A Bunch of Kindness (RACKs)

My class completed a bunch of RACKS this week. We couldn't help ourselves, it was addicting.  We used this free pack of notes by Diamond Mom - mainly since there were 9 per page (and I wanted to save on copies).  We took a bunch of new books, wrapped them up, and delivered them to different grade levels with a RACK note.  

Then we took more RACK notes and taped them to a bunch of pencils to deliver to the primary students.  Other students were writing notes to our school parent helpers to put in a basket in the office.  Then we took time as a class to make cards for our Reading Buddies (added a little candy cane to them), and wrote thank you notes for the office.  It was a little bit of chaos, with a huge helping of fun.

Today we made posters for the middle school teachers with the saying, "We can't wait to be in your class when we grow up." The kids signed and delivered them too. They also signed cards for their PE teachers and gave a candy bar. 

The fun part was seeing the smiles and random thank you emails of staff that had been RACKed, and they didn't know who was behind it. The kids were tickled hearing the emails. :) So glad that we were able to do something to reach all 9 grade levels. 

After all of that, we did a little RACK for each other.  I had a bunch of these gingerbread men that I've held onto for the past 5 years… since I used to do the Me Doll project back in 2nd grade…  anyhow, the kids chose a person and wrote their name on the person's belly.  Then the kids flipped them over so the backs were showing on their desks.  I gave them 15 minutes and they walked around with their pens, writing compliments or adjectives to describe their classmates.    

I collected them, hole punched, and tied some yarn to the top.  These are now high above our carpet area as a reminder of all the kindness in our classroom.  

I hope this helps you in some way!  Have a great day!  

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Math Poinsettias {Factors, Multiples, and Prime/Composite Numbers}

Yesterday for math we made poinsettias.  The kids each had a half sheet of pink, red, and white construction paper.  They folded it, cut out their petals, then glued them onto a large piece of construction paper into 3 flowers.  

The white poinsettias we labeled prime and composite numbers.  Each petal had their own number that had to be labeled with a P or C. 

The pink ones were all multiples.  They chose a random number between 2-10, and then went around the flower, writing the multiples.  

The red flowers were factors.  Students chose a 2 digit composite number, and then wrote the different factor equations on the petals.  

The kids enjoyed getting out their scissors and glue sticks during math, I enjoyed seeing how they transferred their learning into an art project.

Hope this helped someone!  

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Looking like Christmas

It's looking like Christmas in my classroom.  My patience level is dwindling, my room is looking messy, I feel completely overwhelmed, AND progress reports go home this Friday!!!

I really do love the winter holidays though.  Here are 3 "projects" we've tackled lately and completed with the holiday spirit.  

 

Traditions books are DONE - yes, capital DONE!!  They are all tied up with ribbon, graded, and just needing the kids to wrap them tomorrow.  It turned out that we had time to complete 8 pages inside… that's all that time would allow though.  The kids put them in order for the year: New Years, Valentines, Easter, Summer Break, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Birthdays.  Then we trimmed up the cover, glued it onto card stock, and ran it through the jumbo binding machine in the library.  (It was supposed to be spiral bound, but somehow the machine was adjusted to a 3 hole punch - and I didn't know how to change the setting - so we just used yarn instead.)  They came out so adorable!  I loved reading their family traditions - what their families do for each holiday.

(In case you forgot how I set this up in my classroom - we would brainstorm full class for each holiday.  The kids wrote a rough draft, went through a rainbow edit, had a friend check over their paragraphs, then would come to me for their final copy/ and fancy paper.)  I collected, and then last week we had a major paper passing out party just regarding these papers.  We then put them in the correct order, dealt with gluing the cover onto card stock, and then yesterday we hole punched & tied with yarn.  This morning was a final pass out/look through to see if they wanted to add anymore illustrations, and then I collected for the final grade.  I didn't write their grade in the book at all, just made notes on a separate paper, and tomorrow the kids will wrap them up.  

In addition to the books we have also been crafty. :)  

The kids put together an elf writing craftivity.  They had so much fun.  I shrunk the pages to half size so  I didn't use as much copy paper, but that meant they also fit perfectly on a 9 x 12 piece of construction paper.  Such a fun way to celebrate!

We also used this lightbulb template (found in this pack) to have the kids write what their one wish for Christmas would be…  whether it was one gift for the world or for themselves.  I just wanted us to learn about each other a little more.  I strung some yarn on the outside of my cabinet and hung the lighbulbs up on it.  You can't tell by this picture, but one side are my girls and one are my boys.  It was a little competition to see what "team" would finish the project first (plus it made it easier to find a specific kid).  

