I smell cookies.....mmmmmmmm

One of my most favorite things about Christmas is not only the tree and all of the gorgeous lights, but it is also the wonderful aroma of Christmas cookies.. This weekend I spend some sweet R&R while spending time in the kitchen mixing up some of my great grandmas famous cookie recipes (if you lucky I might even let you in on some southern family recipes!) Man so I love to hear my kitchen timer going off when a fresh batch of cookies are ready... and then to get the first bite.... OH MY WORD.... I am addicted......

Ok before I eat another one of those cookies I need to move on! hahaha.... This week our theme is gingerbread! We will spend days reading the various gingerbread man books, like gingerbread baby, gingerbread girl, gingerbread man, etc... After we have read and story mapped each one, we will spend a day comparing all of the stories and coming up with reasons as to which one we liked best. For writing this week, we are learning how to steal, I mean borrow stories that have been written by other people and make them our own. This week since it is ginger bread themed, I will have my student write their own version of the gingerbread man but all it "The Gingerbread ____insert their name______"  The students will write their stories in a gingerbread cut out book and then decorate the outside of their book like a gingerbread cookie! I promise I will post pictures of this project when we complete it on Wednesday!

We are also starting measurement this week so don't forget to check out my new unit on called Merry Measure Me!!! Its a freebie so go get it!

Here is the latest unit that I will be using this week. It is fun of ginger bread themed morning work pages, reading worksheets and Long O word sorts activities!

Also wanted to give a shout out to some AMAZING blogger who inspired some of my gingerbread creativity.....  You have got to check out their gingerbread units!!!

First Grade Parade
Fun in First Grade
Erica Bohrer's First grade
Babbling Abby

Again these ladies are FABULOUS!! Thank you ladies for inspiring us all with your creativity!

Click on the image below for your very own copy of this week's FREEBIE

 

Let me know if you are doing anything gingerbread themed in these last two weeks before the winter break!

Fa La La La La La la..... Getting into the Christmas Spirit!!

So I can honestly say that I am getting into the Christmas spirit thanks to my sweet little husband! He was so sweet and precious and make me leave my computer and school work at school for one night (if you know anything about me, you know that it a really tough things to do as a WORK-A-HOLIC), but agreed and had such a fun night making memories that I will never forget. This is our second Christmas together as a married couple and it was so much fun digging out those old ornaments and and making hot tea and Christmas cookies while decorating our new tree.. I promise just a few pictures and I'll move on to some FREEBIES!! I apologize for the the poor quality of the pictures (my IPhone is amazing but sometime the quick little snaps don't turn out the way I want.......but you get the idea)

Our sweet little fat tree!

Okay, okay I cant resit it .... I got a little crafty (with the help of an amazing talented friend) thanks to the pintrest inspiration and made some darling little mugs for my husbands youth ministry volunteers. He wanted each one to have different lettering and fun designs with the same IMPACT student ministries logo so here's how I ended the night----20 mugs later------

 

So I promised so freebies so here they are... Just click on the picture for your free copies!

 

In class we are teaching the phonic skill of "ee" and "ea"... so enjoy the sweet treat act ivies! The frustrating part about about teaching "ee" and "ea" is that sometimes there are words that sound the same but have different meanings and spellings so I created this unit to teach some small mini units on homophones! I hope that you enjoy!

 

This next one is one of my favorites. I am reading the book "Oliver the other reindeer" which is about a dog who really wants to be a reindeer which the kids just LOVE after we have already spent the week learning about reindeer. Anyways, the students have to write a letter to Santa telling him why they would be good on Santa's sleigh team! Not only is there cute writing paper but they are differentiated. If your class is anything like mine, they are all over the spectrum and I teach to all different levels..

 

 

I would love to hear from each of you to see what you are planning on doing with your little ones for the holiday!

