Christmas Survey!!

Happy Friday!!!

Yesterday, on my first vacation day, I went back to school to do a little cleaning and to pick up my teachers' manuals. I feel like I will be going back a lot... oh wells. It's kind of nice to be there in the peace and quiet. :)

Anyway, Kristin at A Teeny Tiny Teacher did this survey a few days ago, and before I go out and buy the last few Christmas gifts that I've been putting off, I will do it too!!!!


1. Wrapping paper or gift bags?
I'd much rather wrap presents. I am not amazing at it, but I am much worse at arranging tissue paper inside a gift bag. I have no idea how people do that!!! My gift bags always look terrible.

2. Real tree or artificial?
We always had real trees when I was little but now we have an artificial one. I would really like to have a real tree in my own personal home, but I don't really know how I feel about arbitrarily cutting down trees... plus I think it can be costly?

3. When do you put up the tree?
My mom refuses to put the tree up more than like 4 days before Christmas! :(

4. When do you take the tree down?
These answers are making me sound like a little kid..... but, again, my mom would be happiest if the tree was down on December 26th.

5. Do you like eggnog?
Not at all!!!!

6. Favorite gift received as a child?
I know I had an American Girl (Molly) but that might've been for my birthday?

 7. Do you have a nativity scene?
We have one at home and I have one in my classroom, but I don't have one personally. My dream is to get the Willow Tree nativity!

 
8. Hardest person to buy for?
My younger brother. He always buys everything he wants right away!

9. Easiest person to buy for?
My boyfriend! I keep mental notes of random things he says throughout the year and then I have tons of ideas when it is Christmastime!!

10. Mail or email Christmas cards?
I love mail so I love sending mail!

11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received?
Once we had a secret santa exchange and I had asked for dangly earrings. I got some really cheap gross looking ones. Somebody who was there ended up taking them for her 5-year-old, haha!

12. Favorite Christmas movie?
I love Holiday Inn, The Holiday, and Love Actually!!

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas?
If I have ideas early then I buy them right away so I don't forget! Otherwise I am a last-minute shopper.

14. Ever recycled a present?
Not besides those earrings previously mentioned!

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas?
My mom makes a delicious potato casserole type of thing. I promise it is delicious. My dad is on a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet this year so my mom says she isn't going to make it!! I am so sad.

16. Clear lights or colored lights on a tree?
Doesn't matter to me!

17. Favorite Christmas song?
That is tough... I guess I like most of them!

18. Travel at Christmas or stay at home?
The farthest we go is like 10 minutes. Haha! Although if I go with my boyfriend on Christmas Eve, his family goes to Indiana, which is about 2 hours away or so.

19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer?
Oh yes. I think I have The Night Before Christmas memorized.

20. Angel or star on top of the tree?
We used to have an angel when I was little, but our kitten climbed up the tree and knocked it over. Now we have a star! At school, one of my girls made an "origami angel" at her house and brought it for our tiny tree.

21. Open the presents on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning?
We open them on both days!

22. Most annoying thing about this time of year?
Not knowing what to get for people.

23. Favorite ornament, theme, or color?
I like all the ornaments that I've gotten over the years. A long time ago, my mom got me a nutcracker one with a little string on the bottom. When you pull the string, his mouth opens and closes! Love it.

24. What do you want for Christmas?
I will be really happy if I get seasons of Seinfeld!!!! I watch Seinfeld like it is my job.

PS: Is anyone as psyched as I am that the NBA season starts in T minus 48 hours??? That is actually the best Christmas present that the world could give me!!

Our Christmas Party

Happy first day of Christmas break to me!

Yesterday was our party and it went off without a hitch! I am forever grateful to the teacher I worked with in the spring of 2010 who always organized her parties in stations. My typically energetic and loud kids are very well-behaved during our classroom parties because they are in small groups being supervised by a parent doing a fun activity. Hooray for stations!!

Here's what we did at our party.

Our first station was math bingo! My cousin, Kelley, is doing some of her observation hours in my class, and I was lucky enough to have her for the party! Her bingo cards were super cute. The kids rolled dice and added the numbers together, then covered up the answer.

