Holiday Crafts with a Educational Twist

During the month of December, I'm always looking for ways to keep my students engaged in learning activities - as any teacher knows, the closer you get to Christmas, the bigger the struggle that is! I wanted to find a way for my students to practice skills, but not with your typical worksheet, so I created three different holiday crafts that you can use with your students to practice any skill or concept!

In this resource, all of the template pieces are included to make a reindeer, Christmas tree, or gingerbread house. On the blank templates, you can have students practice any skill you want including sight words, math facts, word families, spelling words, letters, fact families, grammar skills, and MUCH more!

Here are some of the ways I used the Monthly Skills Crafts in my classroom:

I wanted to give my students a chance to practice reading and writing their sight words they'd learned for the first part of the year, so I put this activity in a center and they wrote their sight words on the Christmas lights and put them on the reindeer antlers. After they created them, I hung them up in my classroom and they made the cutest decor to boot!

This student decided to make hers like Rudolph!

In math, my students were working on decomposing numbers so I decided to have them create a Christmas tree to practice their math facts for making ten.

There are SO many different ways you could use this craft! You could also have students practice addition and subtraction strategies, place value forms, number writing, skip counting, and more! One way I may use it this year is to have them write adjectives to describe their tree after they decorate it.

For the last craft, a gingerbread theme is always one that students enjoy. This template allows students to decorate a gingerbread house the way they want it and then use the candies to practice different skills! This example has students practicing writing words in the "short I" word family. There are so many great options for this template and they always turn out so cute and creative!

My favorite thing about this resource is that the activities are SO versatile, students love creating them, and they make fantastic holiday decor to hang in your classroom as well. 

If you'd like to add this resource to your classroom this year, click on the picture below to find out more!

Using Elf on the Shelf in the Classroom

For the past five years or so, I've brought the Elf on the Shelf into my classroom each December. My students absolutely love it each year and it brings a little holiday magic into our room! They love looking for the elf each morning and it's a great behavior incentive as well. They never want the elf to  see them doing anything "naughty"! But here's the thing - it may seem like a big chore to implement a few elf activities into your day, but it doesn't have to be anything time consuming for you unless you choose to do it that way!

On the first day the elf arrives at our classroom, I usually wrap the box up and cover it with super gaudy, sparkly bows and ribbons. I then put it somewhere in the classroom and don't say anything about it until someone notices! I then, of course, act completely surprised that there is even a gift in our classroom.

We open it, the students are excited (understatement of the year), and then we read the book. After reading, we brainstorm potential names for our elf and vote on them to choose.

The winner last year was Snowflake! Every year, my students end up picking a different name. Sometimes the name doesn't even have anything to do with Christmas or winter, as evidenced by the list pictured above.

I don't usually do anything too huge in regards to the elf. I move him every day so the kids can find him.

   

He can also be a little bit mischievous... going on joyrides while we're not at school!

And sometimes he brings us special treats... like candy canes!

Then we have a mini-candy cane day! We observe them and describe them using our 5 senses and create a web of all the adjectives we came up with.

Using an elf in the classroom is also a great opportunity for students to write in a variety of ways. My students always love to write their own notes and letters to our elf telling him their Christmas lists, how much they love him, and any other little sweet things they want to "tell" him.

One of my favorite writing activities to do with my students is a persuasive writing project. Students write a letter to their elf to try and convince him to tell Santa why they've been good this year. 

The stuff they come up with is always so funny! They come up with reasons you wouldn't even think of as to how they've been nice all year. If your students need help coming up with ideas, you can create a group thinking map together to brainstorm ways they've been kind to others, followed directions, or worked hard all year.

After they write their letter, they create a craftivity of our elf and pair it next to the letter. They always turn out absolutely adorable.

You can find the elf in the classroom persuasive writing activity by clicking on the picture below! It has differentiated writing paper options for you to choose from to best fit your students' needs.

Once Christmas break begins, our elf returns back to the North Pole. Sometimes I like to get a gift from the "elf" for the kids to find when we return back to school in January. In years past, I've gotten supplies for our kitchen/home living center, a holiday book, or a stuffed animal like the Grinch. The kids are always sad to see our elf go, but finding a special gift from him is a great way for them to say goodbye. Having an elf in the classroom can be such a special, magical experience for your students!

Very Merry Sentence Building Activities for December

Phew! I furiously worked late into the night last night to get my newest pack, Very Merry Sentence Building Activities for December, into my TPT shop before the big sale ended tonight!

