ornaments

This time of year is always so hectic! I know I am trying to finish up testing and cram in as many crafts as I can. My classroom is a disaster area with paint, glitter, glue, construction paper, etc. Here are a few crafts we have done for our parents.

This one is a snowman ornament :)

Here are our gingerbread ornaments- made with cinnamon, applesauce and glue! So NON edible.
This is the gingerbread men once they are dry and before being painted:

Here are the ornaments once they painted them:

 I still have to sting ribbon through those holes to make them into an ornament. They really love making these!

And tomorrow is our last day before Christmas break and I couldn't be happier. They are so chatty it is driving me crazy. They don't even seem threatened by "Santa's watching"..... So tomorrow we are watching Polar Express and having Hot Chocolate. I bought the multi- colored marshmallows for the to put in it for fun.

Kwanzaa

The first grade team is doing Holiday's around the World rotations. I am doing Kwanzaa. I thought I would share the unity cup we made today.
There is a label on it describing the cup and what it is used for. It was a lot of prep work for me- especially for 7 first grade classes but the kids were able to do their parts pretty easily.

I won and award!

I am thrilled to be recognized by First Grade Delight for Up and Coming Blogs! I was given a blog award! Thank you so much for recognizing me !

The goal of the award is to spotlight up-and-coming blogs with less than 200 followers. The rules are: 

1. Copy and paste the award on your blog.
2. Thank the giver and link back to them.
3. Reveal your top 5 picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.
4. Hope that your followers will spread the love to other bloggers!! 


Here are the 5 blogs I am choosing that I think are definitely worthy of this award:

Go and check out these awesome blogs! 

My Favorite Christmas Books

I love reading Christmas books to my students! I love anything Christmas actually! Here are a few of my favorite books to read to my students:

Link up and share your favorite Christmas books! :)

12 Days of Christmas Giveaway(s)

You need to hop on over to Oh' Boy 4th Grade- there are going to be 12 days of giveaways. Yes, TWELVE!

Christmas Time!!!! :)

This is my favorite time of year out of school and in school. Of course, I don't like how chatty the kids are this time of year- but love all the cute crafts. So far we made a snowman glyph:

I had to add all these pictures because I always find it so interesting how different they can make something-- and how cute they turn out!

We also made an Elf and I found this on a blog- sorry I am not even sure which one to give proper credit :/  If it is you, please let me know! They had to fill out an "Elf Application" and we read the book "How Santa Got His Job."

Here are the Elves and they are holding applications for a job to be an elf.

Here are some other crafts (pictures are from last year- before I was a blogger) we do in my classroom. The wreath below is their hand prints and I used hole punch circles for the berries. 

 The candy cane and Rudolph ornaments will be put in shoe boxes and they will wrap it and give it to their parents as a gift. They will have other crafts in there as well. The Rudolph is made out of Popsicle sticks.

Thanksgiving Crafts

It has been a while since I posted and I thought I should post what we have made for Thanksgiving. The first item is our Cornucopia.

Then I found this on someone else's blog (sorry I forget who!!) and I made my own patterns for the boat and sail and we created our Mayflower fact book. 

We also made turkeys with out feet and hand prints. I need to remember to take a picture of them tomorrow. 

Halloween Crafts

Every year I wait until the last minute to do Halloween crafts and then never have enough time to put them up for others to see. So I started earlier this year and here is what we have made so far- both of these I found out here in blog land. :)

This one goes with the story "Skeleton Hiccups." My kids really enjoyed this book and making the skeleton.

We also did this pumpkin glyph- there were no patterns used. 

I copied glyph chart from another blog. 

Halloween Read Aloud

I love when the holidays start rolling in- there are so many fun crafts and activities and books to read! Here are a few of my favorite Halloween Read Alouds:

Johnny Appleseed

So I know it has been a while, but I have been busy with school and wedding planning! I thought I would share what we made in regards to Johnny Appleseed. We made a puppet:

And we made this painting:

The kids loved painting since we don't get to do it often! They had a pattern for the trunk and the tree top and used finger prints for the apples. I printed clip are of Johnny Appleseed and they colored and glued it on!

Sorry for my absence!

Sorry I have been gone so long! I got engaged July 16th and then school started Aug 2nd and well, my life hasn't been the same!! haha

I thought I would share what my kids do for homework as far as sight words go. I cut a pronged folder in half (leaving two prongs inside) and put their words inside. I highlight the words they know, and the words they do not know they have on index cards in a baggie in the pocket of the folder. They get a new page behind the first every time they know most of the words on that page.

 

These are the Dolch words put in boxes in excel.

Also, if you haven't been to my TpT store go check it out -especially if you have Storytown as your Reading Series! :)  I made refrigerator copies for all the words.