What have you done or made lately?  

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My 500th Post

500 posts… When my friend first told me that I should start a teaching blog, I actually told her that I wouldn't know what to say….  In real life I'm not much of a talker.  I'm a ponderer, a list-tackler, but I don't talk much to adults.  

Except on here.  

I wanted to link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching today to share some random things about this past week.

1 - Monday and Tuesday's Shopping Spree

I had a lot of fun over at the Cyber Sale.  It mainly continued the fun that I had with all the Black Friday sales.  

See what I mean?  I actually checked out 4 times.  Kept thinking I was done, but then I just kept coming back for more.

Winter Wonders Story Starters

Robots: Grammar Mosaics

Illinois Tornado Relief Fund 3-5 Bundle

HUGE Seller's Toolkit Bundle #2

Winter Holidays - Color by Parts of Speech & Punctuation

Math Mat Multiplication Glyph

Digital Doodle Frames (The Sophia Line)

Digital Doodle Frames (the Lori Line)

2: Royal Mail

On Veteran's Day I was catching up on email when I noticed a note from a publishing house located in London.  At first I thought it was spam, but it turned out to be legit.  They were contacting me about a new children's series for intermediate age kids and wanted to send me some books.  Of course I said sure (who can pass up free books).  On Thursday I got this package in the mail and my own boys have been busy reading the books.  My oldest (age 9) is really into them, and has almost finished the first book… it's a survival theme with animal characters.  

3: Asthma Stinks!  

Thursday was just a hard day.  I didn't feel good and kept gasping for air… seriously every 4th word was a big breath.  I had a half day training, came home, and immediately called the advice nurse.  They told me that it sounded like I was having a bronchial spasm (again - same thing as last winter), but they didn't have any more appointments in the after hours clinic, and the next phone appointment was at 7:30 pm.  I made it another half hour before my husband (and boys) took me to the ER.  2 hours later, after having an EKG, breathing treatment, blood tests, and getting my blood pressure to come down (of course it spiked when I saw the needle), I was able to come home with a new inhaler.  Now, I've had asthma before… all throughout elementary, middle, and high school… but I had outgrown it.  I was supposed to be in the clear - and it has come back.  Totally stinks that it's now become a pattern.  

4: Nancy Fetzer Training

Like I said above, on Thursday was a big training.  Nancy Fetzer came to our school district for a follow up training and the 4th /5th grade teachers went to another school to participate.  This is the year that we are transitioning to Common Core, and we are trying to see how that change is going to work (especially since we aren't getting new ELA materials anytime soon).  Nancy is an awesome teacher, and has a ton of freebies & videos on her website.  Such great ideas!  

5: Shopping for Winter Wonderland

This morning I went out with my little helper and bought some supplies for our grade level table's fundraiser.  For Winter Wonderland the 4th grade teachers will be hosting a table that students can create glitter ornaments and personalized tiles, so had to pick up 2 boxes (100 each) of 4 inch tiles and 10 boxes (8 each) of clear glass ornaments.  They have both been a hit in the past, so we decided to combine both of them.  Here are my boys' tiles from last year…

For the tiles we just had the kids draw with Sharpie markers.  The cost of one plain tile is 15 cents at the store, but we were able to sell them for $2.  The glass ornaments are on sale at the moment for 50% off (at Michaels), so $5 per box - and we will be selling them for $3 each.  A fun experience for $5.  We asked our student families to donate red and white yarn, paper lunch bags, tissue paper, and different colors of glitter.  This has saved a lot of start up costs.

The ornaments are super easy - we just take off the hanger of the ornament, put a couple of drops of Pledge's Floor Care Multi Surface Finish and swirl around to make everything wet.  Then we dump out the extra, and sprinkle in some glitter, cover the top, and shake to make everything glittery.  The glitter sticks to the inside shell of the ornament - beautiful ornaments without the mess.  Then it's just a matter of sticking the hanger back on, tying a little yarn to the top to make a loop, wrapping everything up in a piece of tissue paper, and sticking it into a lunch sized paper bag.  Easy peasy!

Here is a picture and directions from The Ornament Girl.  


