the week before the week before Christmas Break...

Just a quick post about what we did this week in first grade! As I said in my last post I was gone for 3 days last week so it was kind of nice to get back to my first grade home away from home. :) As I suspected, the kiddos had some fun while I was gone, but I quickly got them back to rights. Or as much as possible since it's, ya know, just a few weeks before the jolly man shows up bearing presents.

So what did we do this week? Well, we continued our work with Christmas Around the World, which is turning out to be SO much fun! I'll have to remember to snap some pictures next week of their little suitcases with their minibooks and maps. I am surprised at how many connections this group has been able to make about the similarities and differences across countries-they're a bunch of smart cookies!

In math, we're tackling our fractions standard. I am SO not a fan of our math curriculum's way of teaching fractions so I'm pulling in a lot of stuff that I've made. I created some supplemental resources last year and that's been the big focus of my math block this week. It's got cut and paste activities for equal parts and halves/fourths, a vocabulary journal, anchor chart pieces, and some more engaging math tasks related to cookies, candy bars, and Play-Doh. If you want to take a peek you can find it here!

At the end of the week I was able to squeeze in a little bit of holiday crafting fun.

We made these stockings (thanks to A Cupcake for the Teacher for the freebie!) and they turned out so cute. On the back the kids wrote what they wanted their stockings to be stuffed with. Their responses cracked me up. One of my kiddoes said she wanted her stocking to be full of "perfume." Another one said "candy and DVDs" (hey, I wouldn't mind my stocking being stuffed with those things, either!).  We will be doing a lot more crafting next week and I can't wait!