Happy New Year....in my classroom

I wanted to share some New Year's activities that we did in my classroom last week.

First, we read the book Squirrel's New Year's Resolutions by Pat Miller.  This book has a good expaination for resolutions especially for younger students.  I know it can be hard for first graders to understand making a resolution, but this book does a fantastic job of relating it to goals to better ourselves or help others.

 

After reading Squirrel's New Year's Resolutions, we discussed different goals that they could set for themselves.  Next, each student decided upon a goal for this year.  Each student wrote their goal on lined paper.   Over winter break, I found Cara's New Year's door post.  So cute!!  I knew I HAD to do this with my firsties.  I even bought the party horns before New Year's {just in case I couldn't find them afterwards}. 

Then the students drew their face and cut out hair to create a self portrait.  I glued on their party hats {with their New Year's goal}.  I added party horns and pom-poms!!  Here are some pictures of my students' work.

During Math, we played New Year's Roll and Cover from Mrs. Littrels Learning Detectives.  {Actually, we have played it on two different days.... they loved it and keep asking to play more games like this}

I also used Cara's Happy New Year! {Math & Literacy Freebies}. 



I had so much fun celebrating New Year's in my classroom this year.  My students loved each of these activities and they were LEARNING, too.  Shhhhh, don't tell them!!  They were having too much fun to notice that they were actually doing work!  HA, HA :)