Another station was making candy cane ornaments out of beads and pipe cleaners! This one was brought in by one of my room moms. She couldn't come to the party, so she sent her high school daughter instead. The word on the street was that she did NOT want to be at the party, but she hid it well and worked great with the kiddos!!

We also played Christmas Cover-Up, thanks to First Grade Garden. This was actually pretty similar to the Christmas bingo game, but none of the kids seemed to notice... They would roll the foam dice and add up the numbers, then cover up their answers. Apparently no one won this game in any of the rotations. Oh wells!

And our last station was two-in-one. First, we made magic reindeer food out of oatmeal and glitter. I used the tags found here. The reindeer clip art is a little weird-looking, but we don't have a color printer at school and I didn't want to use a ton of ink. Because this took a total of 2 seconds to scoop out some reindeer food, I also gave them something fun - a Christmas crypto-code puzzle from Super Teacher Worksheets. They love decoding these things, and it was a little brain break during the party.

After the stations were finished, it was food and present time!

I wanted to have a breakfast party, since we only had a half day. So we had a fruit tray, mini bagels with cream cheese, and apple and orange juice. So delicious and pretty nutricious! And, this is really shocking, NO ONE brought cupcakes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was so happy, especially after the four sets of cupcakes at Halloween.

Here's a closeup of the beautiful fruit tray. Sadly, by the time I got to it, the strawberries were long gone. :(

And then we handed out gifts. These were the gift bags I gave my kids. Inside was a Scholastic book that I picked out for each kid specifically and a Smencil, which they LOVED! The bags say "Jesus loves you snow much." Oriental Trading sent these bags to my mom's work as a Christmas gift or something, but she works at a speech/occupational therapy center, so they couldn't really use them. So I really lucked into these bags! And they held all of the kids' stuff pretty well.

A few kids brought in goody bags for the other kids. They had candy or little toys or games inside. It was really sweet! But kind of a crazy mess. They loved it though. And look! Someone got Pete the Cat for Christmas!! :)

I got some sweet gifts too! I got a Thirty-One Organizing Utility Tote that looks just like this! Mine is downstairs so I borrowed this picture from Mommy of Two Little Monkeys. Mine says "A+ Teacher" in pink!!

I also got a super cute snowman treat dish! I am in love with this thing because I have none of my own Christmas decorations. When I move out someday, I am going to have the saddest house at Christmas time. Now it will be a little more jolly!!!!

I am very thankful this Christmas for having a job, teaching twelve little people that make me laugh every day, and having awesome room moms and the best future-teacher-cousin ever to make my Christmas party a smashing success!!!

It's Almost Party Time!

Only half of a day left until break time!!!!!!!!!!!!

These past few days haven't been horrific, so I am grateful for that! All I have left is the Christmas party tomorrow, yeah!

Here are a few other Christmas-y things we have been doing. :)

Inspired by this pin...

[source]

We made some junk mail snowflakes!

Ours look a little more like junk mail with holes in it BUT they loved it and it didn't take a lot of prep!

We also made Christmas gifts for our families! After perusing 154 blogs and looking all over Pinterest, I went with a gift idea that my first grade teacher did when I was in first grade! I would show you the kids' finished ornaments, but their pictures are on them. So I'll just show you mine!

We just painted popsicle sticks with either red or green tempera paint, and then I hot glued the popsicle sticks into this sled shape! There are two sticks hidden in this picture that would support the sled if you were to lay it down on a table. But it is meant to be an ornament. I am super happy with how they turned out! I just have to tie on the ribbons when I get to school in the AM.

I'm not sure if I showed you the sweet tiny Christmas tree that I found in my closet last week.

In their free time, the kids make paper snowflake ornaments for the tree and we just shove them onto the branches, haha!

And lastly, over the weekend, I found First Grade Garden and this CRAZY cute writing activity! Amanda provides the rough draft PDF as a freebie!!

And here's how they look on the bulletin board!

Soooooo cute!!!

Wish me luck for the partay tomorrow! All of the stations are set and ready to go, my presents for the kids are wrapped, and I am pumped!

December Currently!

I'm so happy the December Currently is here!!

