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.

 

 

 

Winter Celebration Scrapbook

I finally finished my Winter Celebration Scrapbook.  It was a project I started last year, but never got around to finishing.  With Christmas nearly here, I knew it was time to finish putting this little unit together for my students.  I used the scrapbook templates last year and my students loved them.  I had students complete them based on the read alouds I chose for each country.   This year, I knew I wanted to add passages to go along with each of the scrapbook pages. 

Here is a peek at the unit:

 

I make my scrapbooks with large sheets of construction paper folded in half and stapled in the center to form a booklet.  I wanted the finished scrapbook to look and feel like a scrapbook, so some cutting and pasting will be involved.  Here is my sweetie pie holding onto mommy's example:

 

This Winter Celebration scrapbook contains a page for each of the following countries/celebrations: 

• U.S.A.
• Kwanzaa
• Mexico
• Germany
• France
• Sweden
• Hanukkah

Each country contains a passage explaining how Christmas is celebrated in their country.  If it is a celebration such as Kwanzaa, the passage explains the celebration.  A small craft or coloring activity is included for each celebration.  There is also a tag that shows how to say Merry Christmas in each of the countries.  The tag for Kwanzaa is a greeting said by family/friends on each day of Kwanzaa.

Here is a closer look at one of the scrapbook pages:

You can check out the scrapbook on TPT by clicking here.  The first 2 people who leave a comment can get this little unit for free, but please don't forget to leave your e-mail. (Giveaway has ended)
 

Turkey Time

Just a quick post to share a few turkey activities from the last week.  This Goofy Gobbler activity is from my Writing Piece of the Month Unit.  My students colored their goofy gobblers and then used adjectives to fill-in the blanks.  They turned out super cute and they had a great time sharing their adjective poems.  There is also a blank turkey provided, in case students want to create their own goofy gobbler.

We also did this visualizing activity to go along with Jack Prelutsky's Poem,  I Ate Too Much Turkey.  I wish I could share the poem template, but I don't want to break any copyright rules.  All of his poems really are WONDERFUL for visualizing!  The cute turkey holding the poem is from Teacher's Friend Publications: November Idea Book.  The link will take you to Amazon, just in case you're interested.

We also made these little turkeys on our last day before the break.  I thought they'd be really adorable hanging on the fridge over the holidays.  I saw them at Julie's blog, Happy Home Fairy, and knew I had to make them in the classroom.  I'm also going to have to make a few with my own little guy at home. Julie has so many great craft ideas, definitely check out her blog! These turkeys are much cuter without their precious little faces hidden. 

Happy Holidays!!!!!

Communities

I thought I'd share a couple of community activities we worked on a few weeks ago.  My students REALLY enjoyed learning about communities this year. Of all the exciting things we learn about, I never dreamed learning about communities would have been so popular.

We did an inferring activity with communities, which was a great way to integrate reading and social studies.  I am all about integrating whenever and wherever possible! 

 They provided the clues and their answers are written underneath the bottom flap.  You can get this template by clicking here.

For the activity above, I simply numbered them off and they worked on whichever community was associated with their number.  A few were sad that they didn't get their favorite type of community.  So, we followed up with this activity where they got the chance to illustrate all 3 communities.  

Little Old Lady and Witch's Brew

Halloween has passed, but I thought I'd share a couple of activities that I just never got around to posting.

Who doesn't love the book, The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything? It's such an fun story and a great read aloud for October or November.  Here is a little predicting activity we did.  I read the story aloud, but stopped before the last page.  Then, they illustrated and wrote their predictions.

 Then, we did a sequencing activity.  On the left side, they drew a picture of how 

the story actually ended. 

 

We also did a fun activity from my Writing Piece of the Month Unit.  They had to create a witch's brew recipe with all kinds of yucky stuff.  We read the book, The Little Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat to activate those schemas.  Then, we created an anchor chart of a Witch's Pantry and included all sorts of disgusting things.

Here are a few examples of their recipes:

 If you already purchased this, please go back and re-download the file. I added the witch coloring page above, and I also added a goofy gobbler page for November. If you would like to see my original post about this unit, click HERE.