Happy Thanksgiving and Upcoming Sale

Happy Thanksgiving!  My husband and I cook Thanksgiving dinner for our family.  That's right.  Everyone comes to our house to eat.  I'm just glad they are willing to drive an hour to come here for dinner.

Did you know that Teachers Pay Teachers is having a sale Monday and Tuesday?



I'm going to leave you with a song that is played on the radio this time of year.  Enjoy!  It's not Thanksgiving without hearing this song.  I listen to Coach Kidd every morning on my way to work.  Libby Jo is no longer on the air with him, because she started teaching.

Thanksgiving I-Spy Freebie

I survived Halloween 2013!!!  It wasn't that bad, but I will say having parents and kids in costumes for a Halloween celebration can be hectic!  I wish I took pictures this week of some of the things we have been doing, but my phone camera doesn't seem to be working correctly so I dug out my "regular" camera and I will be back to snapping pictures next week.

This week we studied bats and spiders.  Did I tell you I have a student in my class who likes to bring me spiders!?  Ummm, your teacher hates spiders kid!  Bring me a puppy, kitten, snake, but please don't bring me a spider.

We made a can, have, are chart about bats and the students wrote a sentence using the chart.  I also gave them a little bat drawing lesson.  They think I should be an art teacher.  Lol!  I have also been told this week that I should be a music teacher.  That is more likely to happen than an art teacher.  I can read music and I do play a clarinet and an alto clarinet.  

Back to the bats.  My students learned some new vocabulary this week.  When we were creating our chart, I heard words like mammal, echolocation, and nocturnal.  Oh, this makes a teacher proud!  Let's hope those words stick.

I started working on this little freebie yesterday with the intention of posting it yesterday, but then I started watching television with the hubs so it didn't happen.  Here it is now!  Click the picture below to grab your freebie and thanks for stopping by.  Oh, by the way, I'm having a sale in both of my shops this weekend.  All items are 20% off through Monday.
Teachers Pay Teachers    Teachers Notebook 

What are topics are you studying this month?  Leave me a comment below and let me know!

I Survived the Day and a Sale!

I survived the day!  It was tough going to school today even though it was a half day for the students.  I kept thinking that I should be home getting things ready for Thanksgiving tomorrow.  Anyway, Teachers Notebook is having a sale and I am throwing a sale to give everyone an even bigger discount so hop on over to the Teachers Notebook and check out my shop as well as others.  Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Today has been really busy.  I felt like I was in the circus and I was the main clown. Lol  Anyway, my school has a great librarian who does a lot of crafts with the kids.  The kids made these cute little Indians Native Americans from rectangles.

I just had to hang them from our classroom clothesline.

During math, we made pattern necklaces with colored noodles and yarn.  FYI, to color noodles: place dry noodles in a Ziploc baggie with a little bit of alcohol and several drops of food coloring.  Shake the bag.  Let the noodles dry on wax paper in a pan or tray.

The little orange strip that you see is tape.  I used it to write the kids' names on their necklace.

We also added feathers to our headdresses today and we practiced songs and fingerplays for our little performance next week.

Well, I'm going to go work on a few things.  Check back later.  I hope to have a new FREEBIE! because everyone loves a good freebie.

Hanging Art and Painting Leaves

It seems that every teacher I know is always struggling to hang up artwork and classwork.  It seems we never have enough wall space or bulletin boards.  Last year, I came up with the idea to use a binder clip with a Stikki Clip.  I was frustrated that I had to use more that one Stikki Clip to hang up papers, one at the top and one at the bottom.  So I stuck a small binder clip in the Stikki Clip and attached it to the wall.  Can we intelligent ;)!  Here is what it looks like.  I took this of one hanging outside my classroom in the hall.

I also have some classwork hung up with clothespins that are hot glued to the wall.  I didn't hot glue them to the wall, but I know who did and I'm not tell.  They hold work up too, but they are not easily removed and repositioned. 

If you notice, I also have a strip that I can hang work on too, but it's just not enough to hang everyone's work up.  Do you like our fall leaves?  My students did a little finger painting with red, yellow, and orange.  Then I gave them a leaf cut out to trace.  After they traced the leaf, they cut it out and I hung it up.  Kinders love to finger paint and I was surprised at the many that had never done finger painting until we did these leaves.  That just means we need to paint more often. 

