100th Day Recap

Today is snow day #12 fir this school year. We did finally make it to the 100th day on Tuesday. I really wasn't as prepared as I like to be. Mainly because I wasn't convinced we were going to go to school on Tuesday and we've been out so much. But we had a good day. We spent the afternoon celebrating with a rotation of 4 activities.

1. Building something with 100 cups.

Once they realized they needed to work together they did a great job!

2. Making a design out of 100 pattern blocks.

3. Race to 100 

4. A hat - they used 10 strips of construction paper and bingo daubers to make 100 dots for the hats. I saw this on Pinterest.

I had wanted to make a necklace out of fruit loops but it didn't happen. A rotation of activities is my favorite way I've done the 100th day. It was easy to manage and they all got to do activities. I'll have my kids again for first grade so I'm already thinking about what I want to do then.

I'm thinking we won't go back to school this week. We have about 6 inches of snow. I was really not wanting anymore snow but I'm not feeling well so it is nice to have these days to rest up. 

Do you have snow where you live? 

Christmas Cheer!

I'm a little late in posting all our Christmas fun but I took a bunch of pictures that I wanted to share.

This is our elf, Arthur! The kids and I had so much fun with him. I think he's cuter than the Elf on the Shelf but I might be biased!

This was my favorite antic he pulled. He brought us Wrapped Christmas books one day and our leader each day unwrapped one. We read Aliens Love Panta Claus and then the next day Arthur decorated the tree in underpants.

This was Chris and I's third Christmas together. I had a prelit tree I put up before we got together. Now we go get a real one and decorate it together!

Here are some of the centers we did the last few weeks of school. Some had a Gingerbread theme!

I love my sensory bin this month. It was all holiday and Christmassy!

For math we read a poem 5 little Ornaments! Then they wrote their own subtraction problem.

More of Arthur's antics. The Gingerbread man showed up and stole our cookies. We had to go search for them.

This is my sweet niece elfed! She came and stayed with Chris and I one night which was a lot of fun. I took this picture and then elfed it. I. I took my iPad to school and let all the kids elf a picture of themselves. We then made Christmas cards for their families!

Arthur wrapped our door for his last hurrah!

I made these goodies for our class party. It was the calmest party ever. My sister brought my niece and it was a lot of fun.

We had our first annual tacky sweater contest. I should have won but I wasn't in it since I organized and got the prizes.

These are all the presents under our tree! I enjoyed all the wrapping and buying this year.

We got my dad a skateboard and my niece got a tricycle. They were funny trying them out on Christmas Eve!

Here is my fruit tray I made for Chris's grandmother's house. I think this is my new job. I made a turkey at Thanksgiving so I was asked to make another.

My hubby bought me this beautiful buttery leather for Christmas! I've been wanting my very own Micheal Kors purse! I love love love it!

This was the pic we used for our Christmas card! I hope you and yours had a very  merry Christmas! I am blessed beyond my wildest dreams!

You might remember me posting about a student at my school who was diagnosed with brain cancer almost a year ago. His dad teaches with me. We'll he passes away early Christmas morning. My heart is so heavy for the family even though I know Regan is with Jesus and suffering no more. Please say a prayer for this family!

Wintery Science Activites

Well, I'm home today for a snow day. It has been a weird week of weather. Tuesday and Wednesday we were out for flooding. Then Thursday we got out an hour early. Snow was pouring by the time I got home and the road to my house was already covered. It was so beautiful. But today the sun is shining thankfully. We haven't had sun in over a week. And the snow is melting. I had plans of teaching all about MLK jr. this past week. But with no school, it just didn't happen. It think I'm going to have to let go of some of the activities though. Friday we have to have our science fair projects completed. Every grade level in my K-8 to school participates in Science fair. In kindergarten and first grade, we do a class project. And I haven't even started on ours yet. My plan for this year was to do the Crisco blubber project. I think I did it last time I was in First grade. But this year, I plan to add a research component for my kids with it.
So I wrote this on Friday and never got around to finishing it. I was busy this weekend with a fundraiser for the student at my school who was recently diagnosed with cancer. It was amazing to get to talk to people about him and to hear others stories about their experiences with cancer. We got to meet this 5 year old boy who had beat liver cancer. He was so cute showing us his scar and he told us that Jesus healed him. It was so cool. I had to really struggle not to cry when he was telling us his story. Anyway,. I took a little break from blogging and such this past weekend.
Today we started talking about polar animals and the arctic to get ready for our science fair project.I had seen this idea on someone's blog. (I can't find it again. I had thought it was The Teacher's Cauldron or Tunstell's Teaching Tidbits but I couldn't find it on either one) where you put pictures around the room with paper and let the students look at the pictures and then add their questions and ideas. So I googled some images on Arctic animals and got this set up.

I put pictures of different polar animals and then a couple of scenery pictures. The kids walked around the room and looked at them and then I let them sit at each table for about 3 minutes and add their thoughts and questions.

After they wrote their questions and ideas, we read them over and dismissed some errors to their thinking. Like that polar bears are nice. Then we made a circle map of the Arctic on the promethean board.

We also read a book about the North Pole, South Pole.

This gave us some new information. My plan had been to add some more to our chart but when we finished the book it was lunch time and we had to move on to other things. So tomorrow, we're going to add to our chart and do some writing about polar animals. This is our research for our science fair project. I have a couple of great packs from some of my blogging friends that are going to help with our research. The first is from Jennifer Kadar at Simply Kinder.

The second is from Maggie at Maggie's Kinder Corner. She has a pretty cool unit about Animals and Plants in Winter. You can check it out here.

Both of these items will help with our research and our presentation about the animals. I'll be back later this week to tell you more about our science.

Valentine's Day Units

I've been working on a couple of units for Valentine's day for forever now. I really wanted to get it done before February 1st but it just didn't happen. I have Valentine's Literacy Activities and a Puppy Love Math unit up on my Teacher's notebook store. I have a couple of freebies for you from them.

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Click Here for a Preview Activity

 You can check them out in my Teacher's Notebook store.


I'm really torn about selling stuff on Teacher's Notebook. I just recently read a blog post about everyone selling things and no one sharing anymore.When I read this post, it made me feel bad for selling things. It made me feel like I wasn't sharing my items anymore. But that's not true. I shouldn't feel bad for trying to support myself and for being compensated for time and clip art that I've bought. After reading this post, I decided that I wouldn't follow this blogger anymore. I didn't need to feel bad for trying new things. It makes me happy to create and offer some freebies but also it is exciting when I sell stuff.  I still see lots of freebies out in the blogging world and I try to still offer freebies every week.  I totally understand people selling things. Now that I've been working on a few units of my own, I can see all the hard work that goes into it. It has taken me forever to get this Valentine's Day stuff made. I made it as a response to things I needed in my classroom. I started some tutoring last week and I plan on using these activities with my small groups. I want others to be able to use my stuff and love to share my ideas. But I also like to buy things on Teacher's Notebook and TPT myself. It's been nice to be able to use the very small amount of money that I've made to buy other materials. The most expensive things I have on my store is $3.50. I chose that because that's about what I like to spend on items. I don't really like to spend more than $5.00 on stuff but some of the packets are worth it. I am going to spend money on books and things for my classroom, I would rather spend this money supporting other teachers. What do you guys think about selling stuff versus offering freebies?
 I would love to hear what you have to say about this. Also, if you grab one of my freebies please leave me some love. I need all the encouragement I can get in this venture.