Thanksgiving, Christmas, and In-between!

Sometimes I feel guilty for not keeping up with the blog as much as I want to, then I realize....I'm a full time working, mother of 2! Haha! So I give myself a break! But I still want to share my Thanksgiving and Christmas pictures!

Yes, it was that time of year to get a handle on all the talking! My class really enjoyed the book as well!

These are some pictures of my Thanksgiving math stations I created to help practice some of our standards that we had been working on.

"Mayflower Mix-up" was my favorite! We had recently had our first math benchmark and one of the hardest areas was having an equation given to us and finding the right story problem to match it. So, we matched equations to story problems as our station! They loved it and caught on really well! 

We were counting nickels and pennies in "Cornucopia Counting" 

Then before and after two different ways! 10 before and 10 after as well as 1 before and 1 after in ""Compass Counting".

And who can't benefit from some good old base ten counting in "Teepee Tens"!

I discovered the most useful thing ever! Take a picture of your anchor charts to help kids who don't sit near them when they are writing. When kids come to my table they face away from my anchor chart area so the iPad was SO helpful!

Yes, I am modeling our Thanksgiving Program Turkeys! The kids looked so cute! 

This is my youngest, sitting by her daddy, at the Cowboy's Stadium in Arlington. We had to go see the Bobcats when they made it to playoffs!

Me and my oldest....and yes, that is wet hair! It was pouring rain when we got there! Poor girls! 

One of our Anchor Charts

I love to theme them when I can! Yay!

After we watched the original Grich movie for our recess break we talked about what we could have done to make the Grinch's heart grow.  We had Mrs. Block's class join us! (She had never seen the original movie and I almost had a heart attack!)

My helpers! I had come up with some more Christmas stations! 

I love to Laminate!!!! Best way to motivate myself!

Don't ask! It happens to everyone!

The class loves doing Math Mini Journals!

And of course sitting at the carpet to work!

Santa came to visit us and read us a book! "Moosletoe"

We had fun making these reindeer hats at our Christmas party!

Little game of Pin the Nose on Rudolph! 

We're missing Mrs. block!

Best part of having a student who's parents own Donutopia!!! 

My kids are so weird! She called him a Catfish!

proud mommy moment! My little Jersey was in the Nutcracker for the first time!

Green Grinch

We did some fun Grinch activities this year!

These are our Grinch faces!

 

I have a slight obsession with hole punches!  This is one way that I keep myself super organized when it comes to crafts!  I just whip out the boxes and tell the kids what colors or sizes to get!  It is so easy!

This has nothing to do with school but I was pretty shocked that it happened! I was on my way to a dinner party and popped TWO nails off at once! And I still had to go to the party!  I was a little embarrassed, hehe.

 


Here we are working on Reindeer Hats for our Christmas Caroling!

Every year we ask parents to bring cut up fabric and each student makes a beautiful Christmas wreath to give to their parents.  It's one of my favorite things we do!

 

I have several templates made out of file folders and the kids trace them (or I do if I am having an impatient day, lol!)

 

This is what the reindeer hats are for!  They are sooooo cute!

 

We read the book "Snowmen and Christmas" which is very similar to "Snowmen at Night".  We then did the same prompt as the rest of Pinterest "If I were a snowman at night, I would...."  The kids loved doing tear art!

 

We had a class elf this year!  I felt the pressure from other classes, lol!  In a desperate attempt to maintain class control I sent an email to Santa asking him to send us an elf!  He came the next day, and delivered M&M's since they lost them the day before!  They named him Sneakers!  It was fun, until I forgot to move him one time!  Boy was that hard to get the kids to understand! 

 

It's the most Wonderful time of the Year!

Before Thanksgiving break we invited all the parents to a Thanksgiving Presentation.  We made turkey facts and wrote about the first thanksgiving. Then we shared a couple poems and a fun song! "Albequerque Turkey"

Next we made our own 120 chart because a number line is just too crazy when it's that long, right?

Some kiddos wanted to be silly when I took their picture!

The kids told me where to cut...such smarties!

Then I gave them Post-It's and told them to draw /th/ things. 

We made a TH wreath. 

On Thuraday we had an administrator visit us during our math lesson. We worked on understanding equality using story problems and a balance scale.

 

They worked so hard! 

They hard to solve the problem then write a sentence telling what they did. 

On Friday we started our December Strategy Builders for problem solving.  This one is my favorite! I love the Christmas clipart in it!

You can get the December Strategy Mini Journals HERE

 

 

 

We ended the day with skip counting ornaments by twos!