Woo Hoo! FFF Day 2 - TPT Giveaway

Good morning my dears!!! Is everyone enjoying their break as much as I am? I just LOVE relaxing! I cannot wait to hear how your Black Friday shopping went, or should I say Black Thursday. What is up with that anyway? Stores opening for Black Friday at 6:00 pm on Thanksgiving?!? That's crazy. And it ruins the fun for me. Sigh. What is this country coming to? Of course I still went though, so they win in the end :) I go to Target each year and buy a bunch of crap that I don't need. The hype just gets to me. When I see people grabbing things I automatically go into panic mode and think I need one, so I buy random things and then have buyer's remorse the next day. Kinda feeling that right now. Except for the blankets and pants. Target always has these softy soft blankets on sale and cozy PJ pants that I buy in bulk each year. I am all about the coziness in life.

So let's get moving with the:

If you missed my post yesterday, be sure to go check it out HERE. You still have a chance to win my Font Pack giveaway!

Today's flashback and fotos come from the beginning of this year.

My kids LOVED making Friendship Fruit Salad. It was a huge hit.

You will need:

Large Bowl

Spoon

Pre-cut Strawberries

Grapes

Bananas

Apple Slices

Marshmallows

One Rotten Banana

Paper Bowls

Spoons

This is how I explained it to the kids:

The bowl is our classroom. Right now it is empty and what was how our classroom wasb efore you got here. Pretty boring! That's why I was so excited when you came! Let's add some fun to our bowl, just like you add fun to our classroom. There are so many important things that our classroom needs to help it to be a special place to learn and play. 

We then discussed different things that are important! Each fruit represents one of those things.

Apples represent the hard workers

Grapes represent the friends who share

Strawberries represent the love we have for one another

Marshmallows represent the kind words we use

Bananas represent honesty

  

 

 

Then I said we had one more ingredient to add and pulled out the rotten banana. I pretended like I was going to add it and they started to freak out a bit. I asked them why they didn't want me to add it. That led us to our next discussion - we don't want to add the rotten banana. This banana represents the people who don't share or follow directions, or call people names, etc. They shared why they did not want those type of people in our room and how we could be the yummy ingredients instead!

After making the fruit salad, we went outside to enjoy it together!

 The next part of my flashback comes from one of my favorite times of year - Apple Time!!

We usually do an entire week of apple themed activities in our room to celebrate Johnny Appleseed's birthday! We started with an apple taste testing to see which color apple we liked the best!

 

{The kids were seriously amazed by the apple cutter!}

 

First we tried the green apples! They were pretty tart!!

{Most of them really liked them though!}

 

 {After trying all of the apples, we made a SmartBoard graph to see which type we liked the best. I was surprised to see that yellow won by a long shot!

The next day, we made cute little Johnny Appleseed hats. I found the apples at the Dollar Tree. I bought black posterboard and chopped it into 6 inch wide strips for the pot. Then I cut the handles and the kids glued it all together :) The hats have their name on it with Appleseed after it. For example, Jackson Appleseed. Not an original idea, but totally cute!

We then made Rice Krispie apples! They are always super messy and fun to make and the kids LOVE them. The recipe is super easy. We make Rice Krispy treats using the microwavable recipe. When it is still hot and gooey we add a pack of strawberry jello and some red food coloring. We mix it all up and then the kids shape it into circles. They push their finger into the top to leave a little indent for the stem.

 

 

 

 

{The stem is a tootsie roll and the leaf is just green frosting that the kids squeezed on}

 

We also made delicious  crock pot applesauce/chunks! It's not truly applesauce because we don't squish it into sauce. We leave the big chunks so they can chew it. It's more like apple pie really. This is one of my FAVORITE treats to make. It makes the classroom smell so good while it cooks all day and it tastes yummy! We used red apples, brown sugar, cinnamon, and butter.

 

 

We topped it with honey Teddy Grahams, which tasted just like crust! Mmmmm!

 

Apples are so much fun. They had a blast throughout the week!

And that concludes Day Two's flashbacks and fotos! Ready for the freebies?!

Since it is day 2, today's giveaway is the choice of any 2 products from my TPT store. And I will be choosing 2 winners! To have your chance to win, all you have to do is:

*Follow my blog by clicking the button on the side

*Follow my TPT store HERE

*Leave a comment sharing either: one fun thing you bought on Black Friday, one funny thing you saw on Black Friday, OR one of your favorite things to do with your class in the Fall!

