The week before any holiday is always extra busy... and this year wasn't any different. Wrapping up a novel, adding in a little PIE, and celebrating with my school buddies for a Friends-giving made this week a success.
I love this simple recipe for crockpot meatballs. It's super easy - literally just throw the ingredients into a crockpot, and let it cook on low for 4 hours. The students didn't even realize they were cooking over in the corner of the room. It was my addition to our Friends-giving lunch potluck. A bag of original meatballs, and equal parts of chili sauce and grape jelly. That's it.
I also love to do this PIE activity with my kids right before Thanksgiving. In past years I used 2 paper plates - which meant cutting it and then stapling. This year I simplified it and just used one plate - the top was turned into a pie (their choice of filling and coloring in a crust), then the kids used sharpie to divide it into 4 pieces and writing Authors, P, I, E. Behind each piece the kids had to write a definition and an example of each type. Super easy, but it was a great assessment tool.
As for real pie, we had that too - the kids brought in donations of pumpkin pie for our Thanksgiving feast. I split it up and served it with whipped cream as we watched a short Thanksgiving movie. I LOVE Thanksgiving in the classroom!
We also finished up reading Ivan before break, so we created Ivan using 2 shades of gray paper, and then wrote opinion paragraphs on his belly. An art project always seems to make finishing a beloved novel a little easier. Directions for this craft are over on one of my old posts. :)
Hope you had a great day!
