25 Days of Christmas

Merry Christmas to all of my blogging buddies and fellow teachers!!  Here is a game for you to use in your small groups when you get back in January.  My babies will be Dibeled on Nonsense Word Fluency in January and I have not really done much practice with it, so I thought this would be perfect! Hurry... before you MELT!!!

Click HERE to get your copy!! :)

Gifts for Parents

If you are in need of a cute gift for your kids to give to their parents this may be perfect. I have been doing this cute snowman ornament for several years and my parents love it and it is fairly easy!! Just stuff a clear ornament with cotton, add the face, scarf and puff balls and there you go!! We use craft glue for the felt pieces and hot glue the puff balls ahead of time so they are ready!! :) we usually do this with 2 students at a time during small group time. Let me know if you have any questions. :)

Busy busy busy!! The Gingerbread Man Fun continues!!

Is there really one more week left before we are out for our much needed vacation!! Wow!! That is almost hard to believe!! We have spent the last 2 weeks on The Gingerbread Man and we had such a great time!!! We have written about the Gingerbread man, graphed info about how we took our first bite of him and did a science experiment about him!! Phew! And that's just the stuff I can remember!! LOL
Here are a few pictures of the fun! Most of these ideas came from Deanna Jumps Gingerbread Math and Literacy Pack.



Poor guy!! :)









Awwww....



Science Fair Project!! Now this was fun! It was in one of Deanna's science packs!!









I hope you all have a great week!! I have been do busy I haven't even had a chance to make anything new!! I will post some freebies soon!!! :)

Gingerbread Fun - Thanks Julie Lee :)

We have had a lot of fun with our gingerbread books and activities this week. During small groups we did some rhyming fun and Word Family Sorting thanks to Julie Lee!! :)



Instead of putting the word on the gingerbread - I made it a little more rigorous for my children and found pictures - this way they actually had to sound out and write the word on their own. This actually will continue into next week when they go back and read their words and find the matching gingerbread man and color to match. :)


We also did the Gumdrop Lane activity and we used the number word spinner. I added to this activity also by putting up a color code so they had to go back and color the numbers they wrote a certain color and then count how many of each color they had. :)












I love that these activities are easily adaptable to the needs of my children!! Thanks Julie!! :)

Cyber Monday SALE

Use the above code on Cyber Monday - November 28th - and receive 30% off all my products in my store!  Don't miss out on this great deal!!  

Math Night

Last Thursday our school hosted a Math Night for our parents.  They were invited to come and learn about simple games they could play with their kids and then we gave them the opportunity to have a "Make it Take it" time so they could actually take home some of the games that were discussed.

We decided to share how easy it is to use dice as a learning tool so we shared the simple game of Roll Say, Keep, only we changed it to Roll, Count, Keep.  We included a dice and everything they would need to play this game at home.  We received a very positive response from the parents that took advantage of this opportunity.  I have included the document that we provided in hopes that you may be able to use it the same way or in your classroom.  We also shared that they could use the cards to play memory also!! :)  My wonderful colleague who I have posted about before - Ms. Jayme - was the creator of this gem.  Enjoy!!

Roll, Count, Keep

We made it!!!

I was really worried there for a little while... Friday seemed DAYS away.... Yesterday!!! Probably because I was at school for 13 hours (but who's counting????) which included a family thanksgiving feast at lunch, and a reenactment of the first thanksgiving which included 100 little pilgrim and Indians (22 of which were the cutest little Indians you have ever seen!!) AND we had a Family Math Night that evening that unfortunately drew less then stellar attendance - so by the time I got home that night after 8:00 I was one tired puppy!!! We did have a fantabulous time at our reenactment!! The kids had a great time and ate some very interesting foods that were present at the first Thanksgiving. :)




We made butter to bring to our feast. The kids shook and shook and were amazed when the liquid they started with, suddenly turned into a solid!!!!!

See I told you they were the cutest Indians!!!

This a the costume that we made. They were so excited to finally be able to wear them after all the hard work they did with them!!

On our way!!!

Yum!!!!

I hope you all have a very restful Thanksgiving!! God bless you if you still have to go for a couple days next week. I really don't think I could have made it one it two more days!!

Always just one more thing...

Do you ever feel like you are almost caught up, only to realize that there is now yet ANOTHER "thing" that is required/needed/due or all of the above?  This seems to be the story of my life these days and is the reason that it has been more than a week since my last post!!  Please tell me that I am not alone!!!!!!  I have had a few moments of relief these last few days...enjoying some Fall fun with my favorite 7 year old!! :)

Among all the craziness, we have managed to have some fun - all surrounding Veteran's Day. Thanks again Kim Adsit for being the supplier of our fun!!  Hooray for Veteran's Day!!  We did so many things out of this unit over the past 2 weeks and of course I didn't take a picture of half of it...yet. 

One of the first things we did was Label a Hero!  The kiddos labeled a soldier of their own as I labeled mine.  

We also created a brace map for the parts of the flag.  As we discussed the flag and added it's different parts to our map,  the children created one of their own.  

Download HERE

The next day the kids recreated the brace map again, this time using the pieces from Kim's unit - this being one of the things I did not take a picture of.  They turned out so cute too!!  I will try and remember to snap a couple on Monday.  The other things we did that I didn't take any pictures of are an adorable soldier and Veteran's Day book and an Ordinal Numbers activity that really helped my kids grasp that concept even better!  Oh, we also did the All About Number 11 activity today!  See, so much I can't remember it all!!  If you missed out this year - go buy it now so you will have it for next year!!!  You will not regret it!!

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!!  1 more week until our Thanksgiving Break!!  Yippee!!!  Next week brings A Thanksgiving Feast and butter making!!!! :)

I get by with a little help from my friends...

I was looking back through my photos from the last couple weeks and this one just stuck out to me... I think it is so sweet how they take care of each other... Makes my heart smile!!

I don't know what was wrong with me these last few weeks but I just couldn't remember to take pictures of all the fun we have been having... Here is what I did manage to capture!! :)



We made Deanna Jump's Scarecrow and completed the book that goes on his belly! We have been working on labeling so we added labels to our scarecrow's body. :) oops- just noticed my toes... I soo need a pedi!! :)











Here is the Roll Say Keep (Stamp) game we did during small group - they really got into the stamping part. :)



We did the Haunted House Patterning activity - they loved using the foam halloween shapes I found at The Dollar Tree. :)












We made Frankie and ended up using his as our door decoration!!


We have been discussing positional words in Math and my kiddos loved the Halloween position word with a Twist activity by Sue eth Arnold and Robynn Drerup! I can't figure out how to link up to them on my phone so if you want the link - send me an email and I can send you in the right direction. :) for a follow up we made an entry in our Math Journal and I was really impressed with how cute their little drawings were!!





Deanna's Sticky Web Experiment was also big fun for my babies this week. This was one of those "forgotten camera" moments. Oops!! :)



I hope you all have a restful weekend! My daddy is here for a visit and my baby girl is excited beyond belief. She loves her grandpa!! :)


This was a few weeks ago at the airport on our way to visit friends in Florida!! :)