Christmas Survival

Holy moly! If I thought last week was nut-so, I take it back after today (and I'm sure for the rest of the week.) I wonder what these calendar committees are thinking when they plan for the year. Is it just to plug in 180 days as quickly as they can? Because I can assure you, no matter how "awesome" you are (or think you are) as a teacher, these kids aren't feeling it this week! Heck, I'm NOT feeling it this week.

Regardless, I am trying my best to get some teachin' done around here. Today was our Polar Express Day. Our first grade team plans a big to-do for this day. Before lunch, we have the classes complete a 4 room rotation. One room, the teacher will do a craft with the kids. The next room will be a game. The third room will be for caroling and playing instruments. Last, the fourth room is a spectacular Polar Express show. One of my team members has quite the dramatic flair and puts on a one-man show. She plays the train conductor, the wait staff, an elf, and a bunch of other characters. The room is arranged for her show. It is too cute. The kids just love her disguises and voices. It puts my Game Room to shame, I tell you.

Then, after lunch we have some time for a few response activities before we watch the movie. Watching the movie is actually my busiest part of the day. No volunteers for me, so I am working like a dog to get the hot chocolate served, food passed out, seconds given, washing out cups and tables, sweeping up crumbs and keeping the boys from turning their blankets and sleeping bags into huge tents to play ultimate fighter in!


By the time the movie ends, we have about 10 minutes to clean, pack, and change before the bell rings to go home. This is also a very busy time for me. The kids need me to help them cram their sleeping bags, pillow pets, slippers, and clothes back into the tiny bag they came in. It's not a pretty site, but I get it all jammed in there.


However, this year I did something awful. Something dreadful. Something a Grinch would do. Something I have never ever done in the six years I have had a Polar Express day...


I FORGOT TO GIVE THEM SANTA'S BELLS!


I can't believe I forgot to do this. This is the best part of the day. I usually have the postman deliver my cool Santa Box with the frozen bells to my students when he comes to do his daily delivery. The kids flip out over them. I'll pretend to not hear the bell for a while and then I'll suddenly hear them and announce that I do believe. It's all fun.


And I forgot to do it! What worse, is I didn't realize it until I was eating dinner tonight! Pathetic...


I'll have to put on a pretty good show tomorrow when the postman delivers the bells a day later.


I wish I had better photos to share. Camera duty was put on the back burner today.

Sequence Sheet for the Polar Express

One of my tables set up for a Christmas Bingo game.

Apparently, this Pirate's Booty is the best thing since sliced bread to my kids.
I hadn't even heard of it before but it was all the rage. It's just cheesey poofs...

Tomorrow will be our Grinch day. I'm totally ready (that's what I tell myself over and over again.) 


One of my students, Dezi, gave this to me today:

She glued them on all by herself at home. I'm just going to let it go. I will not cut them out. I will not cut them out!

Now, on to something totally different... 

I was reading Kristin's blog at A Teeny Tiny Teacher and she was mentioning something about teacher's lounge clean-up duty. Then, I read some of the comments where others had the same duty. What the heck is this about??? Such crap. Even if you don't eat in there you have to clean-up after others? I can't believe this duty even exists!
Now, I am very thankful for my school.


I hope y'all are having a great time with your families and if you are working like me, GO TO BED!

Gingerbread Week Day 4

Must ... write ... Day 4 .... post!

Cannot fall asleep until this is complete.

Boy, today was a long one! I worked late, then I rushed home to pick up the man and head on over to the in-laws for dinner. Three hours and a while later, I am finally home. Man, I'm exhausted.

Today was a fun day. We did the "Which part of the gingerbread cookie did you eat?" Math lesson. I'm sure you've heard of it. The kids take one bite of their gingerbread cookie and we record where they took that bite {head, tummy, arm, & leg.} First, we make a picture graph to display their information. We analyze the data. The kids complete their own bar graphs. Afterwards, I had them help me take the pictures from the first graph and turn it into a Pie Graph. They enjoyed helping make this graph (very attentive.) Then, everyone writes sentences to describe their data. Easy - peasy - lemon squeezy!