I hope you had a great day!  We celebrated our 1st Christmas celebration with my in laws early this afternoon, then went to my aunt's 60th birthday party (it was a surprise), now I'm home drinking some hot tea, and contemplating another inhaler treatment…

Have a great night.  :)  

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My House Decorations - Want to See??

Linking up with Christina to share some pictures of my decorated house.   

We use these wooden garlands around all the downstair doorways.  Some of the doors also get a little wreath.  

Outside we have Frosty (and 2 deer).

I've always had this thing with nutcrackers.  The little "traditional" one in the front I've had since junior high or high school… long enough to forget when exactly I picked him up.  The teacher one my student gave me a couple of years ago.  

Yes, somehow my boys' stocking holders broke while in storage - and those things are expensive to replace.  Between our extra curious dog and our 3 year old (they would have pulled them down from the mantle), we decided to use wreath holders on the boys' bedroom doors.  I love them!    

My in laws like to move every couple of years… and every time they move they give us more of their stuff.  I loved this little town, so my mother in law sent them over about 7 years ago.  As the boys have grown, they are in charge of setting this up every year.  Some years they put "snow" under the houses, this year they didn't.  

Our tree makes me happy - even though we have to rearrange the furniture to fit it.  This year hubby had to take all the lights off of it (it was a pre lit tree), since all the lights died after 10 years of using it.  Now it has LED lights that will last a lot longer.  

My sister is letting us use this tree on our kitchen counter.  It is extra festive!

Go show off your house decorations over at the linky party!  

Hope you had a great day!  Thank you so much for your support with the TPT sale!  I picked up some great deals the past couple of days too.  :)  

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A Few of My Favorite Things (My Presents)

I know Christmas isn't about the presents, BUT my family sure made me smile this year.  
Here are a few of my favorite things from this Christmas:
My parents got me a laminator to keep at school - yes, I'm spoiled and now have 2 laminators.  :) My oldest son gave me the boxed set of Sound of Music.  I haven't seen it in years, but I guess me singing the songs lately made him think I needed it.  
 
My husband gave me my own copy of this movie.  I enjoy watching it when I'm super stressed - it makes me laugh.  He also wrapped up the box that my new phone came in.  I got it early a month ago.

My middle son gave me this.  He knows I love using my crockpot every chance I get.  I can also see that he wants me to change up the recipes more.  
My youngest son gave me a new pair of slippers.  Mine aren't red though - they're blue.  He wouldn't let me wear them either today - pulled them off of me and put my old ones back on... 
I was also blessed with some gift cards - one to Massage Envy (like I had hoped), and I get to go clothes shopping soon too.  My husband and I also got some date cards from my parents and my sister - so we get to go out to eat (babysitting is included).
I also wanted to share the cupcakes I made for today.  We celebrated Jesus' birthday and had Santa cupcakes (made from Angel Food cake).  They aren't my original idea - I copied from the Pillsbury website.  My version ended up looking like Santa had the chicken pox or measles.  Oh well - they tasted delicious.  

My version - Pillsbury's looks better

 Merry Christmas!

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12 Family Christmas Traditions

Let me start this post telling you that I am not blogging on Christmas Eve.  I am going to use the scheduler feature so it will "seem" like I am on the computer, but in actuality I will be in the midst of our family celebrations - yes, plural... 

Why do something once if you can do it again and again...

This was taken during Winter Wonderland at school.
Yes, my youngest was the one screaming to get away from Santa - he calls Santa "Ho, Ho, Ho" -
So his words were, "No Ho, Ho, Ho!!" 

I wanted to share my 12 absolute favorite family Christmas traditions.  This year, maybe because for once I'm so organized (ha ha)... or maybe because I've had an entire week of vacation before the holiday even hits, I'm so at peace at the moment.  I'm actually HAPPY going into Christmas - not stressed, not upset, not wanting to go hide... I'm really content with life.

Now this list of traditions are things we tackle over the couple of weeks leading up to the big day - it's not like we are doing them back to back in a "we need to do this or else my Christmas will be ruined" type of way.  I'm sure after I hit the publish button I'm going to think of more stuff that we do every year... oh well...I'm limiting it to 12.  Get ready for a long post... 

Tradition #1: Decorating on the day after Thanksgiving.  We decorate, we get the Christmas music going, then we sit and relax.  We then do it all again at my parents house either the next day or the next weekend to help out.  