This past week was our Gingerbread Week. We read 5 different gingerbread stories, compared and contrasted them, and did a few fun activities. Here is our CLAPS (Characters, Location, Action, Problem, Solution) chart which helped us compare each of the stories throughout the week.

As you can see, we read The Gingerbread Man, The Gingerbread Girl, Gingerbread Baby, The Musubi Man, and the Cajun Cornbread Boy.

They ALL loved Gingerbread Baby the best!

We made the gingerbread glyphs that I got from Denise at Sunny Days in Second Grade!

We also did a ginger taste test graphing activity which I got from Tales of a Teacherista! I didn't get any pictures of the actual tasting, but the kids loved it. We tried ginger ale, gingerbread flavored marshmallows, and ginger snaps. They could not get enough ginger ale!!!! And they detested the ginger snaps. We had fun. :)

Unrelated to gingerbread, we made new window decorations. I think 3 months was long enough to leave up our apples, right? We made Christmas-themed tissue paper/contact paper things this time.

Okay, go link up with Farley!

Winter Cleaning!

The teacher who was in my room before me had been teaching at my school for about 15 years. The teacher before her had been teaching in my room since the late 80s. Neither of them felt the need to remove anything from the room upon their respective retirements.

Little by little, I have been purging. I have entire sets of Weekly Readers from the 90s. I have file folders of notes from parents from 2000 - notes like, "Susie will not be at school today because she has a sore throat." I did have a stack of records that I found shoved in a cabinet, but those were donated to Purple Heart many months ago.

Today I tackled an entire file cabinet so I could start using it for actual storage!

I threw 99% of everything inside it away. Well, it's actually in piles on my floor so I can recycle it in the morning. Here's what it looked like before I piled it up!

A ton of the stuff was way outdated. A few things I thought I miiiight be able to use, but then I remembered my mom saying: if you got through half the year already without knowing what was in the cabinet, you can survive without it. Plus, everything I get from blogs totally trumps the worksheet graveyard that is my floor.

While poking around in the closet, I also found a little Christmas tree (that I forgot to take a picture of) and a nativity scene!

I don't know where Joseph is... unless one of the shepherds is supposed to be him?? I put one next to Mary just in case. :).

We finished our gingerbread man glyphs that I got from Denise at Sunny Days in Second Grade! I didn't hang them up yet and I forgot my camera today sooo I will put those pictures up tomorrow!

And I continue to get rave reviews about my math quilt that I got from Reagan at Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits!!! I just want to marry that quilt!

The whole day was not great though! One of my second graders hit someone in the face with a chair leg today. Awesome. And our second class frog lost its life over the weekend. Also I've had the songs from the Christmas program stuck in my head all day. Ahhh!! Luckily tomorrow is the program! Go first and second graders go!

Our First Math Quilt

I heart Reagan and her awesome geometric math quilts!

Today was a crazy day. We had 30 minutes of tech, a combined 120 minutes of music, lunch and recess for a total of 60 minutes... I'm lucky I got anything done. What I'm really lucky for is the sweet geometric math quilts we made today! I stuffed Math in there somewhere!

They loved cutting the triangles to fit the pattern! And they thought the final quilt was so beautiful. Ours is tiny because we only have 12 people! One second grader was absent today so I made one to put on the quilt - otherwise it would be way smaller!

It was easy to teach them the cutting, and once I showed it to them, they took off on their own!! Also we don't have a die cutting machine, so I hand cut my trees during our crazy long music time.

When I told them that we'd do one every month, they were super excited! I am too. 

Also, I have a first grader who is pretty far behind the rest of the students in most of our content areas. I also usually have to give him directions a minimum of 5 times before he processes them and pays attention. But during our quilt-making today, I only had to show him once, and he did great! He had no problems figuring out how to turn the triangles to fit! I was so super proud of him and I think he felt great about himself too! Hooray for a project that incorporated a different type of intelligence!! And hooray for Reagan!!

A Little Christmas, A Little Community

We had a pretty busy day today!

First, today is St. Nicholas Day. Teaching at a Catholic school, I feel pretty confident in celebrating this. Our religion book had me talking about St. Nicholas last week, so I threw it out there that December 6th was the official day. And that we should put our shoes out and see if St. Nicholas comes to see us!!!!

