Ginger Cookies and the Festival of Lights

Oh my goodness! I cannot believe it is almost Friday! I thought for sure this first week back after having a week off would go by so S-L-O-W, instead it flew by. We were very busy this week getting started on all of our holiday activities.

We continued our gingerbread unit with some tasty writing. Each student was given one gingerbread cookie that they COULD NOT eat! Boy, was that hard for a few of them.

First, we used our senses of sight, touch and smell to fill out our gingerbread chart. The kids gave me adjectives to describe the cookie. Here is our chart:

Then, I told the kids to take one bite of their cookie and put it down! What? You said one bite? That's right! I wanted to graph where they each took their first bite of their cookie. Today we wrote about our gingerbread cookie experience and used some of Lori's activities in her freebie gingerbread unit. (Click on the picture to grab a copy). They used so many adjectives to "pump up" their writing. It was great to see how excited they were to put their ideas down on paper.

Next week, we are going to start our Hanukkah unit. I love teaching the kids about different cultures and holidays. Hanukkah is a great one to teach the kids about because we get to eat potato pancakes (latkes), play games (dreidel) and learn new traditions. The kids love it! I just finished putting together these literacy and writing activities which we will be using throughout the week.

We are going to taste latkes and graph how we like to eat them and do some data analysis with our information. We are going to work on main idea and details with the story Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins by Eric Kimmel. Each student will make a menorah. The middle candle (shammes) will have the main idea and the other candles will have the details on it. (You can use the menorah patterns for any Hanukkah story). Here is a sample:

If you would like a few activities to help introduce Hanukkah to your students, click HERE to check out this little unit.

What are you doing in your classroom to celebrate the holidays? I would love to hear your ideas. Have a great Friday!

Gingerbread Glyphs and A Few Hours Left

I don't know about you, but these first two days back to work have been C-R-A-Z-Y! I want to get all our holiday project underway so we can enjoy them before we have to take them down and go on winter break. Three weeks is nothing! We've got a lot to do people!!

Today we got to work on our gingerbread glyphs. The kids love these projects. I never tell them what we are going to be making. I try to see how long it takes them to figure it out. Here they are answering the questions on their white boards.

Next, they started assembling their glyphs depending on how they answered the questions.

Once their glyphs were assembled, we did some whole class data collection. Here are a couple of examples.

To display the glyphs, I decided to make a cookie jar on one of my interior classroom doors. Some of the gingerbread men are jumping out of the cookie jar, while others are happy as can be to be inside the jar!

The kids were cracking up as they were gluing the eyes on. Some kids were very traditional, while others were goofy as can be. I love their creativity!

If this is a project you would like to do with your class, just click on the picture below and grab your copy while it is still in sale at TpT!

I also have the gingerbread men activity in my Gingerbread Fun Literacy Centers (It does not include the data collecting sheets). It includes writing prompts and primary and intermediate writing papers. Click on the pic below if you are interested. It is still on sale at TpT as well!

I hope everyone was able to get their TpT wishlist filled these last two days! But if not, there is still time to shop! I have a couple things I still need to get before the night is over, too!

Incredible SALES and "An Old Lady Who..." FREEBIE

I hope each of you had a wonderful and restful Thanksgiving with your family and friends.  I want to share some pics of our Thanksgiving table.

My mom and my two boys colored each of the place mats and then we laminated them. My mom always does something creative to make the table festive!

Dessert was this beautiful home made apple tart. So delicious! Thanks, Mom!

Today I am off to conquer the shopping world bright and early with my mom and sister in law. It's a tradition in our family for the women to go shopping and out to lunch on Black Friday,while the men bond with the wee ones. I LOVE this day and look forward to it ALL year! Who knows what I will come back home with!

I am so excited to be participating in the Teachers Notebook and Teachers Pay Teachers sales this weekend! This Saturday, Sunday and Monday everything will be on sale in my TN store. TN is also giving an extra 10% off for those 3 days! Click on the picture below to take you to my store so you can load up your cart and then check out on the sale dates!

                        

I will also have all my items on sale at my TpT store this Monday and Tuesday! TpT is also giving an additional 10% off, if you use the promo code: CMT12 during checkout.

I have just add several literacy units for the holidays and winter season. I hope you will check them out and load up during these fabulous sales!

