December goodies!

Hello!

I have been so busy during this holiday season that I have't had time to update my blog but I have TONS to share. A little bit of personal with lots of classroom goodies =)

My boys started in my school district this year and I just love it. Both of them are still adjusting with social and academic changes but I love to see them smile in school. My oldest joined the band in middle school and it definitely is the bright spot to his day. It was exciting to see him play in his first concert!

We needed to get our room updated for the holiday season and created our very own elves. They cam out way too big so I just changed the venue from the bulletin board to the hallway. I will have to tweak this one a bit for next time. LOL! When we were part time Kinders, I always liked when I had the opportunity to fix things when I had to do them the second time. There are no dress rehearsals anymore =)

Well, since the hallways was looking so festive, I couldn't forget our door. Since those little elves took quite some time to complete, I needed something a little simpler for the door. I was going to do a reindeer but the snowman can stay up until April in Ohio. LOL!

I have been really working on completing assessments for our upcoming report cards. My kiddos are having a hard time remembering their 3d shapes so I changed our table assignments (which were previously numbers) to all of the 3d figures with samples. I use these to line them up so I hope it sticks like glue this time around!

Along those math lines, one of our assessments is ordering items by length. We made our Christmas trees from shortest to longest strips and used hole punchers to create the ornaments. Great for those fine motor skills!

Another assessment is spelling our sight words and writing our sounds. I made up this little ditty trying to give them some clues with the puzzle pieces. I think they were in shock when I told them what we were going to be doing. LOL! I had them get writing boards and spread around the room while I conducted the test. They did a fantastic job for the first time. Stapled those to all of the other assessments we have been doing.

With all of this work, we needed a few brain breaks to give us time to refocus. There are some cute holiday brain breaks on YouTube right now. The fan favorite was definitely the one with Santa!

Part of our reading program, Wonders, has the kids learning quite a bit of grammar. We have been working on adjectives recently. The kids and I generated some ideas of adjectives that would be used to describe the perfect reindeer. We then wrote letters to Santa using some of those adjectives in telling him why we would be the best reindeer for him. I love their creativity!

 We are already knee deep in cold and flu season here in Ohio. Unfortunately, my youngest was not feeling well and I had to call in reinforcement. Sometimes, I think it is easier to just be here than get ready for a sub =)

Just one more week until the holiday break. We can do it!