Say Hello to My Little Friend

Hello three day weekend!  (I'm headed to Savannah this weekend... I do love that place!)  I'm pretty much ready for Monday too, as for Tuesday... well.... that's what Monday afternoon is for.  ;) 

In other breaking news... we made our first Plot Snowmen this week!  I love these guys!  We use small paper plates and I cut out the hats from black construction paper.  The kids write the title of the book on the hat in white crayon and the beginning, middle, and end on each plate.  Check it out:

Also.... my ELF ON A SHELF came today!  I had the office call down and tell me that I had a special delivery.  I picked it up on our way to lunch and the kids had a lot of fun guessing what it was after I told them it was from the North Pole.  After lunch we opened the package and read the story that comes with the elf.  My kids voted to name our elf Fred (they were very excited about the name Fred... which I will admit I personally like better than "Elf" or "Elf Shelf" which were two other suggestions).  c:  After we put Fred on the shelf all of the kids were walking up to him and whispering up to him about what they wanted for Christmas!  I have to admit... I'm tempted to tell good ol' Fred what I want for Christmas too!

Well, it's back to writing subplans for me!  Hope everyone has a wonderful night!

Thanksgiving in Review

I was super stressed before Thanksgiving due to observations and other normal teacher and life...[for lack of a better word] stuff, so sadly I did not get a chance to take many pictures or even plan activities like I wanted.  There's always next year though!  c:

I did want to share this neat activity that we do at my school... you may have heard of it before, but just in case... Every year at the beginning of November we send home an outline of a turkey without feathers.  We send a letter telling students and parents that their turkey needs to be disguised in order to make it through Thanksgiving.  We also send home a speech bubble for the students to write something the turkeys would say while they're disguised.  My favorite thing about this project is how involved and into it the parents get!  They love it just as much as the kids!  This year I had 3 rappers, a glittery Christmas tree, a hula dancer, Robocop, and a turkey with a sweater that said "Turkey" on it {reverse psychology? haha}.  I sent my turkeys home before I got pictures of them :( but here are some of a neighboring class's turkeys:

This is actually one of the second grade teacher's kids... they just went to Owl Fest in Apopka, FL (which I heard was pretty awesome) and "adopted" an owl that stays at a rescue center.  I love this one!

A rockstar turkey! 

A rockstar, Spongebob, and Coby Bryant.  Too cute! 



I also teach a sequencing lesson during the week of Thanksgiving (when these turkeys are due) using the book Turkey Trouble which is a book about a turkey disguising himself as farm animals so he doesn't get eaten for Thanksgiving.  Afterall the farmer wouldn't eat a cow for Thanksgiving... or would he?  c;  Hope everyone is having as good of a week as I am!  c:

*I'll try to figure out how to upload the letter and turkey outline for you to download over Christmas break!

Times Flies....

I can't believe Thanksgiving break is over!  As usual, time flew by and my "To Do List" I was going to finish over the break is now longer than it was originally.  c:  Among the many things on that list was posting some of my most recent ideas to this blog.  I guess I'm going to have to settle with adding this one idea for now though:

Our district uses Harcourt's Storytown series for reading.  Before the break we read, "Click, Clack, Moo" and studied plot.  I drew up these barns for a fun way for my students to record the plot of the story.  They loved it!

   

Hope everyone had a great break and has an excellent first day back!

Hooked!

I only recently discovered this amazing world of blogging and I'm hooked!  I am amazed by all of the wonderful ideas and excited to share some of my own!  Feel free to leave any suggestions on my page... especially about how to decorate my blog!  It's pretty plain right now!  c:


Hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving and I'm looking forward to posting some of my class's Thanksgiving activities very soon!