12.19.15: The Best Things We Did This Week!

Hey, teacher friends! We made it! I am sitting here with a lovely cup of coffee and relishing the fact that I have 16 days of blissful break time. This is one of the times of the year when it's GREAT to be a teacher!

I am really sad, though, because I didn't get nearly enough pictures of all the cutie-patootie things we did this week. I was so busy doing the fun stuff with the kids that snapping pictures just didn't happen. Sigh.

Wednesday was Grinch Day...we read the story, did some character anaylsis, watched the cartoon version, and did some writing. I do have pictures of the writing activity, which I saw over on Mrs. Lemon's blog:

"I feel grouchy when my mommy wakes me up." HA! Yes, waking up makes most of our class grouchy, it seems!

I made the pieces myself but I found a pin on Pinterest that showed exactly what pieces you will need. I used a frame I had in a set from TPT to make the face and then played around with some shapes in PowerPoint to create the eyes and hat.

We also made Grinch ornaments. I don't have pictures of the exact ones the kids made, but this is the one Little Miss made last year:

They are super easy to make. I buy two bags of green feathers at the craft store and clear ornaments. (This year I lucked out and got plastic ones at Michael's for 70% off, which made them .29 each!) I pop the tops off and let the kids stuff the insides with feathers and then stick a red glitter heart sticker on the front. Boom! Easy peasy Christmas craft.

What else did we do? Let's see...I did some things that I've seen on other awesome blogs like the adorable mice from The First Grade Parade to go along with "If You Take A Mouse to the Movies". I found the craft templates that Mary from Sharing Kindergarten posted as a freebie here (with Cara's permission, no worries!). They turned out really cute and I am sad I didn't snap any pictures. :( We also did some snowmen word problems. I was going to be SO ahead of the game and post them in the hallway yesterday afternoon to have ready for January...but then my parent volunteers accidentally passed them out to the kids yesterday when we were trying to get all of their ornaments/crafts/goodies into their goody bags. I didn't realize it until yesterday afternoon when I was getting the room straightened up. OOPS! I will have to come up with something else cute!

Yesterday was party-palooza. We used to spread all of the holiday stuff out a little bit, but now our principal prefers for us to have all of the crazy stuff on one day! Yesterday we watched The Polar Express in our jammies, went to the holiday sing-along, and had our holiday party in the afternoon. I had approximately 17 minutes with the kids aside from all of that, haha! It was a crazy day but a good one.

I hope everyone has a merry Christmas and a fabulous holiday break! January will be here before we know it!

The Best Things We Did This Week (12.12.15)

Hey, hey! 2 blog posts in one month? Yay!

I don't have a LOT to share with you this week. I had grand ideas for this past week, but then on Monday (at about 11 AM) I was told that I would be out for the next 2 days at a workshop. Surprise! It was a little challenging to get 2 days worth of sub plans ready in an afternoon with no planning, but I did it. (Thanks to a wonderful parent volunteer who ran all of my copies for me!)

So, for two days this week I wasn't even in the building...I learned all about PBIS (Positive Behavior Intervention & Support) and had a lovely time with my school's team (especially the 1.5 hour lunches!), but I wasn't doing anything fun in the classroom. (And neither were my kids. Bless their hearts, but they had such a fun, WILD time with the sub when I was in California that I left them with zero fun things and lots of worksheets. They were angels this time around...)

Thursday and Friday I played catch-up and we did get to a few fun holiday things. First, let me tell you about one of my favorite teacher store type places; Micheal's! I went in there last weekend to get something I needed for someone's Christmas present and they were having an amazing sale. Their DIY ornaments were 70% off and their foam craft things were 50% off. I bought a class set of the clear plastic ornaments, a pack of Christmas trees, and a pack of foam stockings for less than $20. This is what we came up with:

I know, the fire in the middle is pitiful. My PEC co-teacher found some tissue paper and I am going to work on it on Monday. But the stockings are adorable! I did bust out the glitter for this one...my poor custodian. My para and I split up the glitter supervision and I didn't realize at first that she was letting her kids do their own glitter designs. Ahhh! Puddles of glue. PUDDLES. I am a little too much of a control freak to let them go with glitter and liquid glue!

We did these yesterday. My poor door is so beat-up. (They all are, it's not just mine!) Most teachers don't cover their doors at my school, although some did for the holidays. The trees came out so cute, though! More glitter. I figured what did it matter since we'd covered most surfaces with glitter the day before. HA.

