Holiday Crafting

Ok- last one for the day! I haven't updated in a month, so I want to give you guys lots of different ideas! This has nothing to do with teaching, but during the power outage I had some extra time to decorate and get ready for the holidays...

I went to Michael's with a 50% an item coupon AND my teacher ID for another 15% discount, and I bought the letter H, jingle bells (silver and gold, small and big) and some gold Styrofoam glitter balls.  I grabbed a hot glue gun and started gluing away! I covered the whole H, but there are definitely some gaps. Maybeeee I was supposed to paint the H first, but it still looks good. So easy, cheap, and CUTE!

I got a really cute white ribbon with gold lining from Michael's as well, glued it to the back, and walah! We have a door hanger for the holidays. :)

Snowball Sort- Odd vs. Even

This has been a crazy week.  We had a big storm on Sunday and it knocked out the power in our building.  We had Monday and Tuesday off!  It was definitely a nice and much needed break, but now we are playing catch up with all of our lessons. We have our end of unit 5 math test coming up (tomorrow.. if all goes as planned).  The students were having a really hard time grasping odd vs. even and place value, so we did this fun activity that I did with my first grade friends during student teaching. 

 This time, I decided to make it a whole class activity. Each student pulled a card and decided if it was odd or even, THEN they had to tell the class WHY! If they weren't sure, we helped them out. While the students were deciding, I was recording on a dry erase board as well.

I hope your kids enjoy it as much as mine! Here you go! It's FREE

Thanksgiving Contractions!

I love planning lessons around holidays. It's not only more engaging for the kids, but for me too! I get excited when we get to do something a little out of the ordinary.  We started talking about contractions the other day after a previous discussion on compound words.  After making an anchor chart and doing some together, I split the students up into groups to match up two words to the appropriate contraction!

There is a recording sheet that goes along with this, but I'm going to have them do it again and record their answers later. Today was just a practice day to see if they were understanding it or not (and to see who could work in groups).  The words are written on either a pilgrim hat, or a turkey! I found this fun (AND FREE!!) activity on teachers pay teachers! Enjoy!