This December themed packet is filled with activities to help your students practice and grow their skills in sentence structure, writing concepts, punctuation, sight words, and reading/tracking print! The activities included in this pack are:

Build-a-Sentence {building sentences with word cards}
-2 different sets included with 8 different sentences to build!
-recording sheets included for students to write the sentences they create

Predictable Sight Word Sentences {building sentences with sight words and predictable charts}
-2 different sets included
-multiple response sheets included to fit your students' needs
-students can build up to 10 different sentences

Read It, Write It, Build It, Draw It!
-18 different sentence building printables to work on sentence structure, spacing, punctuation, handwriting, and sight word skills.

Click on the picture below to go check it out in my store, especially while the big sale is still happening! It will be 20% off until midnight tonight.

 

Speaking of the big Cyber Monday/Tuesday TPT sale, it's still going on for a few more hours, and my entire store is 20% off. If you use the code CYBER, you'll get an extra 8% off! Click on the graphic below (made by Krista Wallden) to go to my little shop. :)

 

My big blog giveaway also ends tonight! There's still time to enter and win an Amazon gift card, TPT gift certificate, and some great units from some incredible bloggers. Click here to enter and win big!

I'm off to go empty my wishlist! Happy shopping!

Christmas Rewind and New Year's SALE!

I have been MIA for awhile! The last two weeks of school were crazy between having benchmark testing, our cute little holiday show, and gingerbread house building party. The minute school got out, I dove right into all the Christmas festivities, so I haven't had much of a chance to sit and update my little blog until now! I've got pictures of activities to share, so hopefully they will be useful for you to log away some ideas for next year! We did the Elf on the Shelf again this year, and the kids absolutely loved it, but this year I had some skeptical friends that took some convincing on my part to believe in the "magic"! To introduce the fabulous candy cane graph activity from Deanna Jump's Christmas Math and Literacy Fun unit, I had our elf deliver candy canes to the students one morning:

Then we used our 5 senses to brainstorm as many words as we could to describe candy canes; then completed the cute Christmas tree graph to see how many of us liked candy canes or not. As you can see, "yes" won in a landslide!

                  
We participated in a ton of fun holiday themed centers during the month of December.

1. This one is called "String the Lights" and the kids LOVED it! I strung two huge pieces of yarn across our big carpet - one line was to build -at family words, and the other line was to build -an family words. Then they wrote their words on the recording sheet and drew the picture to match!

 

2. "Bakin' Up Sight Words" - the students chose a Christmas cookie card, read the sight word, and recorded it in the matching space on the response sheet.

 

 

3. "Elf Number Order" - I gave each student a number card out of order and they had to work together to put the cards in order from 1-20. Once they completed that part of the activity, they ordered the numbers themselves for independent practice.

 





All of these centers and much, much more can be found in my Deck the Halls {Christmas Math & Literacy Centers} unit on TPT! There are sight word games, labeling activities, counting on, more/less, and ordering numbers math activities, sentence building games, and MORE! And it's on sale for today only! So even though Christmas is over, you can get it now and be really prepared for next year. ;)

 There are so many great holiday books to read at this time of year, and one of our favorites is, of course, How the Grinch Stole Christmas. We used Deanna Jump's fantastic Grinch unit activity to brainstorm all the ways we would make the Grinch grin.. and let me tell you, my little kinder babies melted my heart with some of their responses. My favorite? "Give him a mom." Love. Here is a web we made of some of our ideas (and can I just say how proud I was of my Grinch drawing? Yeah, it turned out kinda awesome).

 



 

We also made a list of adjectives to describe what the Grinch was like before his heart grew 3 sizes.

 

Here were a few of my favorite craftivities my kiddos came up with. And let me tell you, even though they are young, after reading the 1st ("give him a family") and 4th ("give him a mom") ways they would make him grin, it makes you realize that sometimes kids are pretty astute.

Another favorite story, among many, is Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett. After reading the story, I told the students I had made them gingerbread cookies, but when I got the container out to show them, they were GONE! Of course, they had run away just like the cookie had in the story. ;) To make the gingerbread baby come back, the boy built him a gingerbread house, so we did the same in hopes that our cookies would return to us! We made little houses like this, left them on our desks, and thankfully it made the cookies come running back while my littles were at P.E.! What impeccable timing!

 



There you have a little snapshot and rewind of some of the activities we participated in this holiday season! Now that the New Year is upon us, I have a gift for you! For today only I am throwing a sale in my TPT store - 20% everything until midnight tonight!

Deck the Halls {12 Math and Literacy Centers Unit} and a SALE!

