Book Talk Thursday: Mrs. Claus

I am linking up with Andrea, my friend and colleague from Reading Toward the Stars! for her Book Talk Thursday.

 

We, like many of you, are working in some of our favorite Christmas stories in the next few days!  One of my new favorites is Mrs. Claus Takes a Vacation, by Linas Alsenas.

 

In this story, Mrs. Claus is tired of all of the snow at the North Pole, along with the fact that Santa is the one who gets to leave each Christmas, so she packs up and takes off!  But will she be back in time for Christmas?

When we read this book tomorrow, we will complete this little writing activity to go with the story.  Click on the image below to grab the page to use in your classroom!

 

Check out the other books on Andrea's linky!

 

Happy Thursday ~ just one more day until the weekend! :)

 

 

 

 

"This is a Snowman" booklet freebie

**edited on 01-10-2013 with the correct link

We are back in full swing!  These last three days have been beyond exhausting - that seems to be the case with most blog posts I have read!  Getting back to a schedule is hard!  To help make things easier with the transition back, I have a freebie for you!

We are working on adjectives this week.  I can't think of a better way to learn about adjectives other than describing a snowman!  Our snowman booklets are just adorable!  The children have done an amazing job of describing how the snowman looks and are very creative.  

The booklet has 7 pages (the first page is the title page); each page builds for various parts of the snowman.  Have the children write an adjective and then illustrate that one part of the snowman.  The first page says "This is a snowman.  He has a _____ hat."  Instruct the children to find an adjective for the hat and then use that word to color the hat.  I have my children use the same adjective for hat, nose, mouth, etc. all the way through the book.

There are pages for hat, nose, eyes, mouth, scarf, and buttons.

Click on one of the images below to get your "This is a Snowman" booklet.  Hope you enjoy!

Christmas!

Some of our Christmas activities from class ...

tracing poinsettia patterns

 

putting together the poinsettias

just some of our poinsettias

our circle map of /ch/ words; hot chocolate cups with /ch/ marshmallows

Polar Express trains

If I was on the Polar Express ...

 

If Santa was stuck in my chimney ...

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas!

Mrs. Claus on a vacation??

I recently purchased Mrs. Claus Takes a Vacation.  We read this very cute story this week in class and completed a writing activity.  Click the picture or HERE to get a copy for your classroom.

After reading the story, the children shared where they would like to go with Mrs. Claus if they could take a vacation together.  They came up with an amazing list!

the writing assignment

our writing in the hallway

"We would go to China.  We would eat China food.  We would play China games."

"We would go to Haiti.  We would help the kids if they are sick and take toys."

One of my reading/word study groups is working on beginning digraphs.  I have 4 lists: (1) c/h/th; (2) t/h/th; (3) s/h/sh; and (4) w/h/wh.  Each list has several sight words (note: many of these sight words are difficult to find an image to accompany) and each list has a word search using most of the words.  Click HERE to grab the freebie!  PlEaSe leave a comment if you download the digraph activity so I know how many are grabbed!

 

highlighting December Words, new January Words, and a freebie

Have you checked out my December Word Packet?  Here's a picture of the words up in my room.  My children use these words throughout the month to help them in their creative writing.  Click HERE to get the words for your classroom!  Use them in a word work station, a writing station, or display as you see here.  There are 39 cards on 13 pages.  I laminate everything in my room and then use my scrapbooking paper trimmer to cut between the word cards.

I am trying to get a head start on some of my projects and have just completed my January Words Packet.  I have included 30 cards on 10 pages.  We teach animals in the winter in January, so I have included many animal words (adaptation, camouflage, Arctic fox, polar bear, just to name a few), as well as winter and snow words (such as hot chocolate, mittens, and scarf), as well as New Year and Martin Luther King, Jr.  In this packet, I have a check off list included for those children who need a challenge on their word work.  Click HERE to view it and purchase in my store. 

 

Don't forget that through tomorrow (November 27th), you can get this packet 28% off when you use CMT12 through my TPT store!  Now is the perfect time to fill your cart while getting everything on sale!



And as a thank you for reading to the end of this very long post, click on one of the images below for the initial consonant blends activities.  There are 3 sets of blends, along with a word box activity for each.  Please leave a comment if you download with what you think!

Overwhelmed already??

Anybody else overwhelmed?  I have had a difficult week going back, mainly because of the few hours that I have had to work in my classroom and the many hours that I have had in various trainings.

However, Monday is coming quickly, but Thursday is coming even faster - when my new kiddos and their parents come!  Lesson plans for the beginning of the year are always difficult, but due to Pinterest and various blogs, I have so many ideas running around my head!  The only area I haven't had ideas for is some creative writing responses.  Like most primary grade teachers, I have a lot of back-to-school themed books, so this idea came about.  Click {here} to get the packet.  I have also included a title page in case you would like to put all of writing pages together into a book.  {This might be a great writing activity to save for evidence of progress throughout the school year!}

My husband and I got back from visiting family and my sister-in-law took some great pictures of us; I had to share one!  Have a great rest of the week!

End of the year thoughts ...



telling time activity - concentration

As we near the end of the year, I think about the activities that we've done this year, especially some of my students' favorites.  We love math activities, such as the telling time activity pictured here.  I featured this in a recent blog and you can find it on my TpT page.

daily activities for language arts and math

Most days I have activities similar to this on my board that we work on throughout the day.  On this particular day, we solved a word problem, had a journal writing assignment, played math fact tic-tac-toe, and a bridge map of opposites.

end of the year gift

I found this end of the year gift on Pinterest.  You can find the original link here by Little Miss Glamour Goes to Kindergarten.  I had extra spiral notebooks in my closet, along with colored paper, so I just needed to purchase rubber cement and stickers!  I used rubber cement to attach the colored paper with their name to the front of each notebook, wrote a short message on the first page and included several short writing prompts.  I have bags ready of pencils, pencil sharpeners, and erasers to give out with the notebooks on Wednesday.

Blessings,