Gingerbread Man Data Collection FREEBIE!

Ooohhhh!!! Run, run, run as fast as you can, so we can catch & eat that gingerbread man! Oh, I know how much excitement is in the air in anticipation of our holiday break (& the kiddos are pretty excited about it too!) Ok, lets be honest-we are all WAY past counting down the days left until break...who else is secretly counting down the school HOURS that we have left?!??? Be honest. lol  Well, we have 21 school hours left...tick..tick..  (You know you're doing it too!!!) Honestly, I love LOVE the students' excitement level this time of year & I just have to work super-duper extra hard to channel all that energy during these next few days. My firsties really enjoy the many different versions of The Gingerbread Man. And there are soooo many different versions...Gingerbread Man, Gingerbread Girl, Gingerbread Baby, Gingerbread Friends, Gingerbread Pirate & the list goes on and on. And have you seen the newest version? The Gingerbread Girl Goes Animal Crackers! How fun does that sound!?! Our gingerbread data collection/graphing activity is an all-time fav-or-ite! How could it not be?...you get to eat a cookie!!! (Snacks become very important to me the students during these last few school days!) I'm sure this is something that many of you already do, but I figured that I'd share anyway. I've also had oodles of requests for more data collection sheets, so here ya go!

Just click the pic for your data collection FREEBIE!

If you download my lil data collection freebie, just leave me a shout-out to let me know what you think (or just to give a big "Holiday Hey!") Also, if you are still looking for a few last minute holiday activities, I've put all my Christmas stuff on SALE in my lil TpT shop & Teachers Notebook shop from now thru Monday, December 19th! Be sure to check out my "Holly Jolly Elves"-its been a best-seller! Thanks everyone-I really appreciate all of your great feedback!!!

Click the pic to check out the sale on all of my holiday stuff!

Enjoy the last few school hours of 2011 (tick....tick...tick...!!!)

Asking & Telling Sentences

Did your kiddos have a lil extra energy this past week also? I knew I had trouble a challenge on my hands when I turned around to see my quietest student doing a Michael Jackson style break dance on our rug!!! OMIword!!! I guess having a full moon AND our first snow fall all in the same week could have something to do with it!?! lol Well, once I got everyone settled, we started working on one of our morning interactive writing activities where I give the students a word and then they have to use it in a sentence. Then we work together to write it on the easel. (Of course making sure that it has everything that a good sentence needs!) The past few weeks we have been coming up with a telling sentence & an asking sentence. (That can be pretty tricky for firsties!) I just love these sentences that my firsties came up with this past week...

Not bad, huh? Especially after that whole "thriller dance rountine thing" that went on just a few minutes earlier! You gotta love those 7 year-olds!!! Is it obvious that they have reindeer on their brains? :)  I just love LOVE how he is working so hard to get a "good word space" in there! I also made up the lil sentence writing booklets (in the top pic) for my kiddos so they can either copy the sentences that we do together or come up with their own sentences. If you would like a copy of "My Good Sentences Book"-click HERE or on the top pic.

I just couldn't help but share this pic with you...After a snowy morning of chatty goofy wild extremely motivated students, it melted my heart when these 2 sweeties just couldn't wait for me to read the "good sentence" that they made at the magnetic board...Awww! They said, "Is it ok that we used a marker to make that "exquestion mark" cuz we knew you would just love it!" And I did! They were so proud of this...I just had to grab my camera & share it-sooo sweet! (Makes every minute of the full-moon craziness worth it!)

Also, here is my Good Sentences sign/poster (just in case you missed it in an earlier post.)

Click the pic if you would like a copy!

I've had lots of requests for more of my Sentence Scramblers...check back this week for a few more of them! Hope you have a super week with your kiddos!

HELP WANTED! Holiday Writing Activity Freebie

Santa needs help! You know how busy it must be at the North Pole this time of year-so... Santa is now accepting applications for some additional holiday help! Well, my lil first grade elves were just dyin' to let Santa know why this is the job for them! Just check out this...

I just love her 1st sentence! Who doesn't love making dollars and cents!?! Too cute! My friend Danielle passed along a version of this activity that she was doing with her 3rd graders. I just reworked it a bit (just to make it a lil bit easier for my firsties) and added a little holiday picture. Just so happened, we had a little visit from Santa today so I was able to snap a quick pic of each of my kiddos with him! (Worked out pretty good!) We are really working on writing good sentences so after filling out the top part of the application, they had to write 3 good sentences. (A "Good Sentence" must have capital letter, word spaces, punctuation AND make sense! I think I repeat this about a bazillion times everyday! lol) Well, they turned out so stinkin' cute that I decided to hang them in the hallway for all to see! Also, made a cute lil "Help Wanted" Ad (sign) to hang up with them.

If you would like a copy of this lil holiday writing activity FREEBIE, just leave me a lil holiday shout-out & then click HERE or on the top pic!
Hope your kiddos love it too!

Rockin' Reindeer Fun! & a Countdown Sale!

Oh wow-sie, wow! I can't believe that we only have 12 more school days before Christmas break! Ahhhh-oooooo-ahhh!! (That was me screaming with excited just like that Target woman did when she saw the Black Friday sales flyer!!!!) By the way, I just love those Target ads-what a HOOT that woman is! There is just a extra boost of excitement in the air this time of year so...our job is to figure out how to harness that excitement & keep our kiddos engaged for these next couple of crazy weeks! Well, I kind of ran with a teachable moment this week when the topic of Santa's reindeer came up. It began with two of the students discussing reindeer antlers ("Only boy reindeer have them! Na-uh girls can have 'em too!") Can't you just hear this arguement discussion? Well, that "discussion" drew the attention of my entire class! So much for my Reindeer Fact Families activity! lol The kiddos were so interested in these animals that I went to our library to find a non-fiction book on reindeer-no luck. So, that night I decided to write my own non-fiction book about reindeer. One of our school goals is to incorporate more non-fiction reading and what better animal to learn about in December than reindeer!?! Here's a look at my lil non-fiction book.


I printed the book (& of course, added some cutie-patootie ribbon!) but I actually put it up on the Smartboard when I read it to my firsties. OMGoodness! They soooo loved learning about real reindeer. Check out our chart... (see if you can find our fact that only applies to Santa's reindeer!)

I decided to package up this book along with some of my other reindeer/holiday activities in my "Rockin' Reindeer Fun" math & literacy unit. I feel bad since I did not have this ready to go for the cyber Monday sale...so I'm going to have a "Countdown to Christmas" sale. Everything in my TpT & Teachers Notebook shops is on sale through Tuesday (12/6).


Click on the pic to check out this unit!

A big thank you to Amy over at Krazy About Kiddos for giving me the Sunshine Award! That was sooo sweet! Be sure to head on over to check out her blog-its awesome! And check back here this week for some freebies!
Let the countdown to Christmas begin!