Neat Stuff for the Weekend

Found some great New Year's ideas on the My Mix of Six Blog. She has a countdown til midnight full of fun activities for the kids and a collage that looks like fun! See you in 2013!

Our Gift

Some teachers had heard through the Internet that the students of Sandy Hook will be attending a remodeled school building nearby and that the front entry way will be decorated as a "Winter Wonderland." Without telling too much about where our snowflakes were going due to the sensative nature of the subject, we decided to send some snowflakes to some kids who need a smile this holiday season. My heart is heavy with sadness for what went on at Sandy Hook, and this is the least we could do. Our thoughts and prayers are with everyone affected by this tragedy. We wish you well!

Holiday Party Fun!

What an amazing party! Special thanks goes out to our room moms and all other parents who helped and donated supplies for our gingerbread houses! Thank you!

All I got for Christmas...

Are some new socks!! We had fun in our new socks today! This is a tradition in my family, and now a tradition in my classroom!

:)

Reindeer Games for Reindeer Food

Today we played some reindeer games! The kids rolled dice, did some adding and subtracting to see how many scoops of each ingredient they needed to make reindeer food. Sprinkle the food on your lawn on Christmas Eve so Santa won't pass you by!

Christmas Around the World

We started our Christmas Around the World unit with our first stop in Ghana. They decorate their homes with garland for the holidays. We decorated our classroom with the garland too! There were plenty more stops to countries around the world to learn about their Christmas traditions. The kids loved this project and they get to keep all the fun memories in their lap books!

Force and Motion with Miss Adams

We said goodbye to Miss Adams with a really fun lesson! She showed us how to make paper airplanes and we used them to learn about force, motion and position. It was a blast!

Neat Stuff for the Weekend

Fun Christmas Breakfast!!!

Kitchen Fun with My 3 Sons Blog

Rutherford Family Happenings Blog

Neat Stuff for the Weekend

LOVE THIS ONE.

When I found this on Pinterest and clicked on it, it only linked to the photo and not the web site it originally came from. I'm not that techie to be able to figure it out, so I'm sorry I didn't give credit to the original author of this idea because it is a good one!

Here is what the Pinterest text read for this post:

Original pinner says: "Each year our kids must choose ten old toys to put in their Santa bags. These must be toys in decent shape that other kids would actually want. We leave the bags under our tree on Christmas Eve. Santa takes the old toys back to the North Pole to fix them up he leaves new toys in the bag. I toss the toys in a black trash bag and hide them until I can drop them at Goodwill or a service center. New toys are unwrapped in the bag. Santa leaves a few "family gifts" under the tree that are wrapped. Great way to declutter, recycle old toys, and teach the kids about giving rather than receiving."

Neat Stuff for the Weekend

This is so fun! Reindeer Cam shows Santa taking care of the reindeer everyday until Christmas! I think they have a link to Facebook too. I wonder what happens on Christmas Eve night???

Neat Stuff for the Weekend

Need a new breakfast idea? Over at the Little Bit Funky Blog, there are some easy donuts that any kiddo (or grown-up) would love. Mine would have chocolate on top... just saying! Have fun!

Neat Stuff for the Weekend..er.. Christmas!

I am a FIRM believer that we should wait to celebrate Christmas AFTER Thanksgiving, but you know all those stores have had their Christmas stuff out for months now! I wanted to wait until after Thanksgiving for this post, but it requires some planning ahead. Anyways... Here are a few ideas for a fun "Countdown to Christmas" for your family!

This one is from Elle Keeps Moving (I had to go pretty far back on her blog posts to actually find this, but it's there!). Wrap 25 Christmas stories and unwrap one every night to read together. What kid doesn't want to open a gift everyday?

Or, if you really want to put some hard work into it, go to The Workman Family Blog and check out their countdown idea. Wrap an activity to complete daily. They even give you ideas for the activities-write letters to Santa, Christmas themed movies, crafts, food, etc. What a fun family experience!

If that's too much for you, check out this fun idea for Christmas Eve. It comes from The Imagination Tree. Wrap a gift full of pajamas, hot chocolate, Christmas books or movies and open on the night before Christmas and enjoy!

Neat Stuff for the Weekend

So we're getting close to Thanksgiving Day and I thought this one would be a good idea for your family get togethers. It comes from the blog called The Girl Who Ate Everything. These are called "Thankful Rolls" and you have everyone write something they are thankful for and bake them into the rolls for dinner. Dinner conversations would be full of thanks! This sounds just like something we would do at my grandma's house! 

A Writer's Celebration

We just completed our unit on "Easy to Read" writing and invited some special guests from around campus to come see our improvements! It was fun to walk around our "Writer's Gallery" and read each other's pieces! Glad some of you were around campus to attend too!

Election Day Mini-Enrichment Day

I am so blessed to have a class that gets pumped up about everything we learn! This day was no different... Maybe even more excitement than usual! We reserved all of Election Day to learn about it! We started off by learning about fun and serious jobs the president has. We compared them and decided which ones we would like as president! Our "craftivity" is based on the idea from Cara Carroll, but with a fun twist to go along with our discussions.

Then we read 3 books and educated ourselves on each candidate (bc that's what good voters do!). We read "My Teacher for President," "Grace for President," and "Duck for President." We even helped each candidate campaign--bumper stickers for the teacher, buttons for Grace and Duck taught us about the mayor, governor and president! We even discussed women's history when it comes to voting and the president. We listed all the great qualities of each candidate and each student got to cast a ballot, as long as they had their "Voter Registration Card." Turns out... Grace won our vote! With Duck at a close second. This day was truly amazing!