Getting Ready for Christmas

Although Thanksgiving is over, I'm loving the Cornbread Dressing leftovers! I've made good progress on getting my home decorated for Christmas and for the first time ever, I know how good it feels to have a big part of my Christmas shopping already finished!  My goal for the rest of the weekend is to finish working on some more Winter and Christmas products for my TPT store. 

We spent the two days of school during Thanksgiving week doing our annual Christmas Craft days.  Our students rotate through all four kindergarten classes and make an ornament in each classroom. By the end of the two days, each student had a total of 8 ornaments.  With the creation of Pinterest, the four of us decided to find new ornaments to make this year and get away from our outdated ornaments. 

My coworker found this adorable picture on Pinterest but the link to it was no longer valid so we had to use the picture to figure out how to create them. Ours looked very similar to these except we could not figure out what they put in the clear balls to make them colored...we tried glitter paint but it didn't turn out right so we ended up filling the reindeer, elf & Santa with brown and red shredded paper and the snowman with snow confetti.  

  

My second ornament was these adorable cupcake ornaments that I found on YouTube! I found pastel pink ornaments at Hobby Lobby and used tacky glue to paint glue from the hanger to about half way down the ornament. We then sprinkled snow confetti (irredescent) to the glue and then hot glued it into a silver mini cupcake foil liner at an angle. The cherries on top were cut from a floral pick that I also found at Hobby Lobby and hot glue on. The pretty hangers made these so elegant looking. The pastel pink was so pretty but we had trouble finding 100 of the pink ornaments so we offered the boys a choice of turquoise blue or pale green and they turned out pretty good too.

 

I plan to make an entire set of the pink for my little 3 foot tree in my house and add a candy garland to make my own "sweet" little Christmas tree!

 

Now back to the classroom...My kids will be so excited to go to the Home Living center next week. They will be sorting Christmas cookies by beginning sounds using the Gingerbread men from my Cooking Christmas cookies package, some small spatulas, cookie sheets, and some gingerbread man plates I found at Dollar Tree many years ago.

 

         

 

 

Click on the pictures above to check it out! 

 

 

I can't wait to read all of the different versions of the Gingerbread Man stories soon! Here is the Gingerbread Man is on the Loose package that we will also do during Gingerbread Man week!

 

Click on the picture to take you to this product.

 

 

 

 

Naughty or Nice? It Doesn't Matter!

 

It's that time again! Several times a year, the administrators of the Teachers Pay Teachers website host a sale in which they give up a portion of their profits in addition to any discounts that the individual sellers offer. If you use the PROMO code: CMT12 at checkout you will get a total of 25% off of your total price from my store! Go NOW and fill up your wish lists and shopping carts and then go back on Monday or Tuesday to check out while on your planning or lunch time!  I have been revising & improving most of my Christmas products so be sure to check those out!

Christmas is Coming!

I did the unthinkable! Yes, I pulled out a few of my Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving! I never do that but the Hallmark Channel keeps playing all of those Christmas movies all weekend long and I just couldn't help myself! Just a few though.  I decided to distract myself from decking the halls all of the way by revising all of my Christmas products on TPT. This time last year I was just getting started and learning all about creating things to sell so the quality just wasn't the best. Boy have I learned alot in the past year and made many revisions to my things but I'm not finished just yet. Here are some of the new and/or improved things I have so far... If you have bought any of these (any of my things really) then go to My Purchases on the TPT homepage and check for any updates. You can also click on the pictures to take you directly to the product. The weekend isn't over yet so check back again in a few days!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Have a Blessed Thanksgiving!

 

 

 

Winter: Hibernate, Migrate, or Stay Active?

We spent last week learning about how animals get ready for the winter! With the new time change and it getting dark much earlier, I have been getting ready for winter a little myself! I love coming home from school and putting on my warm, fuzzy pajamas and enjoying soup that is waiting on me in the crockpot. To make it even better, the Hallmark channel has already been showing Christmas movies all weekend. No better way to get ready for winter for me!

.
Now back to the animals... we started talking about how animals that stay active in the winter prepare for winter by growing thicker fur and storing up food. Our math activity was supposed to have my little "squirrels" search the room for nuts such as acorns, walnuts, and pecans and then sort, count, and graph them. (I had a little "nut" issue so we didn't get to do this activity yet).

Then we talked about how some animals hibernate and sleep the winter away (that would be me!) When we talked about how some animals migrate, we watched a short BrainPop Jr. video that showed how the geese fly to the south in a V formation so they can find food. I taught the kids Dr. Jean's song called Directions to learn about North, South, East, & West and pulled out a map & globe to show where we are (Southeast TN) and where the North & South would be. Good to bring in the discussion of where the North & South Poles are since Christmas is coming soon. I also have magnets in my science center which brought up a good teachable moment to talk about the North & South Poles of a magnet.

I hung up a sign in the North side of the classroom where my little "geese" shivered in the cold and had trouble finding fish to eat because the lakes were frozen.

 

 It took a little team work to get my geese into a V formation (masking tape on the floor made this a bit easier to organize) and then we talked about how the leader had the hardest job of flying against the wind and then practiced "flying" across the room in our V formation.

 

 

 Once we got to the South, the kids easily found fish to eat (Goldfish crackers) and loved using their "beaks" to eat them.

 

 

I found some of these fun ideas from http://www.littlegiraffes.com/animalsinwinter.html. She has a great unit for Animals Getting Ready for Winter, just wish we had more time to do more of the activities!