Snowmen!

Now that Christmas is over and the children have taken home their presents I can show you what we made for Christmas presents for Mom and Dad!  I have been making these snowmen with my classes for over 15 years I think... That means that there are hundreds of these guys out there.
And that best part is that I have parents coming and telling me that they come out every year for Christmas and are a favourite!
My husband is a secret helper in that he cuts up the wood for me!  Thanks, hubby!

Each year at the end of November I put three blocks of wood and a small piece of sandpaper in a ziplock bag for each of my students.  The blocks are one each of rough cut two by fours, two by threes, and two by twos!  I teach the children how to sand the blocks and we sand away for several weeks.  They love to sand and beg for "sanding time"!

When we decide they are smooth enough we have a painting day! We do one coat with white craft paint watered down.  The next day we do one coat of glitter paint really watered down.  I will be posting more detailed instructions at a later date.

Then we have a day when we put them all together!

They really look cute all together! 

I know the children really enjoyed making them!  I think they were pretty proud of them too!  

Fun Christmas Projects!

We worked on a variety of projects over the last few weeks!  We have a couple more to finish before Christmas!  Tomorrow we are going to make these neat ornaments as a buddy project!  I saw a few neat ornament projects using plastic ornament balls to make snowmen but couldn't get the materials organized easily or was worried how to do them quickly as a buddy project.
As I was wandering around our local craft store trying like mad to come up with an idea I realized that if I combined two different ideas together I had a quick and easy solution to my buddy project. One of the ornament ideas I saw on Pinterest had tinsel in the ball and another used ornamental snow in the ball to make a snowman face.  I pinned both ideas on my Pinterest site.  Brainwave!  Use white tinsel in the ball instead of the snow and draw the face on with sharpies!  Bought some tinsel that had snowflakes mixed in to the tinsel and experimented at home!  A three inch piece of tinsel pushed into the ornament with a pencil and a sharpie face drawn on and we are done.  Add the name and the date on the back and we have a keepsake for both the big buddy and the little buddy!

We also made a Christmas count-up book.  Take a look!

The children has fun decorating the trees in their books and then the cover of the book.  This one is from my Christmas fun package.  You can find it at my Teachers Pay Teachers store.  

The elf on the shelf has also been having fun in our classroom.  We made a little booklet chronicling some of her adventures with the little ghost named Gus who manages to hide my stapler and leave us notes each day.  

Here Sparkles and Gus are on a life size baby Stegosaurus that we had on our wall for a while.  

Each day they manage to find a different spot to visit in the classroom and have left puzzles and Christmas books on various days.  Lots of fun!  

This is our contribution to the door decorating contest!  

The children completed applications to become elves and then we made elves to hold the applications.  Found this great idea at The First Grade Parade.  Thanks!   There are lots of neat ideas there!  

Lots more to tell but have to go make some gingerbread!  Will post pictures of our Christmas presents soon!

Santa Hat Books

We started working on Christmas vocabulary words this week.  I used the Christmas vocabulary material from my Christmas Fun package.

The children seemed to really enjoy the activity and really did a great job! I decided to use the colour it yourself version and I am glad I did.  The colouring was a "want to" not a "have to" activity but most of the children choose to colour their booklets after they had finished matching the sentence strips to the correct picture.  Some even wanted to take their colouring pencils home so they could finish it at home!  They were doing that particular a job!  

I just used the pocket chart pages at the original size that they come in the package and they worked out great!  You can increase the size on your photocopier by selecting the option that lets you increase the size from an 8 X 11 sheet to an 11 X 17 sheet but I found I didn't need to.  I printed off a colour version of the pocket chart pictures and laminated them as well as the pocket chart strips this time.  But you don't have to as they work just as well just in paper form.  I didn't have time to laminate my Halloween package sentence strips and they are still in great shape.  

The children helped me match the sentence strips to the correct picture in the pocket chart.  When they went to their seats to do their own they did great.  I found that telling them to match the sentence strips to the pictures before cutting the sheets into pages worked really well. 

I made simple Santa hat covers for the books by folding a red construction paper in half and chopping off the  top two corners to make a hat shape.  A strip of white paper on the bottom and a cotton ball on the top and you have a funky Santa hat cover!  

We also worked on math addition concepts with the Christmas workspaces.  We call it "Add it Up" and the children really like it.   They use the workspaces to make an addition story at their desk.  They record their story on the Add it Up sheet and then go to their friend's desks and record their stories too.  There are 18 spaces on the worksheet and I have 22 students so they get lots of practise, have fun, and get a chance to move around too!  They love the new Christmas workspaces.  Especially the gingerbread house!  

I put out the counting tubs Christmas work spaces during Blue Bin time.  The children have to put the cards in order from one to ten.  Then they put the appropriate number of objects on each card.  Lots of counting practise and fun! 