In the afternoon, I gave the kids another gingerbread man cookie to enjoy. We discussed adjectives to describe the gingerbread man cookie and added them to our large gingerbread man. Then, I let the kids choose their favorite seven adjectives and add them to their own gingerbread man bubble map.

Today was our last day for our Gingerbread Man comparison lesson. We read the story, The Gingerbread Cowboy. They loved this one, too! There is something magical about desert regions to first graders. I don't know why, but every year my kids get soooo into learning about deserts.

We recorded and posted the last bits of information to our large Gingerbread Story Anchor chart and completed the last story response sheet.

I still have at least three other gingerbread men stories to read tomorrow: The Gingerbread Pirates, Bad Boys Get Cookie, and The Gingerbread Friends. However, I'll just read those aloud for enjoyment, not work! They've been working super hard all week.

As I was tidying up the room at the end of the day, I noticed I had a small problem ...

I'm running out of places to hang up my student work!

I had to hang today's work on our library bookshelves. Hopefully, no one needs to shop for new books tomorrow!

I did get some really good news at the end of the school day. The "no pajamas" declaration for our Polar Express Day was overturned. My kids were so thrilled {me, too!} I could have kissed my computer when I read that email! :)

Let's hope for smooth sailing tomorrow. Either that or everyone is taking a long nap {including me!}

Gingerbread Week Day 3

Yay, I made it over the hump!

I'd love to report that I only have two more days until Christmas break, but then I'd be a darn liar! That's right, we have school until December 22. I've got to say, for this year, I am so thankful for blogs and Pinterest. I have MORE than enough ideas for lessons and craftivities to last me through this week, next, and even the week after that!

However, I'll take the break. I'm ready for it right now!

Well, I did have another observation again today, but this one was only 20 minutes long and it was first thing in the morning. I didn't lose any time from my regular schedule.

I can't imagine what it must be like to be a new teacher nowadays. This year, I have walkthroughs and observations all of the time. During my first few years teaching, I only remember being visited by the principal when it was time for my formal observations {that was 3 times a year.} And that was it! No one else would ever walkthrough, observe, or even visit. I think I would have lost my cookies, if I was observed back then as much as I am now! We are so used to people watching us. We could hold class outside in the middle of a busy parking lot. I am not sure if that is good or bad?!?! Whatever it is, these kids are always being watched.

Anywhoo, back to the topic at hand, Gingerbread Week Day 3.

Today, we read the Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett. I love this book! Jan Brett is so talented and creative. The kids really enjoyed this story, too. They liked the ending the best.

We recorded the characters, refrain, and ending onto our giant Anchor Chart and completed a response sheet.

Sorry the picture quality isn't that great. The lighting is so crappy.
At least I remembered to move the red garland today!

Then, during our 3 rotations of Daily 5 students who were either 'reading to self' or 'reading to someone' could use this cute gingerbread house and character sticks to act out the story. They loved it.

If you use any of Jan Brett's books, you've gotta check out her website. She has many activities to go along with her books. She even has videos to show kids how to draw some of her characters! 

Click {here} to go to her website.

There's even an interactive gingerbread house that the kids can decorate by dragging the candies onto house. So cute!

Alright, confession time.

I was scared that my gingerbread cookies would stink and there wouldn't be enough for my two lessons, so I went to Walgreens and picked up some Pepperidge Farms Gingerbread cookies. {NOT, what I wanted to serve to my class.}

Then, when I came home, I baked the gingerbread cookies from the mix. Surprisingly, I managed to have plenty of cookies and they didn't taste awful either!

I had Scott do the official taste test. I'm going to use his bite with our class data! :)

So, I guess I'll keep the Pepperidge Farms ones for the house. I know one person who won't mind having more cookies in the house at all!!!

Happy Wednesday!