Be sure to do the things above by this Sunday, December 1st at noon.

Hooray for Day 2! Good luck - I hope you win :)

Let the FEASTING begin!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING FRIENDS! Today is the first day of our Thanksgiving break and I am so excited to have some time to catch up (on sleep, on reading, on dvr shows, and of course, on work). This past week we have been busy little bees working to prepare for our upcoming feast! We started by making paper bag turkeys:

In the process....

Finished turkey! They made adorable table decorations!

We also made placemats and they came out super cute! The kids weaved thin strips of colored paper through a large sheet of brown construction paper to make the mat. Then they colored pictures and glue them on. When they were finished, I laminated them and they were ready to go!

While making the placemats

A finished placemat!!

We also did some cooking for our families. The first thing we made to celebrate our classroom family was "Friendship Soup". I have my kids make this every year and they always eat it up! I cut up the ingredients in advance, put them in baggies, and scattered them around the room. Then I gave each student a picture of the ingredient that they would be looking for. They searching the room to 'gather the harvest'. Then we put the ingredients in the crock pot and let it cook all day. The room smelled delicious!

The kids with our soup!

Adding the most important ingredient - LOVE!

Enjoying the soup with our friends!

We also made two types of pies: pumpkin pie and pumpkin cheesecake! On our way to the kitchen, one of the trays went flying and pie went EVERYWHERE! We were covered. It was a straight up pie-splosion! Luckily, we saved one of the trays. So we ended up with pumpkin cheesecake only, but they were soooo good!

Then (finally) yesterday we had our fabulous feast! Many of the students families joined us and it was just lovely!

I'm so sad it's over, it really is such a nice time of the year! But I am soooo thrilled it is almost December - I am already gearing up for snow, gingerbread men, and other classroom fun! I can't wait!! Are you as excited as I am?! Hope everyone has an amazing Thanksgiving! HAPPY TURKEY DAY!

Time To Be Thankful!

This week we are learning about The First Thanksgiving. The kids love listening to the stories and discovering what life was like in the 1600's! I just get a kick out of how shocked my little ones are as they find out what kids their age did in the past. As we read the book "The Story of the Pilgrims", I explained how the pilgrims were on the Mayflower for 66 days and related it to the number of days we have been in school this year (67 days - how perfect!) It really shook one of my kiddos, who screamed, "WE'D ALL BE DEAD! JUST DEAD!" Sigh! Sometimes I wonder what it is like inside their brains :) They were rolling on the floor laughing when I read the name "Squanto". I asked one what was so funny, and he said "That's what we do in PE." I kindly explained "No honey, that is called squatting." I love them! They truly make my days full of laughter! So here's a breakdown of what we've been up to so far!

We started our week by reading two wonderful stories about the first Thanksgiving! We then created a flow map to sequence the events that occurred! First we discussed the sentences and decided the order. We glued them onto the chart. Next we found the corresponding pictures for each sentence. After gluing all the sentences and pictures in the correct order, the students filled in the missing words - most of which were sight words we are focusing on! They really loved this activity and I loved that it combined sequencing, critical thinking, and sight words!

 The finished product:

 If you would like to make a First Thanksgiving flow map with your class, feel free to purchase the activity in my TPT store by clicking the picture below:

We also learned about the trip on the Mayflower and discussed what three things we would bring with us if we had to go on the journey!

 One of my very favorite activities is our "Pilgrims & Native American Thanksgiving Plate" activity. We have been discussing healthy foods and the different sections of the 'MyPlate'. We decided to see how healthy the first Thanksgiving feast was! We researched and read about the foods that they ate and organized them onto the MyPlate. (For more information about MyPlate visit: http://www.choosemyplate.gov/food-groups/) Didn't it turn out great?

 While we created the large plate, the students also completed a visual by drawing and coloring the plate! Click on the link below to grab a copy for yourself:

Finally, we created a Venn Diagram comparing the Wampanoag Children to the Pilgrim Children that we read about. The kids had some fantastic ideas!

