More Gingerbread and Landforms

We continued learning about landforms today with a couple of really fun activities from Jeannie Hunter's fun landform packet, which you can find {HERE}.  First, we made landform cootie catchers (fortune tellers).  It was fun for me to refresh my memory on how to make these because I haven't made them since I was a kid.  It all came back to me quickly!  The kids just had to cut out the pre-made cootie catchers, like this:

Then, I modeled for them how to fold it.  They didn't have any trouble with it, so it didn't take much time.  Inside the cootie catchers, the definitions of various landforms were written.  The kids worked in partners quizzing each other.  I let them use their landform mini books to check their answers.  Here is what the cootie catchers looked like:

After this activity, we had one more!  We played landform concentration, for which they worked in groups of four and took turns trying to match the landform names with the correct pictures.  Here is what that looked like:

No match...

Not yet....

Got a match!!

They had SO much fun with these activities, and I know they are going to do an amazing job on our landforms quiz tomorrow.  I also continued to use some gingerbread activities in my reading and writing small groups today.  I got these activities from Linda Kamp's gingerbread unit, found {HERE}.

For my reading small groups, I used this great spinner activity to check students' comprehension.  After we read part of the story together, they took turns spinning.  Whatever topic they landed on, I looked at the question card for that topic and asked them a question.  I required them to answer in complete sentences.  It went really well with all three groups I met with today!

Finally, I observed my students while they were writing today and wrote down the names of every student who was not using punctuation correctly.  I pulled these students and did this gingerbread cookie punctuation sort, for which they needed to read a sentence and put it on the cookie tray with the correct punctuation mark.  Then, they had to write their own sentences on the recording sheet.  This activity made them all hungry because it was right before lunch! I'm hoping that I will see these students editing their writing for punctuation tomorrow when they're working on their final copies!  

We had such a fun-filled, yet learning-packed day today!  I love how the day flies by when there are quality products to use like these :)