Gingerbread Week Day 2

First off, today was NOT as productive as yesterday. I had 45 minutes taken away from my regular day for a Fundations observation. That 45 minutes pretty much ate up almost all of my time for any good Gingerbread activities.

Oh well, tomorrow's another day. 

All we did accomplish was to read the Gingerbread Boy, Gingerbread Girl, compare the two stories using a venn diagram, and complete a response sheet.

The overall response I got from most of them was that the Gingerbread Boy was predictable. Ha! They didn't get into it as much as they did with the traditional story yesterday. To each his own. 

Completely different reaction with the Gingerbread Girl. They LOVED it! The girls wanted me to sing her refrain over and over again. I thought that was pretty cool. I was getting myself prepared for a revolt after the Gingerbread Boy.

Then we completed the story chart on our big Gingerbread House Anchor Chart.

Try to ignore the red garland in the way! Oops :{

I ended my day with an hour long meeting and an e-mail stating that we can't wear our pj's for our Polar Express Day. I was crushed, devastated, and disappointed.  That's my favorite day of the year! I guess I'll let them take their shoes off instead. I'm not sure the kids will be allowed to board the Polar Express if they aren't in their pjs. Oh, well.

Tonight, I went out to Target to pick up the Gingerbread cookies for our science project and for the great bite taking day. Guess What??

They didn't have any Gingerbread Man cookies!!!

Yikes! So, I picked up one lonely bag of gingerbread cookie mix. Now, I've got some baking to do! Oh, my poor kids. You can't screw up the mix, right?

Check out what else I got at Target:

It's a Gingerbread Man headband! 

Hahahaha! I could not pass it up. The kids will probably think I've lost my mind.

Let's hope we have a better day tomorrow. :)

Gingerbread Week Day 1

It's Gingerbread Week in our classroom, yippee!

Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of extra time to do bunches and bunches of gingerbread lessons and cute craftivities. We aren't doing an anthology story this week, so I can use that time. For anything else, I'm trying to integrate the best I can.

For instance, we integrated gingerbread into our math lesson today. We've been working on fact families, so I figured we could make gingerbread houses with fact families written on them. I lucked out and noticed that Mrs. Hodson from Today in First Grade ... had a great fact family house freebie! One less thing to do for me. Gotta love that!

I copied her house onto brown construction paper. It was a lighter shade of brown and they looked fabulous. Next, I knew I wanted to add candies to the houses, but I hadn't made up my mind on how we would do it. So, I decided to check out Jan Brett's website because I knew it is full of great pictures and ideas.

Lo and behold, I found exactly what I wanted. Not only did she have candies for our houses, but she also had these super adorable gingerbread friends!

Click {here} to go to the Jan Brett Gingerbread Friends page.

Here's how our Gingerbread Village turned out. I had one little cutie still out sick so you'll notice a spot left for her.

The kids were so proud of themselves! {me too!}

Later in the afternoon, we read the Gingerbread Man. I asked if anyone remembered the story of the Gingerbread Man. They told me what they remembered {which was pretty good} and we went over the GIANT Anchor Chart we were going to complete as we read the different gingerbread stories this week. Got this from Deanna Jump's Gingerbread Unit. It's super cute, go get it now!

I reminded them that as I read the story they had a job to do. They needed to recall the characters, refrain, and ending of the story so we could put it on the chart. I read the story to them and they loved it, of course.

The kids gave me the answers for the anchor chart and I added them on.

Afterwards, I read Deanna Jump's Gingerbread story to the class. It is short and sweet and the kids loved the rhyming. Then, I showed them our big ole pocket chart with the same story all mixed up. We worked on ways to put the story back in order. They SO wanted to look at the book to help them figure it out. I told them we would look at the book after we tried to sequence it on our own. They didn't like that answer, ha!

Alas, they did it {without the book!}

One of my kids asked me to take a picture of it. I guess they are really used to me taking pictures of them by now. They want to document everything!

Here you go, buddy!

Can't wait for Day 2 fun tomorrow!

Week in Review

Oh, wow! Have your kids been nut-so lately or is it just me?