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday. Did any of you venture out and go shopping on Black Friday? I did... found some great deals! The good news is, great shopping deals don't end today! TPT is throwing a HUGE sale where you can get discounts up to 28% off at all your favorite shops! I am going to be participating as well, and every product in my store will be 20% off - just use the code CMT12 to get the additional discount! I've got 4 units available for purchase: Shapes Galore for the Common Core (my best selling product!), Deck the Halls {12 Christmas Math and Literacy Centers} (my BRAND NEW product!), ABC Order Picture Sort Pack, and Plants and Living Things Observation Journal.

Click on the picture below to go straight to my TPT store!

Thanks to Ashley Hughes for the adorable banner!  

I have created a brand new unit just in time for the holidays: Deck the Halls {12 Math and Literacy Centers for Christmas}! It includes 12 fun, hands on centers with response sheets for every station! Some of the activities include -at/an family word building, sight word practice, dice games, 2 different Santa labeling activities, ordering numbers, more/less board games, rhyming words, counting on activities, and more! It is the perfect addition to your December activities! Click on the preview picture below to go directly to the unit in my shop to download the preview and check it out!

 

 

Happy shopping! I know I'm going to be filling up my cart in preparation for the big sale!

Happy New Year!

Oh, I've neglected my sad little blog for two months. But now I'm back, hoping to get ahead of myself to post on a more consistent basis. I start school again on Monday after a rather glorious break and I am hoping that my little kinders will come back, calmed down, and ready to be more independent workers! It has happened that way the past 2 years with my kiddos, so I am keeping my fingers crossed. It really is an amazing thing. All of a sudden I'll set the kids to a task, then look around and realize no one has come up to ask me a million questions, no one is out of their seats, and I am not having to whirl around the room 24/7 helping every student with something different. It's a wonderful thing, I tell you. They grow up over Christmas!

Here's an overview of what I did with my kinder kids during the month of December:

Our entire Kinder team decided the do the Elf on the Shelf with our classes, and it was such a blast. The kids LOVED it... and "Jordan" (as my kids voted on for his name) was a good motivator for good behavior! Every day the elf moves to a different location (after he returns from the North Pole to tell Santa who was naughty and nice, of course) so the kids would pile into the room in the morning on a desperate search for Jordan. And it didn't matter where he was, they laughed hysterically about it. You can register your elf's information online, so we thought up facts and descriptions to say about our elf and watched a video from Santa about what his job was. Every so often, I'd have "Jordan" bring a special surprise or treat from the North Pole. We made peppermint floats one Friday afternoon - combine ginger ale and vanilla ice cream, shake green or red sugar crystals on top and then stick a small candy cane on the side of the cup. So fun! Another day he brought a box of candy canes, and on the last day before break, he brought a huge present - a package of play food for our kitchen/home living center, since it had literally nothing but the scraggly toys that came with whoever the previous owner was. Haha. We also kept a journal to write about where our elf was each day. There are so many fun things you can do with it! I highly recommend it to any moms or teachers out there.

                                       

The day Jordan the Elf dropped off some candy canes, I decided to do a little candy cane activity that can be found in Deanna Jump's Christmas unit on TPT (which is fantastic, by the way). We taste-tested our candy canes and then made a web of all the different words we could use to describe our candy canes - I was so impressed at the words they came up with! We then completed the candy cane graph/poem from Deanna's packet - I love how it turned out! Only one student didn't like how they tasted! We analyzed our data (sorry, didn't get a pic of that) and made our own graphs to go along with the big one.

Since we were in school an extra week longer than usual, it gave me tons more time to plan holiday-themed centers. I used a couple of activities that I got last year from Cara Carroll - Santa number word match and gingerbread word family game. The kids loved them, Cara, so thank you for sharing! They also created candy cane patterns using paper squares.

Near the end of our holiday unit, I came up with an Elf on the Shelf writing craftivity. The kids had to write a letter to our Elf to tell him why he should tell Santa that they should be on the "good list". Some of their responses were hilarious! One kid said, "Because I never get spankin's at home!" and others included "I get a green light every day!" and "I won't hit my sister anymore." HA! Very persuasive. ;)

 Here is an "in-progress" elf. They turned out SO cute. When I get a chance, I'll post the tracers for you guys.

I'm putting together a weather unit that I'm hoping to get posted for my first product to sell. You can do so many fun things with weather; I love it every year!

I am going to enjoy my last day off tomorrow with some church, football, and friends. Oh and as an aside, I am still relishing my amazing night at the Phoenix Coyotes game tonight - I got to witness our captain, Shane Doan, score his first ever hat trick. It was an epic night! Go Yotes!