Tis the Season (Pins)

The countdown is on until Christmas break - 10 days... as my Dad says, "You could stand on your head for 10 days!"  Not that I could actually stand on my head anymore, but it's kind of nice to think that my Dad has that confidence in me.  :)  Well, I guess the countdown actually started last Monday when we got back from Thanksgiving vacation, but now that it's officially December 1st - I'm full speed ahead.
I have so many projects going at the moment (Traditions, Idioms, Missions, Rocks & Minerals, Owl Pellets, Medicine Unit, Chocolate Fever, etc) that I almost feel like I can't add anything more without something going completely wrong.  BUT (and it's a BIG BUT) I love this season in the classroom.  It's almost magical how everything always works out exactly how it should.
I really want to try these toilet roll characters...  
or these penguins... though I guess I could save the penguins until January...
I would also like to tackle this art project with the kids, though I don't exactly know when yet...
Or these heart trees...

Or these name lights... (I did this one last year with my students and they loved it.)

These math packs are already printed off and laminated...

and I'm still deciding exactly what gift students should make for their parents.  We are decorating tiles at  the school Winter Wonderland this coming Friday night (which was originally what I was going to do with my own class) - so I don't know if I could still do it with my kids or if I should do something else...they will be bringing home their Traditions book as a definite.
What little gift do your students make?
Click any of the links above to head to Pinterest and to the websites from which they came.  
Happy Saturday!

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Traditions Book (Writing)

This time of year I really start thinking of traditions.  I personally love them.  I love the special routines surrounding a certain holiday. So, the time between Thanksgiving vacation and Winter break I have my students create a book that includes all their special family traditions.  
Last year I had the idiotic idea of trying to have them do the entire book in a 2 day span to be able to submit it to Student Treasures on time for our publishing date.  

click to go to their website

Student Treasures is a company that publishes student work into their own hardback book.  It's a free service, they just include a note that asks parents if they want to order additional copies.  They were beautiful when they came back and we wrapped them up in Christmas wrap as a gift for their parents.  But it was absolutely nuts of the hours upon hours of creating rough drafts and final drafts for those days, plus then hauling it to UPS to be able to mail it off.... nervously waiting if it would be delivered in time.
So I'm going back to my normal routine this year, and saving the Student Treasures hardback books for a later date - perhaps an end of year memory book?   
Anyhow, below is the breakdown of the book.  The students are writing one page per day about their traditions.They create a rough draft, edit, and do a final draft on just plain lined paper (copy paper with lines printed on it) that they then illustrate with their family traditions.  I start with Thanksgiving since it's fresh in their minds.   Pages
New Year's Eve and Day
Valentines Day
St. Patrick's Day
Easter
Mother's Day and Father's Day
4th of July
Halloween
Thanksgiving
Christmas and Hanukkah
Birthdays
So, 10 pages in total.  When they are done with everything inside their book, they will create their own personal cover and a dedication page to their families (with their cute little cum picture on it).  Then I stick everything into 6 sheet protectors (back to back pages) and use red & white ribbon through the holes to call it a day.  Their own little personal books to give as a gift.
I'll take a picture when it's done for this year.  :)  
Hope you had a great day!  

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End of Unit Review, Ordering Owl Pellets, and I WON!

This week we are finishing up the end of Unit 2.  Every Monday the kiddos write their definitions and draw pictures that go with each of their vocabulary words for that week's story.  They each have their own composition book.  It's nice and neat.  It's a routine.  
This week is the end of the Unit and they are getting ready to take their Reading Lions vocabulary test tomorrow.  Yesterday they created vocabulary cards for the entire unit - all 34 words - this was to reinforce for those visual learners that really need to see the definitions one more time.  They did so willingly because of the promise of using them for a game today.  Now, I tend to become indecisive at times when it's "game" time.  I really couldn't make a decision between Charades, Pictionary, and Hangman - so I let them choose how they wanted to practice.  It was organized chaos, but it was wonderful to watch.  One side of the room held the kiddos using their cards and their whiteboards to draw pictures with a partner.  They took turns going back and forth.  The other side of the room also had kids with their cards and whiteboards and partners, but they were guessing with the typical hangman fashion.  Then in the front of the room, there were groups of 3's and 4's acting out the words.  They also had their cards.  Each child could be heard guessing the words, and then they had to say the definitions for their partners to hear.  Small groups allowed the students to have numerous turns.
Sometimes it pays to be indecisive.
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Okay - onto the next thing... Last year I bought Owl Pellets and my class loved them.  This year the money has been extra slow rolling in, so I used it as incentive to have students try to donate something to help our class.  Since we now finally have enough for our field trip, it was time to order.  Since I bought from the company last year, and it was a great product, I wanted to share it with you.  
www.discountowlpellets.com 
There really is a website for everything out there.  This is a family owned business that operates out of Washington.  I bought the Individual Bargain Bags (16 packages of them - $1.05 each) instead of buying standard or premium pellets (more $).  It's a bag of a lot of "stuff" and each bag has a ton of different bones to sort.  Last year I had 4 students share a bag and it worked, though it was a lot of hands in a small area.  This year I want them to work in partners and each have their own amount to take home.  Shipping is very reasonable.  They have a ton of pictures on their website, as well as bone sorting charts, and FAQ.  Check them out!
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Last for today - I WON Tara's giveaway.  :)  That made my day yesterday, and it kept me smiling throughout today.  What did I win?Then, as if life couldn't get any sweeter, she surprised me with her "Be Merry" banner!  Super cute!    
      