Everyone is either sick, getting sick, or getting over being sick. Even I got sick! There's just not enough Lysol in the world to keep these germs at bay. On Friday, I only had 13 kids in class. Five of them were still hacking and sneezing. Which makes for some pretty whiny kiddos.

Anyway, we really didn't get a lot accomplished due to testing and illness. Or, at least, as much as I wanted to do. Oh well, there's always next year...

Here's some of the activities we did get to:

Amy at Step into 2nd Grade with Mrs. Lemons posted this great lesson about Reindeers and Caribou. It was AWESOME! I learned so much about caribou. We didn't get to all of the activities but we did have fun doing the research together! Click on her link to view the lesson. She has a wonderful blog - very generous!!

She wants a cell phone! Who is she going to call??

She wants a new jacket. So sweet!

Antonio wants an elf to be his brother. Cute!

Lindsay at Teacher Bits and Bobs had these cutie-pie Santas and I fell in love! The kids loved coming up with items to put on our list for Santa. We generated the list together on chart paper and then the kids filled out their letters on their own. The next day, we made our Santas. Let me tell you, this not using tracers thing is fun. There were just two students who really couldn't figure it out. Poor guys! Their Santas were all backwards. I had to intervene! Click on the link above to view the beautiful art and letter.

That's about it for now. This coming week it's all about the Gingerbread! Yippee!

I love this week! No basal story. :) Only, too bad for me because we also have school the following week as well. BOO!

Opie, our class elf, wishes you a happy week!

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

I'm beginning to panic. I have this feeling that the Christmas Season is just going to fly by and I'm not going to get in all that I want to do. I don't know why I'm feeling this way. I literally know how many days I have to teach before the holiday break, but I can't help this feeling of not having enough time.

I am just going to have to start planning RIGHT NOW and prioritize exactly all of the things that I want to do before my break begins. It seems like I had all of these high hopes for the last two holidays, and I really didn't get to do all of the activities that I planned for. This time, I'm not going to plan as many activities and choose to do things that I can get done with the time I have allotted.

I know what my biggest obstacle is: FUNDATIONS. 

Losing an hour everyday to phonics lessons is killing me. However, I can't do anything about it. Gotta do it. I just need more time!

Today, I went to my classroom (my usual Sunday routine.) I combed through my room trying to find all of my Christmas lessons, books, nick-nacks, and decorations. I found a lot, but I have a feeling there is still another box somewhere. Since I am VERY limited on wall and shelf space, one of my favorite ways to decorate my classroom for the holiday season is to go up!

I DO plan on removing those Thanksgiving charts and tree soon!

It doesn't look like much from this perspective, but you really feel the change when you are in the room. It makes the room feel a bit magical and definitely Christmassy.


I love it so much, I kinda wish my house had ceiling tiles (but not really!)

This is an easy way to decorate your room for the holidays. I purchased garland, cut them up, and attached a pipe cleaner to the end of it. I chose to add silver ball ornaments at the end of the silver garland to make them stand out. 


AND they are easy to store when it isn't the holiday season!
We always need more space to store things.


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Now, on to something completely different.


I need some help. PLEASE make me feel better and tell me that I am normal!

Okay, here I go:

Our school collects Box Tops for Education to get money back into our classrooms. I send home those cute little pages provided by the company where the parents can affix the boxtops and send them back into me. Some parents are great about collecting these tops and usually send in more than the paper will hold and are enclosed in a sandwich baggie. This is awesome and really nice of them to do for our school.

Here's the crazy part: I will sit for about 8-10 minutes (each time) and cut these tops again so they are cut perfectly on the dotted lines.

I really don't consider myself a Type-A personality person OR a control freak, but I feel compelled to do this every time I get a baggie of Tops handed over to me. I even do it at home when my husband doesn't cut them perfectly!!!

This is what I need from SOMEONE out there in blog-world:

 Let me know that y'all do this, too!

Have a great night and I can't wait for tomorrow! Lots of great sales!!!!!