A to Z Community Helpers

As a culminating activity to our study of community helpers my class made the cutest A to Z community helper class book. We brainstormed a community helper for each letter of the alphabet. Then the students told me what that helper does and I typed up their information. Each student had a page to illustrate. Here are a couple pages from the book.

Click HERE for the list my students came up with.

Parent Helper Gift

I have ten parent helpers this year and needed to come up with an end of the year gift that was affordable. I found these cute little pots at the dollar store and wrote with paint pens on each one "Thanks for helping us grow!" I got the flowers at Trader Joe's. Each morning for the last 10 school days the students have written a thank you note to each parent thanking them for their contribution to our class. I've stapled the letters into a book. It's not much but I did want to show each parent how much they have been appreciated.

I have truly been blessed to have all the help this year.

Community Helper Book

We've been learning about "Our Community" and have been working on a "Community Helper" book. After I've read a story we make a circle map of the information we've learned about that particular helper. Then the students write about that helper. Finally we do a directed drawing lesson that shows the community helper doing their job. The students love seeing their own little face in the picture.

These words get written on the left side of the page an a thin sheet of paper that can be glued in below the hole for the face.

Here are a couple of the other pages we did.

 We finished the book with: When I grow up......

Daily 5 Library

I'm gearing up to begin "Daily 5" next year so I've been working on organizing my library. I found these wire baskets at Target for $2.50. They are perfect for organizing the books and attaching a label on the front with little clips. The beautiful bookshelf was custom made to fit along that wall by my youngest brother (a cabinet maker by trade). I'm so spoiled to have him. Thanks Tom! So far the library has stayed in perfect order due to the labels and students are quick to discover if a book is out of place and find it's correct home. My students have been highly motivated to read now that they can easily find books of interest.