Happy……………Day!

So, today is the official birthday for the good Dr., who shall not be named. :)

(picture borrowed from a pin on "Really Good Stuff")

Tomorrow (and for the rest of the next couple of weeks), my students will be participating in some fun "Featured Author" activities.

Last week, we kicked off our celebration by making "Thinklings".
I don't know what they are actually called, but they are the bird-like creatures from the book "Oh! The Thinks You Can Think!"

My inspiration came from Babbling Abby, but since her cute little packet is no longer available (ahem…), I had to create my own templates.
I think they turned out pretty cute!
What do you think?

I can't provide the template for the bird creatures, but they are pretty easy to make, if you try!

However, I'll include the writing template and thought bubble I used for our project.

Simply click here for the paper that goes on top of the Thinklings' shirts!

For this project, I asked my students to sit quietly for 2 minutes and just think…. 

(btw, that is no small feat for this group of kiddos!

We are a very wiggly, energetic group this year! Oh my)

…then each student contributed a thought to our graphic organizer:

Some of their thoughts were creatively zany!
A crab fighting a buffalo! Really?

As you can see, they went in all directions.
From hot-glazed donuts (student after my own heart) to being with friends, and even "light and black", it was incredibly interesting to hear the thoughts of six- and seven-year-olds!

Then we read the book, AND THE STUDENTS DIDN'T SEE THE ILLUSTRATIONS UNTIL AFTER THEY WERE GIVEN TIME TO VISUALIZE the words used.

After listening to the story, we drew WITH PENCIL (no color at first) on our thought bubble paper what we had been thinking.
Then we added some color and started to put together our 'Thinklings'.

I was very glad to finally get some work out in the hall!
I'm telling you, this group of firsties wipes. me. out.

We also took some crazy pictures with these cute photo booth props from Chela's etsy shop:

You can't read the poster, but the girls holding it made a poster for one of the good Dr.'s famous quotes:

"Why fit in when you were born to stand out?"

If you want these cute little props for yourself, read more on Tania's blog, My Second Sense! 

As I'm typing, there is snow coming down, and I'm praying for it to fall harder kind of hoping for another snow day.
We haven't had very many this year….a few more won't hurt us, right?
I know it will affect our celebration, but I'm okay with that:)
We all must make sacrifices...

Enjoy your Sunday, friends!
7 more school days ( & 2 days of P-T conferences!) until Spring Break:), for me!