Sharing a Couple of Recaps and a Couple of Units

Hello Everyone!!
2014 is almost here!  We are staying home, safe and sound in our living room this year!  I am so happy!!  We had a houseful of love and laughter this past week with both boys and friends here, and frankly, I am pooped!!  It feels good to not have to cook, clean, dress up, and be "on" for a few hours!! But at the same time, I miss them already!!!
I do, finally, have a minute to show a couple of pics from the week before winter break.  One of my favorite days was our Grinch Day.  We love celebrating the special message that Dr. Seuss illustrates in this infamous story!  Here are a couple of pics!

The kids went all out with grinchy green spirit!

The grinch sent some sweet little elves to check on our kindness and make sure we learned from the story! Jolly, Joy, and Jingle made their debut and will probably hang around throughout the new year!!

A yummy green snack was mysteriously left for the kids!!

This amazing team really gets into every celebration!!

I also wanted to share with you something our room moms made for our classrooms!!!  The kids brought gift cards to clip onto this amazing snowman tree!!  

We have the best room moms around!!!

When we get back from winter break we will be studying the historically significant and amazing life of Eleanor Roosevelt,  First Lady of the World.  I put together a little unit about her, integrating social studies and ELA. Here are a few pics from the 17 page unit.

For your own printable unit on Eleanor Roosevelt, click here!!

Another thing we will begin studying is the science concept of living and nonliving.  I have shared a mini unit on this topic before, but I revamped it a bit, so I'm offering it again!

Here are a few pics from the 9 page unit.

For your little living/nonliving unit click here!!

I hope these little offerings will help your 2014 get off to a good start.

 Stay tuned for a little somethin' somethin' 

later in the week!!

Till then, be safe and warm tonight. 

Welcome 2014!!!

Joyfully!

Nancy

New Year 2014

Hello Everyone!
I have had several requests to update my New Year unit for 2014.  While doing that, I decided to add a couple of things to go along with where we are in our curriculum.  I have added another poem/chant to help kids work on responding to rhythm, rhyme, and alliteration using voice and body, as well as written expression. 
I have also added a component practicing the hard and soft sounds of c and g. Oh! and there is a quick 2-d geometric figure activity. 
The unit ended up to be about 55 pages.  Here are a few pics.

For your free printable 2014 unit, celebrate and click here!

Or HERE for the 2015 version!! :)

Have a great week!!! 5 more days for us and then winter break!!

Joyfully!

Nancy

Stuffing our Stockings with Blends!

Hello Everyone!
A very quick peek into  a few minutes of our day today!  We've been studying blends for the last few weeks. This week we are spending time reviewing.  I wanted to make our wordwork fun, easy, and memorable.  We cut out some large stocking shapes and attached a little label topper. Then we wrote some of our blend words on white adhesive mailing seals. (You could just use circles cut from paper and glue them on.)
We stuck our words on our stockings and added some little details.
Fun, easy, and memorable?
 Take a look!

If you'd like the stocking topper, click here for your printable!

Gotta run!! Lots of holiday planning to do!! Have a great rest of the week!!

Joyfully!

Nancy

A Pinch of "You Know Who!"

Hello Everyone!
Next week we will learn through the celebration of a wonderful holiday classic by Dr. Seuss.  We will be learning so much through this wonderful story.  We celebrate this amazing author and know that he would love for school children to spend so much learning time using his book!! He would love the connections we are making with his characters.  We thank him for inspiring us to read, write, talk, and learn!
We'll concentrate on adjectives, text connections, author's big idea, comparing holiday traditions, energy, matter, and so much more.  I have shared this unit before, but have added a bit to it.

If you're interested in the updated 56 page unit, click 
here...it's free! :)


I'll post some pics next week to let you know how everything went!! Let me know if you have any questions, or problems!!
Have a great week! Stay tuned for some pics of our learning activities from this short week! We're taking a mouse to the movies!!! :)
Joyfully!
Nancy

Math Mints

Hello Everyone!!
Well, I can't believe I'm posting again this weekend, but we are iced in pretty good here and I'm beginning to get a little cabin fever.  We had an ice day (aka snowday) on Friday and we still couldn't get out today. Church has been canceled for tomorrow. That gives you an idea how bad it is.  I've baked, made 2 kinds of soup, cleaned, put up the rest of my Christmas décor, organized 2 closets, avoided some of the many files I have to attend to...and now I'm posting.  Feeling blessed!
I wanted to share this year's version of our math mints.  Last year when I posted about this activity, we were focused on fact families.  This year we were developing our doubles facts.
We learned a catchy little rap (inspired by Saxon) and as a whole group lesson, we worked on a giant mint work mat. I used two different colored starlight mints to show how to compose and indicate the part/part/whole of doubles facts.

Kids had recording sheets to help them see the patterns in our number sentences.
After our mini lesson, the kids has a chance to make their own math mint. This hands on visual connection was quick, easy, fun , and looks great hanging up.  It was also a good way to differentiate, as some kids challenged themselves with higher level doubles facts.

 

We just took two cheap white paper plates, colored them to look like a mint and wrote our facts. Glue the rims together so they become 3 dimensional, wrap them with clear cellophane and tied the ends. When we get back next week, kids will make a little book about doubles.

 

Click here for the rap, the mini book and a math tub activity

 

Hope you are all staying warm.  Till next time!

Have a great weekend!!

Joyfully!

Nancy