So next week we go to school Monday - Wednesday and then we are off for Thanksgiving.  I know many of you get the entire week off.  Let's just say I am a little jealous, but I do have a lot that I will be doing with my class and one thing we are doing is taking a field trip to a nursing home and singing Thanksgiving songs and rhymes to the people there.  We have a lot of practice left to do on our singing and we are dressing up as Native Americans.  We are tie dying shirts brown for this, and we are making some pretty patterned necklaces.  We have already made our headdress which I have already posted about.  We just need to add some feathers. 

I also like to do a pilgrim costume and let the kids eat lunch with them on.  More on that later.  I hope everyone has a wonderful Friday!

Handprint Turkeys and Indian Headresses

We got a lot of things accomplished today in my classroom.  Maybe it was because we had several students absent or it could be the fact that it is Friday.  So right before lunch, I decided to have my students work on their Indian headresses that they will wear when we sing Thanksgiving songs at a local nursing home.  I like to use natural materials to make these as I feel Natives Americans would use natural materials to make theirs.  So I had the students use brown beans, black beans, and split peas.  I would have liked to add white beans too, but I didn't have any.

To make the headress, I gave each student a sentence strip.  I explained how one side had three lines to write our name and the other side had one line for our patterns that we were going to make.  I demonstrated how to lay the pattern out and pick up each piece to put a dot of glue under it to hold it on.  I was Amazed at how neatly they did at gluing their pieces down.  Maybe it helped that I made them sing the glue song from Dr. Jean's CD.  Anyway, here is what they look like.

 

Here is a close up.

 

 

Here is a different pattern one of my little made.

 

 

 

So now that we have that done, we can write our "Indian names" on the front and start earning feathers for things that we can do, such as tying our shoe.

 

 

We also made handprint turkeys today.  I had a wonderful volunteer who came in and assisted while the kids did traditional centers.  Yes, I work somewhere that allows us to have housekeeping, blocks, and a sensory table.  We actually got NEW toys too.

 



My volunteer is willing to come help out next Friday too!  Oh, I am not sure where the poem came from with our turkeys.  I have had it for years in my Thanksgiving files (Yes, I said files.  Six hanging file folders stuffed full to be exact.).  My next project.....clean out my files. ;)

Seasonal Sensory Tables

I have been changing my sand and water tables to match the season and the themes.  I know it's a little late, but I here is my Halloween themed sand table.  I put rice in the table and Halloween toys.  All the toys came from the Dollar Tree except the mini pumpkins and the couldrons.  They came from Michael's.

Today, I changed out both tables.  I left rice in the red table and added some silk fall leaves and a few styrofoam gourds that I purchased at the Dollar Tree.  I finally removed the split peas from my clear table and added brown beans, foam leaves, and stryofoam gourds in different colors.  I also added some new scoops and a few scarecrows.

I would love to see what other people are doing in their classrooms to add to the season.  Feel free to shoot me a comment and tell me about it.  Maybe I have inspired you to change out your sand table or to even create one at home for your own children.

Thanksgiving Writing Freebie!!!

I have been really working on my Teachers Pay Teachers store this week.  I have posted a new freebie.  This is a Thanksgiving writing prompt paper.  Check it out at my Teachers Pay Teachers Store here.

Teachers Pay Teachers Sale

I'm throwing a sale today for Election Day!  All items in my Teachers Pay Teachers store are 10% off today and tomorrow.  This sale includes my Thanksgiving Fun Literacy and Math Activities and my Christmas Fun Literacy and Math activities.  I will be adding some new things soon.

Turkey Time Thanksgiving Packet!

I added a new Thanksgiving packet in my Teachers Pay Teachers Shop and my Teachers Notebook shop. 

This packet contains the following:

*Turkey numeral cards 1-30
*Turkey dot cards 1-10
*Turkey number word cards 1-12
*Turkey uppercase and lowercase alphabet cards
*Sight word roll a word graph and cube
*Blank sight word roll a word graph and cube
*Syllable Sort step book patterns and photo directions
*Thanksgiving dinner journal writing page
*Venn diagram to compare Thanksgiving long ago and today

I have included a list of ways to use the alphabet and number cards. The cards are great to use in your calendar or in a pocket chart and can be used for matching game. 

Check it out!