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!

Mummy Dracula Cans

Halloween is always a favourite of mine!  So many things to do!

One of my favourite things is the Halloween centre activities we do on Halloween Day! I usually try to run four different stations that the children rotate through in the hour.  One of the most popular is the Mummy/Dracula can.  When I first started to do this craft it was just a mummy pencil holder can made out of a tin can wrapped in strips of white fabric with googly eyes.  That was cool but THEN one of my parents came in and showed me how to turn it into a Dracula can!  TOO COOL!

To make the can into a Dracula can you need a piece of string and a little wet scrap of towel.  

You punch a hole in the bottom of the tin can with a nail.  Then you put a piece of string through the hole and tie a knot.  Let the piece of strip dangle down from the bottom of the can!  Take a small scrap of old towel, get it wet, and squeeze out the excess moisture.  Fold the piece of towel around the string, pinch it tightly and     slide the towel down the length of string.  If you are doing it correctly it will make a sound like Dracula laughing!  The quality of the sound changes depending on the size of the can.  Big cans make low sounds and little cans make squeaky sounds.  Needless to say, the children love it.  I make them promise that they will stop making the sounds when their Moms tell them to!  

We also made spider pops, a five little pumpkin glove puppet, and a spider web.  Lots of fun!

We also made these skeletons that we hung from the ceiling!  The children took them home on Halloween to help decorate their houses. Too spooky!