Oh what fun! We have a few more activities planned the rest of this week and for our SUPER short 2-day week next week so I'll be sure to share! As we get closer, all I can think about is Thanksgiving dinner - yum! I am so THANKFUL you stopped by! Hope to see you again soon :)

So Long Halloween, I'm Feelin' Fall-y!

Yay! It's Saturday! Though I always get excited it's the weekend, I usually spend most of my time catching up on school work that I never got to during the week. It is absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to catch up! Every time I think "Wow, I really accomplished a lot!" I turn around and remember 15 other important things that I need to do. Ahhhh, the life of a teacher :) Boy is it fun though!

Well Halloween was a fabulous time in our classroom! We had such a blast! Here's the low-down on what we did! I loved our pumpkin unit. There is so much fun to be had when it comes to pumpkins! You can see some of our fun creations later in this post in our fall display. One exciting part of the unit that the kids are always "pump"ed (haha gosh, I'm clever) about is pumpkin carving!! Before the scooping began, I passed out small papers with blank pumpkins on them. I asked the students to draw a picture of the jack-o-lantern that they would want us to carve. They did an awesome job! We then voted as a class which we liked best. Here were our winners:

 After the vote, it was time to get down to business. I brought in 3 pumpkins and put the class into 3 groups. Some of them had never scooped a pumpkin before! Most of them were thrilled to touch all the goopy yuck, but two of them literally threw up. Good grief.

 And after all the scooping, we carved them together. We did our very best to make them look like the pumpkins we voted for. Unfortunately the pumpkin on the left was supposed to have one tooth but it broke off as we pulled the mouth out. It worked out ok though, we just called him our "Happy Pumpkin"!

 

 And of course the best part of carving pumpkins is eating the seeds!! They LOVED them!!

 And then it was the glorious day itself! HALLOWEEN! We all dressed up in costumes and went trick-or-treating around the school!

I am the big pumpkin in the middle! And just to be clear - despite how it appears in this picture, I have two legs. The witch on my right is my intern Chelsea and the pumpkin on my left is my fellow kindergarten teacher (and good buddy) Amanda.

 The kids looked spookalicious in their adorable costumes!

 

 After our fun trick-or-treating adventure, we came back to the room for our Halloween party! There was freaky food, gory games, and creepy crafts galore!

Our "Witches Brew" made with lime sherbet (my kids called this lizard guts), pineapple juice, and gingerale. And don't forget the hand!! This is always a winner!

 

We also made little witches broomsticks with pretzels and reeses!

 

Making "Spageletons" - Skeletons out of spaghetti (I was so proud when I came up with the name!)

Making graveyards with chocolate pudding, oreo crumbles, gummy worms, and milano cookies (tombstones)

Pumpkin Bowling!

Pumpkin Painting

The snack table! YUM!!

One of my kids moms brought this in! They were so cute and the kids gobbled them up!

 And just like that Halloween is over! I love holidays (maybe more than the kids! Ha!) In the aftermath of all our spooky fun, I finally got my fall decorations up this week. I felt awful that it took me 7 days into November to get them up. I spent lots of money and even more time to make it festive, but it was well worth it! It looks adorable and my kids were ecstatic when they came in. So here's how it came out:

The inside of our room!

The hallway right outside of our room! The kids loved all the pumpkin activities that we did. You may be wondering why I have 600 scarecrows. All I have to say is: Sale. At Michaels. No self-control.

In the middle row of the wall are our 'Pumpkin Life Stage" projects. After reading "The Pumpkin Book" by Gail Gibbons, the kids colored and cut out the life stages (seen above) and glued them in order on a piece of string. They then made pumpkins from paper plates and glued the string to the top to become the vine!

Don't you just love our little pumpkin patch? The kids made the little orange pumpkins and they came out great. They stuffed paper bags with newspaper and closed the top with a rubberband. They then painted them orange and brown (stem) and added a green pipe cleaner to hide the rubberband and become the vine! At the end of the vine is a little green leaf that has each child's name on it.

Our Pumpkin Diagrams - these were super easy to make! I printed all the words on labels and all the kids had to do was stick them on the correct place instead of messing with sticky glue!

"Leaf Pile Kids" - Super cute! I got this idea from April Larremore's blog and created my own templates.

 So there we have it! I hope you are getting ready to cozy up and enjoy the season. The very best time of the year has just begun! Here's to a fabulous fall ya'll!