ups holiday spirit and level of engagement in your classroom! So, I pulled out this Santa Pete activity from TpT store:

I created the recording sheet the night before we completed the activity in class. You can find it for  FREE here. 

Another plane shapes activity that my students really enjoyed was when we played "Mystery Matheticians" and solved some shape riddles. Shout out to Reagan Tunstall -this activity comes from her Guided Math Units. 

The kiddos had so much fun, I decided to let a little mystery spill over into our Reading/Language Arts block. This week we were writing 5 Senses Poems. So I came up with a Mystery 5 Senses Poem activity. 

This picture is of the mystery poem I created as an example. I forgot to snap pictures of the kid's sticky notes, but some were hilarious. The class split into groups. Each group had to fill out five sticky notes, one for each of the five senses. Then, the class read the poem and tried to guess "What is it?" There was a kinda foul odor in the boy's bathroom and one group went to town with it. Their sensory poem was about the boy's bathroom! Ewww. I suggest using sentence strips in place of sticky notes. 

Are you fortunate enough to have Ipads in your classroom??? My campus has a rotating Ipad cart schedule. Here are two great apps you should know about: 

The first one is called SeeSaw. My class used See Saw to illustrate plot elements and then record a voice over explaining the illustration. Then, we used it again to illustrate a connection we made to a story. My favorite conection was one a student made to Cinderella. He drew the wicked step mother and himself riding a bull. His connection was that the stepmother didn't let Cinderella do anything she wanted to and his mom refused to let him ride a bull!! In th pic below a student is recording the plot of Cindy Rocks and the Three Bears. 

I recently learned about an app called Chatterpix Kids. The app allows you to take a picture of an object and record a voice over. Add a mouth to the picture and the picture "talks." You can also add props and clothing. My girlies at home LOVE IT (they are 3 and 6). I think my class can use the app to take a picture of a shape fill-in and then record a voice over explaining which small shapes were used to fill in the large shape, or to snap a picture of a solid shape and talk about it's attributes. The possibilities are endless. 

Happy holidays!