Merry Christmas!

So nice to be able to say Merry Christmas! At times it seems this school year has flown by, but some days it seems forever.
We are having lots of fun. We made Gingerbread Houses, Gingerbread Retelling Houses, decorated Christmas Tree Cookies, Traveled Around the World, made a class Christmas Tree and today we will take a ride on the Polar Express wearing our PJs!

Our Gingerbread Houses. This year we used icing instead of glue for the sides. They each had 6 graham crackers and had to decide how to "glue" the house together to get the roof and sides to stay up. We had a dear volunteer and baker, Mrs. Deborah Houston, come with Gingerbread cookies! That was a huge surprise! Our prompt was to make a Gingerbread House sturdy enough so that the Gingerbread Man would live there forever and not get eaten.

We did some math with our buddies. We rolled the dice and took turns making one more than the dice. They loved this activity. Nothing to do with the holiday, but any time we can use manipulatives and their math kits, they love it!

We also made a Class Christmas Tree using triangles. One of our standards in math is K.G.6.

K.G.6. CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.K.G.B.6  

Compose simple shapes to form larger shapes. For example, "Can you join these two triangles with full sides touching to make a rectangle?"

We have to make larger shapes with small shapes. Usually we do this with our pattern blocks and puzzles. I made some decorated triangles and they had to put it together to make a tree! It took a long time after coloring the triangles to make a tree but they had fun and they persevered. Later I put a picture on the overhead of how to do this and it helped!

One of our classes has a child that doesn't celebrate Christmas so I made a woodland tree with birds and one with just 'cranberry' garland. I also added a trunk. I gave the buddies two triangles and together they had to figure out how to make a square tree trunk. We used one on the "skinny tree."

I packaged all this up and put it on TPT for others! It is a fun package that meets the standards and is also a little merry for your students. This is good for Pre-k (with more support,) Kindergarten and First Grade. A first grade class is  making this today so more pictures later!

If you are interested the link to grab the packet is: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Class-Triangle-Christmas-Tree-Geometry-Project-2916741

Thanks for visiting and Merry Christmas to you and yours!

We Joined A Christmas Card Exchange!

When my energetic co-worker, shown below wearing  her Turkey Hat!...

 told me about a Christmas Card exchange I wanted to say nope... not with all that we have going on. I went ahead and signed up and hoped I would be able to keep up!
First I signed up using this link: http://projectsbyjen.com/Projects/HCE2014/HCE14Welcome.html
The whole thing was so organized and I was very impressed!

The theme was Christmas Lights so I made up a card that would fit nicely in our school envelopes. I colored in the tree and reindeer... yes 30 cards! My students colored in the lights and details. I let them use new glitter crayons and they were thrilled!

I made the cards 3 up on one sheet of cardstock. I let them color until they were too tired! They would shake their hands and say I just can't color anymore!

This really didn't take as long as I thought it would and my students had fun!

I sent out 30 cards and we received 29 back... from all over the US and Canada! I waited until the last day of school to open our cards and talk about each of the states. We also graphed the states to see which state sent the most cards.

We don't have a Smartboard, but I can still use the software so I pulled up a map and we made a tally mark on each state as we opened the cards.

Each student opened a card and we read where the card came from and basic info that we all included with our cards. (there was a template to print out)

My TA is holding up a card that had a picture of each student on the letter. Very pretty. We received some very nice cards.

We displayed the cards on our door! My students loved doing this project! I am signing up for sure next year. The hardest part was figuring out how to take the excel file and make labels up! I was pretty proud of myself when I did this!

Merry Christmas to everyone and I hope each of our students has a safe and loved filled holiday!

Dodecahedron Frenzy!

I love group projects! Makes me feel so good to see my students all working together and having fun!
The Dodecahedrons are so fun and do not require writing a ton of copy or coloring for hours. My Kinders love them!

My Kinders are learning to color while they are learning CVC words. I think they are doing a better job than at the beginning of the year. They enjoy making the dodecahedrons.

My kinders pick which family they want to make. They trace the words first, since the pictures might be hard for some to figure out. (Like wed.) Then they color and write the word on the dodecahedron circle. When they cut them out, they place them on my desk for me to put together. They watch me, but it is really hard for me class to put the tabs exactly right.

If you would like to make some with your students, I have this for sale on my Teacher Pay Teacher store along with the Dodecahedron for Digraphs! 

Click on this link or the pictures below to check them out.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Word-Family-Dodecahedron-Cooperative-Learning-Project-1596326

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Digraph-Dodecahedron-Cooperative-Learning-Project-1604146

Hope those links work for you. I am still learning this blogging business, but it is fun! 

They are really pretty just like this, but look nice hanging from my window. I'll take a picture of my window this week and post it! Hope you are all ready for this coming week! Most of us will be out of school for our Winter Break. We are out Friday at 12:45 and then will meet in our Media center for a Staff lunch! Can't wait. Thanks for visiting! Pam

Our Christmas Elf Applications!

I had so much fun with these little Elf Applications! My students took this so seriously and this was the best present I could have this Christmas. They actually believed they could apply to be an Elf! I am just back in Kindergarten after teaching 4th and 5th grade AIG (Academically Gifted Students.) I wanted this change and I can see why now! These children have not lost their magic, they still believe that anything is possible and I love that! I hope their creativity never gets stifled!

When we were going over the Application (they did this first) I asked them to really think hard about whether or not they wanted to be an Elf when they grew up. We talked about having to make all those toys and then what it would be like if they were sent out to homes and schools to be an Elf On A Shelf. One little girl almost cried saying she didn't want to be an elf! I told her just to say that she didn't want to apply. She is the one that is below. I think the cutest one of the bunch!

Most of mine wanted to be an Elf. We talked about why an elf would have to like toys, snow, and of course, Christmas. They had such a good time doing this.

My only regret is that I cannot find the file or where I got this free item. I have searched through TPT where I usually get my free items and I can't find it anywhere. When you add something to your wish list and then download the item, it is gone. If someone knows who I can link this free item to, please let me know. I couldn't even share the link with my co-teachers since it is lost somewhere. It must not be titled Elf Application.

I love the little faces they made! Cute activity and it tied in well with careers and why you need to have certain skills and likes to be successful in a job choice!

At beginning of the year, my students couldn't even hold scissors for the most part. I just love the way they have learned to cut out carefully. These pieces were not that big and they had to cut the collar, the hat, all of the pieces. They have come a long way since the beginning of the year!