That's all I've got for this week. Next week I have a ton of good stuff planned, though! We're going to work it in around the holiday sing-along and AIMSWeb testing and sight word testing and the million and one things that are happening around the school.

The Best Things We Did This Week (12.5.15) & a gingerbread freebie

Hey, teacher friends! I hope everyone is hanging in there these last few weeks before break. I LOVE the month of December...but these three weeks or so seem to stretch on for forever! Being a first grade teacher in December is pretty magical because the kids are SO pumped about Santa and their elves and Christmas lists and Christmas decorations and presents and alllll the things that December brings. It's also pretty exhausting keeping up with their...um...enthusiasm. And energy.

This past week we were working on our story elements standard so I ventured away from the basal (sorry, Journeys) and did some cute gingerbread things. I LOVE a fun week of gingerbread stuff and some may end up spilling into next week because I didn't get through everything I wanted to do.

For starters, we read three of my favorite gingerbread stories. Of course we started with the original! Then we read The Gingerbread Girl by Lisa Campbell Ernst. Last, we read my FAVORITE...The Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett. There are other great versions out there but that's all I had time for this week. We read the stories and then charted the key story elements.

The kids glued their graphic organizers down into a little construction paper folder and added a gingerbread house to the front.

Easy peasy. These are now hanging outside of my classroom. If you want the graphic organizer and gingerbread house template, you can click here or on the pictures to download a free copy! I included a blank version of the graphic organizer just in case you want your kids to compare different texts than the ones we used. I would have liked to outline parts of the house in glitter but I couldn't face the mess that would ensue we ran out of time. (Truth: We are still recovering from the Glitter Pumpkin debacle from a few weeks ago!)

Yesterday we had fun chasing that silly gingerbread cookie around the school. I used this adorable FREEBIE from Teaching Hearts & Minds to create the clues.

We started with the envelope the crafty gingerbread man left taped to our door, then followed the clues all around our school building before we ended up in the principal's office, where he had left us a basket of yummy treats!

Most years I make my class their own set of teeny gingerbread babies that I have decorated, but this year I let Little Debbie do the hard work me. The kids loved this activity and it was a great way to spend the first few minutes of recess on a super cold day! (The day before I was literally running in place on the playground to stay warm. It has been so chilly this week!)

Then I tried a new activity. One of the stellar teachers in our building told me about an easy cinnamon ornament class. I love EASY crafts. This one definitely fit the bill! I found some directions online and I basically followed along with what the lovely blogger at The Kitchen Is My Playground did as my guide.

You need a big jar of applesauce, a big container of cinnamon (I got one for $7.99 at Kroger!), and a little bit of liquid glue. You will also need a rolling pin, big mixing bowl, gingerbread man cutter, and some aluminum foil or wax paper. Here are some basic directions for how I did it with my class. I did have both a parent and my parapro with me while we did it and the extra help was really nice, but I definitely could have done it solo.

1.) Pour about a cup of the applesauce into a big bowl. Add a lot of cinnamon. I started with 6 tablespoons and then shook in a lot more as I mixed. Add in about 2 tablespoons of glue. Start mixing (you can begin with a spoon, but I ended up getting in there with my hands to knead it all together). You're going for a dough that is the consistency of Play-Doh. If it still looks wet and more like the texture of applesauce, keep dumping in cinnamon. If it starts to get hard and clumpy, add in more applesauce and glue. Eventually you will end up with a ball of a dough-y substance. I did this about 3 times to make enough dough for my class of 24.

2.) Use a rolling pin to roll out the dough. I put my ball of dough between two pieces of aluminum foil to keep the dough from sticking to the rolling pin. That worked really well!

3.) Use a cookie cutter to stamp out the gingerbread men. I have a set of cookie cutters for a boy, girl, and a baby so I let the kids pick.

4.) Use a straw to punch out a teeny hole in the top of the gingerbread men. When they dry, we will thread a piece of ribbon through the hole to make it an ornmanet!

5.) Lay the gingerbread men/people out to dry. Before you go home, some of them may start to curl up a little bit around the edges. I mashed them back down flat. We'll see if they curly up again when I check on them on Monday.

6.) On Monday I will flip them and make sure they are dry. Later in the week, we will paint them with puffy paint (which will then need to dry) and add the ribbon.

So there you have it! This was our week of gingerbread fun! If you snag the freebie, I would love some lovin' in the comments! Hang in there friends...just a couple more weeks! We can do this!