Over the weekend I went up to visit my parents in Brillion, WI. They were working hard replacing the roof on the house. I was on babysitting duty reading TONKA books until my lips bled (best dollar I spent at a rummage sale EVER!) My mom was lamenting on this windy, rainy day for two reasons. First, this is not the ideal weather for roofing a house. Second, according to her, "Mother's Day is always yucky weather!!" She said that fathers get a day in June that is always nice, so it isn't fair.
My aunt countered with, "But we always got the nice school-made gifts, while the kids were out of school before Father's Day."
I'm not going to get into the rest of the discussion, but it did go on from there.
Which brings me to the project the 3rd and 4th grade English class has been working on. We are studying some of my very favorite words: adjectives! I always felt bad about the lack of Father's Day gifts, so I try to do a little something for the dads. This year I found two very similar projects. Through Pinterest, I found the blog Mrs. Lirette's Learning Detectives, which brought me to A Cupcake for the Teacher's Teachers Pay Teachers Store. Now, if I was a kindergarten teacher, I would have purchased these in a heartbeat to use in the classroom. It has the adjectives ready to print as well as the written sayings. There is a Donut for Dad and To Mom with a Cherry on Top. However, I wanted the students to generate their own adjectives and write it out themselves. The results were quite fetching if I do say so myself! 
I started off by having them make a list of adjectives to describe their moms in their journals. After about seven minutes, I had them make a list of adjectives to describe their dads. Now, it was pretty tough for some of them to ONLY think of adjectives because when you ask a child to describe their parents, the first word that comes to their head is usually an occupation. I let them use some nouns. I mean, if you want to say your dad's a farmer, what adjective do you use to describe that? I did tell them to think of adjectives that someone would need in order to do their job, which helped a little! 
One of the fourth graders noticed the "I am..." poems still displayed in the back of the room and recognized the adjectives. She got a lot of ideas! For the ones that were really struggling, I brought the group together and we all listed some adjectives together. They could write down anything they thought would work as we brainstormed together.
I asked the students for their mom's favorite color besides red or brown. They were okay with not being able to choose brown, but the fact that red was off the table was nerve-racking for some of them. In the end, they did all make a decision for the ice cream. I made tracers for the ice cream scoop and the cherry. They shared them in their groups. While one person was tracing, the rest of the group was writing "I love you with a cherry on top!" on white-triangles. They wrote in pencil and then covered the writing in permanent marker. Then they could work on their adjectives. I had made white strips of paper which they could write multiple adjectives on a strip and cut between. After I checked their adjective spelling, they were able to go over the pencil marks with colored marker. Each group needed to share a pack of markers as well. This worked fairly well because each student was working independently and together at the same time! There were enough things for the students to do that didn't have to sit and wait around for someone else to finish. Because they were finished on Friday, they were sent home right away. As a result, I don't have student examples for the ice cream cones. 
I had tracers for the donuts, which the student cut out of brown paper. This time, I asked for Dad's favorite color. Some of the students were stumped. I asked them what color Dad wears most often... their answer... BLUE jeans! There were a lot of default blues, a couple John Deere Greens and one International Red. Not everyone is finished with this project.
Tomorrow, for the ones who are finished, I will put them into groups to play Slapples to Slapples, a school-friendly version of Apples to Apples. I thought I found it on Teachers pay Teachers, however, I can't find the same thing again. It was free when I got it! The kids LOVE it, and they are practicing with adjectives at the same time! I did find this which I think is just an updated version of the game. It costs money, but I think it would be worth it! I will have to print the cards out on card stock so they last longer. 
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