Five for Friday (on Saturday)

My first Five for Friday! I managed to take pictures even during this hectic week. I volunteered to be in charge of Student Council this year. It's been fun to work with 4th, 5th, and 6th graders for a change. They are fantastic kids! This week we are selling candy cane grams so we met Monday to put some together (a candy cane and Christmas pencil tied together with a tag) then the kids sold them after school Wednesday and Thursday. So far it's raised a good amount of money. Between that and my classroom it's been a very busy week! Here is some of what we did:

My students paint trees every year. We start with a green triangle which I have the whole class paint at the same time. The next day I call students over in small group to add the details. They're so much fun!

These plaster ornaments from Michael's are my students' Christmas gifts for their parents. My mom generously comes down for a day and paints them with my students. She gets almost all of them done and then my instructional aide, who is an artist, finishes the rest with the kids. Do you have instructional aides at your school? Carol and I have worked together almost every year that I've been at my school (about 13 now) and she's just such a wonderful person. That reminds me, I've got to do some Christmas shopping for her too!

The Holiday Card Exchange organized by Jen over at Projects by Jen. She's amazing! It's so much fun to participate in this and learn about other schools. As you can see we're displaying them to show where they came from. My students have a map in their desk with the US on one side and the world on the other. As we open cards, I help them color the state/country the card came from. We got one from Miami where the average temp is 70 and Manitoba, Canada where the average temp is -20. Yikes! That's way too cold for this California girl. But I'm sure it's beautiful up there!

We're doing Christmas Around the World. I use Christina Bainbridge's unit for this. I love that she has a powerpoint for each country to teach the kids about it. She has a different poinsettia craft to use, but I've done this one for a while so I used my own. So far we have only been to Mexico, but that's really the most special for my class since about half of them have family there. Next week it's off to Brazil, Japan, and Germany!

Our classroom Christmas tree. During Work on Writing my students can make Christmas cards for their parents and place them on the tree. It's fun to go back and read their messages at the end of the day. One little boy wrote,

"Dear Mom,

I was a good boy at school today.

From,

J_____"

How sweet is that? This is a little boy who could never be anything but good and sweet. I may photocopy that one and keep it with my Christmas things.

I made a few quick Gingerbread Man cards you can grab if you want them. Just click on the picture.

I hope you have a nice weekend! My husband and I are going to lunch and to the movies today. I've been looking forward to it all week. We're off to see Nebraska, the new Alexander Payne movie. My husband had some involvement with his movie Sideways and has been wondering about Nebraska off and on ever since. We just heard this week that it had come out. My brother says the preview look good. We've liked his other movies so hopefully this is good too. Happy Saturday to you!

2

Christmas Vowel Review Freebie

What a great day... a sunny, relaxing Sunday after spending a few fun days with family and eating way too much food. For me the turkey is just an excuse to get to eat gravy, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and cranberry relish. I made pumpkin bourbon cheesecake too. Oh my do I need to exercise this week! But today I'm spending some time on the computer. Laundry is done, next week at school is planned. Maybe I need a week off more often...

While I was at school last week getting all my December things ready, I ran across a Christmas short vowel word sort activity my class did last year. It was a fun way for my kiddos to review what we'd worked on in reading. I had a couple of students who were reading above grade level and made a harder set of short vowel cards for them so they weren't having to read only CVC words. It worked great and was lots of fun. So I thought I'd share it with you.

My students worked with a partner to sort the words by their vowel sound.

When they finished the partners had to raise their hands so I could check the cards. I'd pick up any that were wrong and have them try those again. Once the words were sorted correctly, I gave them the recording sheet

Each student had to pick two words from each vowel to write and draw a picture of. I reminded them to make sure the word they wrote was one they could read so that they'd be able to draw the picture. I had quite a few struggling readers, so by letting them choose the words to write, everyone was able to do the activity.

You can download this freebie by clicking {here}. It would work well for second graders needing some review too. I'd really appreciate if you'd leave a little comment if you do download this. It's so much fun to hear from you!

Also... 

I'm having my first TPT (& Teacher's Notebook) sale! My store's still small, but it sure has been fun to get it started. Hope you'll pop over and follow me. Personally, I can't wait to make my wishlist smaller on Monday.

The sale is Monday and Tuesday. I'm having the same sale in my Teacher's Notebook store.

Have fun shopping!

If you'd like to grab this cute button, stop over and visit

It's in her TPT store.

Thanks for stopping by! Have a wonderful week!

1