Christmas Fun

I like Christmas a lot.  Right now I am trying to think up a new idea for our annual Door Decorating contest at my school.  The whole school gets into the act.  We have had some really neat doors.

These ones are just a few samples of the great doors that have been created at my school! 

This is one of my doors based on the gingerbread man story.  You can't see the door very well but it is supposed to be a cookie sheet of gingerbread men who are escaping down the road!

Another year, we made a gingerbread house!  We had a lot of fun with that one making up the patterned candies and gingerbread men.  

Still trying to think up a good one for this year!

Tomorrow is Cyber Monday!  My Teachers Pay Teachers stuff is on sale!  

I am working on some new stuff too.  Hopefully I will be able to complete it and get it posted before Christmas!  

I am looking forward to starting Christmas in my classroom soon!  I can't wait!  

I sound a bit like the kids, don't I?

Early Christmas Fun!

I love Christmas.  I live on a street that is famous for its Christmas lights.  We are unofficially known as Candy Cane Lane at Christmas because we have 6 foot high candy canes lining either side of our street.  I have even decorated my classroom door as Candy Cane Lane during our  annual Christmas Door Decorating contest!  Can you see the real candy canes lining the street?

So you can see I love Christmas.
So it won't surprise you to find that my third package on my Teachers Pay Teachers is all about Christmas.  I got brave and uploaded it last weekend along with my Thanksgiving package.  The Christmas package has a few of my favourite projects in it. It also has some new ones!

The package has a Five Senses for Christmas activity that goes with the Christmas Houses.  Lots of memories can be packed into this project for an awesome Christmas booklet to keep!

It contains a Christmas tree count up book to read and one for the children to make!

It also contains some fun math activities.  I had too much fun putting that together! 

I can't wait the show the gingerbread houses to my kids!  

You can download a preview of the package at my Teachers Pay Teachers website.  I hope you will find something you can use.   

How many days until Christmas?? I can't wait! 

Dinosaur Days!

We have started working on a mini unit about dinosaurs in my classroom.  We did our first mini research report about Apatosaurus.  I managed to find a variety of interesting facts about apatosaurus from a variety of sources and made a fact list.  The children and I then categorized the facts into four groups.  They were: what they look like, what they eat, about the babies, and cool facts.  The children liked the cool facts category the best and I think they wanted to put everything in that category.  I guess they think that everything about dinosaurs is cool.

To add a "super funky" element to the project I prepared some covers for the booklets that could be made into dinosaurs.  I find that if I go the extra mile and create a "super funky" product to strive for, the children will go the extra mile and give me an excellent effort in their work.

I had fun creating a backdrop for their booklets.  I think we both had fun!

Fall Fun!

I love these turkeys!  I couldn't resist posting another picture of one!  Quite the face...

It has been a busy weekend!  I had such a lovely response to my first Teachers Pay Teachers package that I decided to be brave and jump in again!  I finished working on two new packages and decided to post them on my Teachers Pay Teachers Site today.  One package is called Thanksgiving Fun.  We have already celebrated Thanksgiving in Canada but I know that everyone in the United States is eagerly looking forward to this holiday so I thought it wasn't too late to share.  Take a look!

There are a variety of reading vocabulary and writing activities including an I Like Thanksgiving cloze activity with a corresponding art activity.

I have also included some math centre activities that I hope you might find useful.  They are one of my most popular activities during my "Blue Bin" centre time! 

There is a preview file that gives you a taste of the package!  I hope you find something there that you might find useful!

The fall vocabulary booklet was a big hit in my classroom this year!  I found some really neat peel and stick Fall foam stickers at my local craft store that were a huge hit.  I didn't even have to make a fancy cover for the booklets.  They created the cover themselves and had a ball!

I wish I had bought more of those stickers though!  They were a good deal in more ways than one!

Happy Fall!

We celebrate Thanksgiving in October in Canada but I didn't get a chance to post about our little pine cone turkeys that we made.  I thought that our friends in the United States might enjoy a look at our funny little turkeys!  They were a big hit with the children.  The first year that I made them the children made little nests for them in their desks!  I hesitate to think about how many of these turkeys are out there now! 

I had been looking around for a turkey craft a few years ago and found the one that uses feathers with the pine cone.  I didn't have any feathers but I did have a lot of leaf garlands that I picked up at my local craft store and dollar store at a discount after the season.  I tried out the leaves and was happy with the result. Anyway, the kids loved them and that's what counts! Right! 

We have been working on fall vocabulary in my classroom over the last little while!   I have been having fun creating little vocabulary books for my children to complete.  First, we matched the appropriate sentence to the picture and then the children made their own versions in a little book.  I managed to find some fall peel and stick stickers at my local craft store at a great price.  Wow, were they a hit!  The children happily decorated a simple construction paper cover and were happy to let me take their pictures with them for their scrapbooks as well as pictures of their books for this blog.  I love the way one of the students decided that it needed to have a title too!  

Wish I had thought of that!