Life is good!  I've laminated about 80 sheets of all my goodies from TPT, and just bought 3 more packages of laminating sheets from Amazon.  They are on sale for $9.88 each at the moment.  
 Yay!

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Thinking of Teaching - Follower Feature

Beth picked me.  

That makes my day.  Click here to go visit her and read about me.  :)

Hope you have a great Monday!  It was SO hard to get up this morning... 3 weeks until Winter Break... but whose counting?!?

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Elf Task Cards (Freebie)

I finally made something cute.  

Well, with a lot of help from Melonheadz and Kevin & Amanda.

Here is a freebie for you.  It's a set of 8 Elf Task cards.  

My classroom has been filling buckets since the first day of school and I wanted to incorporate a little Secret Santa type of thing during the last 2 weeks before vacation.  8 cards that as a class we will do together before we reveal our secret identities to each other.  Everything from verbal compliments, to written ones, to creating artwork, to learning about each other, to playing together at recess.  Just ways to get my students thinking about someone else...

Hope this helps someone!

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Did You Enter? Part 2

The other day I mentioned a bunch of giveaways that I've entered, but I messed up royally since I forgot about even more of them!  Yes, I've been going a little crazy between entering giveaways, buying stuff online from Black Friday, and getting ready for Cyber Monday...not to mention all the mom stuff and house stuff that I've been trying to accomplish around here.. Vacation you know... These end tonight!!  
Tara from 4th Grade Frolics is having a giveaway regarding Tri-Words.  Amanda from Teaching Maddeness is onto Day 7 of her week long giveaway.  Today's prize is your choice of units.  
Chrissy B. from Buzzing with Ms. B is hosting her One Year Blogiversary giveaway.  She has so many prizes!
Good luck!

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3, 2, 1 - Week #3

Last week my 3 goals were to get prepped for December, to clean out the home clutter, and make good food choices.... Well, as of this moment my school bag has yet to be opened for the past week, but my home has been cleaned out, and I'm happy with the decisions I made.
I did have a wonderful week of vacation.  Of course I did.  I love vacation!  It was an eventful week.  We took the boys to Chuck E. Cheese to play the games, had a ton of movie nights, did build a fort, we painted toast for breakfast, and I did make Cranberry Orange bread.  We did decorate for Christmas - this year I went through the boxes before we stuck everything up and ended up clearing out some clutter in them as well.  I love how my house looks.  :)
Yesterday was a pretty awesome day too.  Well, not in the morning... our car battery died and it cost $120 plus tax to replace it.  We didn't know exactly where that extra money was going to come from - car issues are never in the budget.  Later on in the afternoon  I took the dog and my 6 year old for a walk in our neighborhood and found $130 on the sidewalk.  I took it to the nearest home and knocked.  No one answered.  Took it home and later on my husband went to also knock.  Still no answer.  We're taking it as a blessing.  God met our needs.
Okay, onto this upcoming week...
3 goals
*School goal - This week I really do want to make sure I'm all planned for December.  We only have 3 weeks until our next LONG Christmas vacation.  
*Home goal -  I hope to be able to finish Christmas shopping.  We are so close to being done. *Personal goal - I need to remember to drink all my water this coming week.  When it gets cold I don't think about it.  I'm barely getting 3 to 4 glasses a day (compared to the 12 I drink when it's warm.)  Just something for me to work on.  
2 things I'm looking forward to
*Writing conference this coming Friday!  It's a 4 day week for me! :)  I'm excited to spend time during school hours learning something new.  We don't really have much of a writing curriculum in our district, everyone does their own thing.  I'm glad to get new ideas.  
*I'm excited about helping my parents decorate their house for Christmas next Saturday.  Even with the past decade of decorating our own house, it's still fun to help my parents.  That feels like tradition, and I love traditions.  So many of their decorations are the same ones that I've seen since childhood.  
1 thing I want to tryLaura Candler has a blog post all about using the easy button in her classroom.  Click the button above to head to her website.  I picked one up during break for school.  I'm excited to put it by the computers so the kids can press it once they pass AR tests or get 100% on their regular tests.  After years of seeing them, I had no clue that it could talk.  Good to know!  
Have a wonderful week!  

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