To get everyone in the holiday spirit, I have a little FREEBIE I want to share with each of you. I just bought the book There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Bell to add to my class library for the holidays. It is such a cute book and I can't wait to share it with my kids. I created two activities to go with it. The first is a sequencing activity. After you read the book to the kids, they can color, cut and paste the story events in the correct order.

The next activity is a writing activity where the kids will color and cut out the old lady and then write and draw about one of the things she swallowed and why.

You can grab your freebie copy of these activities at my TpT store by clicking on the picture below.

Thanks for taking the time to read, follow and leave sweet comments on my little blog. I love sharing my ideas with you and want to thank each of you for helping fill my world of teaching with such joy. I appreciate all of you! 

A Little FREEBIE and some Gingerbread Fun!

Although Thanksgiving has not even arrived yet, I have started planning for the short three weeks I have when I return from Thanksgiving break. That's right! Only three weeks and then we are off for winter break. It is going to be jam packed with learning, singing and getting ready for the holidays. I wanted to have some fun and engaging activities for my students when they return from their week off. I need to reinforce skills I have taught and support some new ones.So I created Gingerbread Holiday Fun! This unit has 8 literacy centers and a writing craftivity that goes with it.

I am going to read them a version of the gingerbread boy and they are going to fill in the beginning, middle and end worksheet.

Then, each student is going to make a gingerbread baker or a gingerbread boy cookie. They are going to choose to write about their gingerbread from one of the six writing prompts included. 

During center time, they will work on ABC order, synonyms, antonyms, writing, revising and much more!

I have also taken the gingerbread craftivity and turn it into a gingerbread glyph for those of you that would like to practice data collecting with your students and also give them some writing practice. 

Here is a little FREEBIE I used this last week with my students. We are working on estimation of numbers and number sentences. Each student got this little guy:

In the middle snowball, they wrote their own 2 digit addition problem. On the bottom snowball, they showed the estimated addition problem and how to solve it. Any time I bring a craft to our math lesson, they kids just eat it up! If you would like to use this in your classroom, you can grab the template HERE.Also, if you are at school this week and need a few last minute ideas, don't forget to check out my previous Thanksgiving post with a FREEBIE class book you can make with your students about how to save the turkeys.

This is a time to be thankful! Some of us are thankful to have a week off from work. Others are thankful for a short week ahead. But in all seriousness, it is a time to reflect on all that is wonderful in our lives. It is a time  to reconnect with family and friends and take a few moments to appreciate all that we have. I want to thank each of you for taking an interest in my sweet little blog and sharing your thoughts and ideas with me. Thank you for your inspiration and wisdom. I hope this is a week full of love and happiness for each of you.

Turkey Apples and Thanksgiving Freebie

Oh my goodness! I can't believe Thanksgiving is just around the corner. I wanted to share two fun projects with you. The first is an oldie but goody from my childhood- TURKEY APPLES! My mom used to make these for my class when I was a kid. I also remember making these as a "how to" project when I was in third grade. I brought all the ingredients to school, so each kid could make their own turkey apple as I explained the process step by step. So now, I am going to share it with all of you. Here is what you need for each apple:

One apple, 5 toothpicks, a candy corn, 2 raisins, a candy orange slice, mini marshmallows and orange icing.

1. Place candy orange slice on one toothpick so toothpick does not poke through the top. 

2. Put a dab of frosting on top of the candy slice and adhere candy corn.

3. Put a dab of frosting on each side of the orange candy slice and place a raisin on each to make the eyes.

4. Push tooth pick into one top side of the apple. (see pic)

5. Put 4 marshmallows on 4 toothpicks to make the feathers of the turkey.

6. Push each toothpick into the apple on the opposite side of the turkey head.

7. Enjoy!

Turkey Apple

I am in the process of making 30 of these for my son's kindergarten class for their Thanksgiving feast this week. My son has been a great help, peeling off all the apple stickers and "tasting" all the ingredients!

If you would like to turn this into a "How To" lesson with your students, I have provided a template to use. You can down load it HERE: 

Fonts from Jen Jones and Graphics from KPM Doodles

The next freebie is a follow up activity after a reading of 'Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving by Dav Pilkey.

After I read this book to my class, we made a class book called "Save the Turkeys." Each student wrote one or two things they would eat instead of turkey on Thanksgiving. Here are a couple samples:

pizza

soup with vegetables

You can grab your FREEBIE copy of this class book HERE. I hope you can find a moment to fit this into your busy week and enjoy the story with your students. If you decide to download the copy, I would love for you to leave a comment and let me know what you think. Have a great evening!