Tradition #2: Bake, bake, bake.  This year I got smart.  Instead of baking up 6 batches of cookies (which equals 18 dozen) that we need for all the gifts, I made up the cookie dough in my mixer, and stuck the dough in the fridge.  Every night I just stuck 2 dozen on a cookie tray when I was cooking up dinner and had "fresh" ones for the next day's gifts.  I just did the last of the cookie dough yesterday and now we have cookies for Santa.

Tradition #3:  Becoming elves... I love the tradition of delivering lemons to our neighbors.  I know I've mentioned it before.  I also love that my boys are getting into it.  This year we also took 2 night drives and delivered lemons and cookies to friends and family.  We didn't call first, we just showed up and knocked on the door.  There wasn't time for them to rush around trying to give us something in return - it was just a gift for them to accept.

The second part of this is the RACK's in our community.  I cannot stress enough how fun it was to watch the look on the faces of the firemen, CHP, and the dentist when we delivered thank you goodies.  They don't get enough thank yous and to see grown men get emotional - it was worth it.  The CHP was also collecting toys for the kiddos in our community.  It's a good thing to have my own boys get in a habit of helping others.  

Tradition #4: Date night and wrapping party.  Once or twice during the month my parents take the boys and we are able to have a date to finish up the shopping and then we spend the rest of the time wrapping everything.  Yeah, I'm thankful for family.

Tradition #5:  I love when we do PJ drives.  We are the type of family that the kids usually go to bed at 8 pm, they read for a bit (or listen for a bit), and then it's lights out.  It's a fun night when we load up the car in our PJ's, blankets, and swing by the drive thru for Hot Chocolate.  Then we just drive around our town and look at the Christmas lights.  My boys are so silly.  It started a couple of years ago but they bring cameras with them.  When they see a house that has "stuff" in front of it - not just lights, but reindeer, Santa, penguins, nativity - we will pull over and they take pictures of it.

Tradition #6:  Movie nights!  There are so many wonderful kid's Christmas movies.  We have had quite a few family movie nights lately.  We always get PJ's on first, then pop popcorn with a touch of sprinkles on top (they think it makes it extra special), and then we settle down with the classics.

Tradition #7: Decorating Gingerbread Houses.  Enough said about that.

Tradition  #8:  Christmas Eve with my parents.  I know when I get older I'm supposed to make new traditions, and we have... but it's also nice to revert back to the same traditions that I've grown up with.  I love going over to my parents, knowing that Dad to have set the dining room table with all the fancy "Christmas only" tablecloth and plates.  My oldest son reads the Christmas story from Luke 2 out of his own Bible, we have a delicious meal, then we gather in the family room around the Christmas tree to open presents.  The youngest always goes first, then we take turns opening gifts.  The kids "deliver" the gifts to each person.  My sister is there too... we laugh - we joke - it's family time.

Tradition #9:  Christmas Eve service with the family.  It's so important to me when I can snuggle with my kids in church, singing carols, hold a little candle, and know we are worshipping as a family.

Tradition #10: Christmas morning.  We have a gate on the landing at the top of the stairs.  Standing behind the gate the kids can't see over the banister.  Every year my husband goes downstairs where the tree is and gets the camera ready to capture the kids expression with seeing what Santa has brought.  I help the youngest walk down the stairs since with all the gawking there is always a chance that some child will trip and fall...  Santa never wraps anything when he comes to our house, and he always sets up whatever big thing he brings.  He told me that he is bringing them a big play tent for them this year.  I'm sure that their stockings will be right outside the tent along with whatever else he brings.  I kind of think it's funny how many pictures we take since we are all in our PJ's and I'm not exactly the kind of person to broadcast PJ pictures to random visitors to our house - or put them into any photo albums...  

Tradition #11:  Christmas Breakfast.  We are having my husband's family over for a late breakfast - right now the menu will include Eggs Benedict's like normal, but I'm also thinking of Popovers and Sausage... We will have our 3rd celebration at that time with them - more presents, and then our 4th will be at my cousin's... This year we aren't hosting Christmas.  We were supposed to, but it meant more to my cousin - so she gets the big double side of my family at her house - my in laws are coming too.   

Tradition #12: Jesus' Birthday Party - Yes after we come home from all the extended family celebrations (a little earlier this year to let the dog out) we will have a birthday party for Jesus.  I make up our traditional birthday cake - it happens to be Angel Food Cake, we sing Happy Birthday to Jesus, we blow up balloons, and then the kids start playing with all their goodies from the day.

Fun times ahead!

What are your favorite traditions?

Hope you have a great day!  

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