Christmas Fun

We made it...and now some time for rest and relaxation.  Just kidding, no time to rest here! I still have sooo much Christmas shopping to do.
I thought I'd share just a few activities from our last week.

We did these little reindeer activities.  They are a part of my Writing Piece of the Month Unit.  I save each of the pieces thy complete, and bind them at the end of the year to create their Writing Portfolios.

We also did this sweet little gift activity.  It's a bit like secret Santa.  They each drew a random number.  The numbers corresponded to their class numbers.  They wrote a sweet little note to the person they secretly got.  On the last day, I passed them out and they got to read the nice messages they received from a classmate.  They really enjoyed getting a special message hand written and illustrated just for them by a friend.  You can get this in my Dear Santa...Santa Craftivity set.  If you already purchased this set, please re-download it for this Friendship Gift Printable.

Here are a few:

We made these snowman ornaments this year as parent gifts. They came out really cute!  I had a whole stack of old CD's, what a great way to recycle.

I got the original idea from Jackie at Happy Hooligans and fell in love with her little snowmen right away.  I just changed the nose a bit and went a little overboard with glitter.  But, I really love how they all turned out.  I wish I had taken a picture of all of them!!!

 

Amelia Bedelia and Santa, Oh My!

Thought I'd share a little of this and that from our classroom.  It's been so cold in Texas recently, it's actually starting to feel a lot like Christmas.  We read Merry Christmas, Amelia Bedelia last week, and that's always a lot of fun.  By the end of the week, it's super cute to hear my little ones say, Amelia Bedelia takes everything sooo literally!

For the very first reading of our Amelia Bedelia story, we used the mental imagery quad below.  The quad is an idea that comes from Debbie Miller's book, Reading with Meaning.   They don't get to see the pictures during the first reading, so this gives them an opportunity to visualize the story and become illustrators themselves.   If you follow me, you know I LOVE visualizing.  We use this strategy all the time!!!!

 I'm loving the images by these little artists in the making.

We also worked on story elements.  The activity below is one I loved and saved from when I did my student teaching about 10 years ago.  Yikes, that really shows my age!!! I just added the plate template to put the cookies on. 

I also added a new product to my store.  Santa is a pretty popular guy in our classroom during this time of year, so I thought we'd honor him with a few fun-filled activities.  You can click here to check it out in my store.

The set includes a Santa Letter Writing craft.  Here's a peak at some of the finished letters.

 Santa with glasses is way too cute!

The Santa Set also includes:

There is also a Visualizing Poem about Santa getting stuck in the chimney, that's not pictured.   I told you, I lOVE visualizing activities! Poems are fantastic for mental imagery!

12 Days of Christmas...

Welcome to  Day 6 of the 12 Days of Christmas Blog hop.  If you're just joining the fun, you're in for a fabulous giveaway hosted by Dixie from Teachin' Little Texans.  Each day, you will get a freebie and several chances to win some pretty fantastic prizes. 

 

Here's a peek at everything in this fun-filled giveaway.

There will be several winners- YAY! 13 winners will receive a unit from above.  There will also be a winner for the pencil sharpener, which I have and LOVE!!! In addition to that, another winner will win a TPT gift card, and yet another winner for the Target gift card.

You have lots of chances to win, so enter away below!

A Rafflecopter Giveaway

 

Now, how about a FREEBIE?  I thought I'd offer my newest clip art set as a freebie.  This set contains a bunch of different trees.  It seems like I'm always needing a tree for this or that.  So, I thought I'd try my hand at trees.  If you like the totally trees clip art, then be sure to join the giveaway, because you can win the colored version in the giveaway.

Get your FREEBIE by clicking below. It will take you to TPT to download.

You are only half way through the giveaway, so you have lots of time to get your entries in.  Tomorrow, Breanne from Ms. Third Grade will be your host for the next stop.  So, click the owl tomorrow to head on over to Day 7.