Let's Talk Turkey!

Things have been so crazy at work lately (almost everything that can change in my school has changed this year: new principal, new tests, new staff, new schedule, I could go on!) that it has been SO wonderful to have a long weekend to catch up. I am celebrating my mom's 60th birthday today (my grandma's 95th is next Sunday!) and catching up on projects that have been on my to-do list for MONTHS. Tomorrow I'm hanging out with some co-workers to make Christmas cards and drag them to Zumba (I know they'll love it like I do!).

Since Thanksgiving is already right around the corner, I thought I'd better use my time wisely this long weekend and work on November activity books I'd been meaning to do. 

I finally got around to making my November activity book

(September and October got skipped, whoops! I'll get them next year!)

And just for fun, I also created this little Thanksgiving coloring/writing booklet:

 My plan is to pass these out right before the Thanksgiving break so the kids have something to work on at home during the long weekend. I used to work with a kindergarten teacher who brought in a huge pumpkin pie and gave all of the students a little slice, so I just might do that too (even though I hate pumpkin pie myself!) =)

And I had such great news at the end of October, I have to share!

My new 2nd grade classroom came without a rug for the students to sit on during carpet time (and no funding available to buy one). This made me so bummed that I decided to post a grant request for one on DonorsChoose. It went awhile with no funding, so I resigned myself to the fact that I may never have a class rug again. Then shortly before Halloween, I got an e-mail that Chevron had fully funded my request and on Halloween day it was delivered!!

I cannot tell you how much I LOVE this Lakeshore rug! It has 30 squares so it can accommodate a large class and it has nice, roomy squares so that even my 2nd graders can sit comfortably with no one in their "bubble". This is what I am thankful for this Thanksgiving!

Holiday Fun!

Since I've just joined the blogging world, I thought I'd share some cute holiday projects I've made with my kiddos the last few months!

In October, we read several of the Old Lady Who Swallowed A... books, created two class books about them, and voted on our favorite version. We also made this cute craftivity to go with it. I saw the idea online and drew the templates for the face and hair myself. One of my favorites was "I knew an old lady who swallowed an elephant" with a little elephant drawing in her mouth. Too cute!

In November we made this "How to Catch a Turkey" craftivity after reading the book Run Turkey Run! This was created with a free template I found online.

We made these adorable pilgrims (both boys and girls with various hair/skin colors) for Thanksgiving. The students had to write what they were thankful for. Unfortunately, I forgot to snap a photo before I sent them all home! This is my teacher demo pilgrim. The template for this project is on TpT by First Grade Blue Skies!

For Christmas, we made these adorable reindeer from TpT by Just Wild About Teaching.

Close up of my teacher demo:

Close up of the mess I made at home pre-glittering the noses and writing pages (I found that baking sheets work very well for this!) I told my students that the glitter fairy came and did this all by herself! 

Here is the writing page I created to go along with the project:

*Cute reindeer graphic from Zenware Designs @ My Grafico*

Whew! And there's a whirlwind tour of some of what we've been up to the last few months. :)