 

Blessings,

Kelly

Voting All Around

Hello all,
My vote is in and I can tell you it has been a fun week teaching little ones about all of the politics and election pieces going on around our nation. I started the week out reading the story called " Vote for Me" which the students loved! From there it was really easy to transition into real world elections and voting. Character descriptions were the writing focus for the week and I decided to have the students describe their perfect presidents.  Some of their pieces were so adorable! Here are some of the samples from lesson:

What I LOVED about this unit (besides the future voter button) was the differentiated writing pages. If my class is like anyone elses, I have some really high, average and low writers and these pages helped my students to feel successful no matter what their level was.  This unit also includes Long A Sorts, Recording Sheets, ABC Order Sort and writing pages!

 

If you would like to grab this unit for free just click here to download it!

 

Another very exciting thing that took place this week was the announcement that I was VOTED Rookie Teacher of the Year for my school. Honestly I was blown away and so humbled because we have so my amazing first year teachers. So thank you fellow colleagues!

Here are some fun things that I was showered with:

 

 

Enjoy the rest of your week and keep a look out for the Thanksgiving Unit that is up and coming!

 

 

Ghosts, Goons and Goblins

This week was one of those short, yet felt longer than normal kind of weeks. We continued to work through our Halloween themed lessons and I think the anticipation of the big candy day is getting higher and higher. I just love seeing their little eyes light up each time we introduce new topics that are Halloween based. The last thing on my list for October is pumpkin activities and that will all take place next week!

We started the week with a little classroom meeting on manners. Is my class the only class that seems to lose them while they sleep at night? haha.. But seriously, where do they go? I found this adorable book from Patrick McDonald called " The Monsters' Monster". The book with a perfect Halloween themed text that taught the big idea of how far the words "Thank you" can go, or according to the monster, Dank You. Which can I tell you, I think my little ones say "Dank you" now more than they ever said thank you. Our team is really trying to incorporate writing with everything and so I created the Monster Manners handwriting page. Just click on the link for your copy! Pintrest also inspired me to have my class create the Frankenstein monster, notice boy and girl version!! What on earth would we do with our time without that amazing site??? (Pretty sure I could accomplish a lot more than I do!)

 

 

I also finished out the week teaching character descriptions to my students. Although this was somewhat hard at first, because they don't add details to ANYTHING let alone characters within their stories, by the end of the day Thursday they seemed to be getting better....Fingers crossed....To help enforce this concept, I used an idea from First Grade Parade. I asked the students to write a character description and draw a picture about themselves. Then we put these cute little ghosts over the top of their pictures to see if other people could guess who wrote the disruption. They were so enthusiastic about go around the room to try and guess who's was who's and then begged for me to put them in the hallway for everyone else to try and guess as well!

 

 

Thanks for reading and here's to going and trying to enjoy part of my weekend here in beautiful St. Augustine, Fl!

eeeKKKKKKK... spiders

I have to say that my least favorite theme of the fall is..... Spiders.... These eight legged creatures are so gross but the kiddos just eat this stuff up and beg to read more non-fiction books about them. Here are some of the highlights from our week.

We brainstormed a list of spider action words and spider describing words and then made this Cinquin poem to go with craft below.

I absolutely LOVE using their little hand print and fingerprints for everything!

 

OK y'all this next activity is one that I adore. My teammates are amazing and thought of using the book "AAAARRRGGG spider" to teach persuasive writing. After reading the book, we brainstormed reasons why spiders would make good pets. Here are some of their reasons.

Take note of the very last one. It says " I can train it to give you a massage." Where do they come up with this stuff?? If that doesn't convince you I'm not sure what will.

The students were then asked to write letters to their parents persuading their mom and dad to allow them to have a pet spider at home.

 We didnt' have any intention of framing this writing but when I had 10 minutes of  extra time to fill those creative minds made these adorable spider pets!

 

 

I also have a FREEBIE spider double game up for grabs on our TPT store. Click here to get it for yourself!

 

 

AAARRRRRGGGGG Spider Doubles Game