Well, that was last week.

Today, when the kids came skipping in the room, they said, "Can we put our shoes out in the hallway???" And I was like, "OH NO!" Totally forgot to get stuff for them. I really need to keep candy bags in my desk!!

But, no worries. My wonderful friend Stacy who teaches 3rd/4th grade came to the rescue during math stations!

The purple shoe is mine... they made me put mine out too, haha!! They totally did not see through this, yeah!

Today I also read Tomie dePaola's The Legend of the Poinsettia.

It was really meaningful to my Spanish speakers that I read this book about Mexico and they were amazed that I could read the 10 Spanish words in the book! :)

Afterwards, we watercolored stained glass pictures of poinsettias (here's the template). My kids love watercoloring and I think their pictures always look so beautiful! One thing I am definitely grateful for about my students is that they always give 100%, even if it's just watercoloring. :)

Aaaaand lastly, we are studying communities in Social Studies right now. They've had a pretty tough time remembering which type of community is which, you know, urban, suburban, and rural. I did a quick Google Reader search for anything to help us, and I found this great foldable idea at Keeping Up With Class!

Even though it legit took me 15 minutes to figure out how to fold these little books... the kids ended up loving them. I hope we can review them over and over and finally master these important vocab words!

Tomorrow I am SUPER excited to do our December math quilt that I got from Reagan at Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits!!!! Our entire afternoon (which is when we normally have math) is being taken over by our Christmas music program practice.... so I will squeeze this into the morning!!! Party time!

Yay for a Good Day!!

I had an awesome day with my first and second graders today!! They listened most of the time, they worked super hard, and all these minutes showed up that I never usually see!

I think it was because I was more strict than normal right when the day started and moved a couple of kids' clips down for talking during calendar. I hate moving clips down and I would much rather focus on positive behavior, but I've gotten pretty frustrated with the extreme amount of talking that happens all day long. So I guess those kids sent a warning to everyone because the rest of the day was just lovely. :)

Today I started decorating the room for Christmas! The other day I saw this cute wreath idea on Dr. Jean's blog and decided to go with it! I don't have any store-bought decorations so everything I put up is kid-made (which I like better anyway)!

Admittedly, this is not really "kid-made" besides that those are really the hands of first and second graders. I first had them trace their own hands. After two kids who took 15 minutes EACH, I commandeered that situation and traced all their hands and cut them out in my free time. Our secretary had that sweet bow template and then I just cut some little circles for berries! I think it looks amazing, haha!!

I also put up my Dollar Tree Christmas bell! It's so close to the door that it won't even ring but I don't care!!

Over the summer, I signed up for a traveling stuffed animal project on Second Grade Teachers' Club and yesterday we received Tyrone in the mail.

The kids think he is the best thing that ever happened to them. One girl already is bringing him with her to everything she does... math stations... P.E.... the carpet.... I have to try and find a little pin to put on his vest!

With Tyrone, we also received a book - Owney the Mail Pouch Pooch.

I am not going to lie to you, friends - I was not feeling this book. It is a true story of a dog who hopped on trains and went all over the place. The story was pretty cool, but it was exceptionally long-winded and I got bored reading it. In my bizarro world classroom today, the kids stayed sitting and silent for the ENTIRE THING. Whoa.

I also started Words Their Way this week!!! It was a little hectic yesterday trying to explain what we were doing in life, but today when I had them re-sort their words into groups, about 80% of them were super into it. Hooray!!!! Yay for sorting!!! I have 4 groups and only 12 kids.... on one hand, I feel like that's kind of overkill, but on the other I do have two grades and incredibly varying ability levels. So I am feeling good about that!

And on a last, more somber note, one of my dear little frogs went to frog heaven today.

I am not really sad about it, as I only had them since August and the kids never cared enough to bother giving either of them a name. And this experience has taught me that I am not a class pet person. I think I'm more of a class plant person........ except I have a classroom that gets no natural light!! My wall of windows looks at the building right next door and we face the north! Any suggestions on plants that are cool with shade?