I connected the book to what we like to do with our families at Christmas time since all of the characters in the book were able to share Mr. Willowby's Christmas tree with their family.
We read the book. Then we talked with our elbow partners about all of the things we like to do with out families at Christmas time.
We retold and acted out the story using the characters. The kids loved pretending to snip off the top of their tree and throw it out. You can get the picture cards for retelling here.
Then we wrote about one thing we like to do with our families at Christmas time.
I like to me and my mom bake cookies.
I like to see Santa.
I like to open presents.
I like to... I like to see Santa at the mall.
(This friend needs to work on rereading and writing on the correct line :)
I like to bake cookies.
I like to open presents.
We made and decorated ice cream cone Christmas trees. It's been a crazy week and I have way too many projects going on with my kids so I left the green food coloring at home. Oops! Sometimes we just have to improvise... and have snow covered Christmas trees.
We are still working on orally solving word problems, joining groups, and separating them so we used these fun ornaments from First Grade Blue Skies to act out and solve word problems about decorating the tree.
You can pick up Jennifer's freebie here.
A few miscellaneous Christmas things...
our finished Polar Express keepsakes
Two of my teammates read Pete the Cat Saves Christmas and make paper plate Pete's.
This idea also came from one of my teammates. I really wanted to use this book, but I have just run out of time :(
I also found these great lessons for the book Mooseltoe. This first picture came form Mrs. T's First Grade Class. You can check out her original post here. The second picture came from one of my favorite bloggers- Deeanna at Golden Gang Kindergarten. Click here for her Mooseltoe post and freebie.