Gingerbread!!!!

  I do realize that it is after the holidays, but, we will be doing a Gingerbread unit when we return to school.  We have our adorable Gingerbread House outside of our classroom and we are planning on adding some more Gingerbread decor to the hallway!  I have plans of having the Kinders decorate a foam Gingerbread Boy/Girl and putting them all on a huge hallway-sized baking sheet!  I also am planning on making real Gingerbread cookies with the Kinders as a culmination of the unit.

  I have been very inspired by so many great bloggers out there over this break that I decided to create an activity of my own.  I started out pretty simple with some free clip art that I found on TpT and here is an adorable Gingerbread sight word Bingo:

 

It's not much. but, it's cute!  What are theme(s) you working on in January?

Resolution time!

I was over at Teaching Madness and Amanda is hosting a resolution linky party!
Click the button to join the fun!

I'm not a fan of resolutions because it seems that they always fall to the wayside come January 30th.  So, I guess what I am going to do for myself is to try to set myself monthly goals as well as "rest of the school year goals".  Each month I will try to post what I will be working on and if I've attained the other goals I had set for the previous month. The best part about it being on my blog is that I can come back and tweak goals as needed!  Here goes:

Personal Goals for January:

• Complete surgery on January3rd and rest for 2 days.
• Try my hardest to move on with a happier, less stressful life despite the results of said surgery.

Classroom Goals for January:

• Push for what is best for one of my students during their IEP meeting.
• Do more crafts!

I think that's all for now.  I am going to start small!  Happy New Year, to you all!

Gift Card Giveaway!

Mrs. S over at The Peanut Gallery is giving away some gift cards as well as some things from her TPT store!  Click on the button below to enter to win some great gift cards and some great items from her TPT store!

 

Good luck!

Merry Christmas!

  I hope everyone's holiday was fantastic!  We had a lot of fun with our families and enjoyed spending time together.  I wish everyone a very happy, healthy and prosperous new year!  Here's to making it through the Christmas Season!

 

Good-Bye, Rosabelle!

Yesterday we bid farewell to Rosabelle.  I forgot to take a picture of her; oooooops!  She came with a note from Santa Claus.  It said that he received the letters they had written him and hoped that they would continue to be on their best behavior.  Here is what Rosabelle had been up to this past week.  She decided to join us on Rudolph Day by dressing the part:

Here she is on pajama day.  She wore her nightgown, brought her teddy bear and snuggled up with our resident reindeer:

Hope you all have a wonderful holiday and a restful, relaxing vacation!

 

All I Want for Christmas Linky!

I was just over on Learning with Mrs. Leeby and saw she was doing an "All I Want for Christmas" link up.  I just had to join in!  If you want to join in, grab this button:

 

What would be the perfect gift from. . . 

1. Students

2. Kiddies

3. Husband/boyfriend

4. Parents/Family

5. BFF

6. Santa

 

  Students-  Dunkin Donuts gift cards!  I loooooooooooooooooooooove DD!  I'm happy with a $5 giftcard.  It beats getting mugs and other trinkets that I just don't have the room for.

 

 Kiddies:  My kiddo brought home a wrapped present for my husband and I from school today.  I cannot wait to open it on Christmas Day.  I, of course, love everything that she makes.  Having her in preschool this year has been wonderful as she is creating all sorts of adorable things!

  Husband:  I would love for my husband to get me the Georgetown Cupcake cookbooks.  I loooooove baking and decorating and I'd really like to try my hand at their recipes!  I also wouldn't mind an Alex and Ani bracelet or two!

  Parents/Family:  I'd be happy with anything really.  There isn't much I want for Christmas.  I'd be happy with clothes and gift cards!

  BFF:  Bath bombs!  My BFF and I both love them and I am almost out of the ones I bought!

  Santa:  I'd love for Santa to give me some materials for my classroom.  :)

 

Oh, Rosabelle!

Rosabelle decided to get in on the Grinch Day action yesterday:

 

The students really loved it!

Sentence or Not?

The students have been working hard in their journals as well as their elf journals lately.  They have become really good about capitalizing the first letter of the first word of a sentence; as well as putting ending punctuation marks on their sentences.  So, I threw together a little sorting game and a worksheet to finish up the activity.  Here is how it looked:

The Kinders really seemed to enjoy this lesson.  Can't wait to use it again in the future!

12 in 12 Linky Party!

I saw this linky party on Miss Kindergarten's blog and I just have to participate! 

Without further ado, here is my 12 favorite things in '12!

12. Favorite movie you watched:  Unfortunately, I don't watch many movies.  I'm going to have to go with Disney's Brave.  It is my favorite because it told a great story, it was my daughter's first movie in a theater and we watched it in the theater when we were on Disney Cruises Line's ship Disney Magic.

11. Favorite TV series:  Without a doubt my favorite series is Big Bang Theory.  My husband and I just love this show!

10. Favorite restaurant:  My husband and I have really taken a liking to Antonio's this year.  I am Portuguese and really love their food!

9. Favorite new thing you tried:  Meditation.  I only recently began meditating and it really works for me.  I try to follow a guided meditation each morning when I wake up.  Here is my favorite collection of meditations.

 

8. Favorite gift you got:  

7. Favorite thing you pinned:

 

 

6. Favorite blog post:

 http://wwtyik.blogspot.com/2012/12/welcome-to-our-gingerbread-house.html

5. Best accomplishment:  Finishing the 2011-2012 school year feeling accomplished.  Last year was my first year teaching students on the Autism Spectrum and it was an amazing learning experience!

4. Favorite picture:

My baby meeting her favorite character of all time this past Summer.  She was over the moon!

3. Favorite memory:  Our Disney Cruise this Summer.  It was our first cruise as a little family and it was perfect!

2. Goal for 2013:  Stay healthy and RELAX!

1. One Little Word:

Hope

 

Saying a prayer for Sandy Hook Elementary

Rosabelle's Shenanigans!

Here is what Rosabelle has been up to the last two days:

 

Yes, Rosabelle decided to sleep on the job the other day.  The Kinders thought it was funny and it was a great way to practice using our exclamation points!

She also wanted a bird's eye view of the room the other day, so, she sat by the calendar:

 

Dear Santa,

Today we practiced our writing skills  by writing a short and sweet letter to Santa.  The students were given a template to write on and my volunteer created a larger version on the whiteboard.  She spearheaded this lesson and I got to walk around and help the Kinders who needed some extra support.

Their first instruction was to write their name on the bottom line and to color the edges green and red.

Once this was done, the writing process began.  This is how it unfolded:

And, here is a finished product:

The Kinders were pretty creative.  Their wishes varied greatly and there weren't any copycats!  Tomorrow we will work on addressing our envelopes to the North Pole.

Pirates and the Library!

At my school we are very lucky to be located so close to the main public library in the city.  Although we do travel by bus due to safety issues, it is wonderful to be able to go and get out of the classroom once a month.  In September there had been some issues with busing so, we weren't going to be able to go to the library.  Have no fear, because the two librarians who always host offered to come to us!  They are simply amazing!  They brought their books and their craft supplies and we met them in the cafeteria.  For the month of September they had chosen the them of pirates!  Who doesn't love pirates?!  The kiddos were very excited as this was their first time meeting with the librarians.  They had so many questions to ask and were so eager to listen to the stories.

Unfortunately, my memory has failed me.  I cannot remember what pirate tales they read to us!  After they read the stories and fielded questions, they started to work on the craft with the kiddos.  They made pirates out of paper plates.  They were ADORABLE!  They were so cute, we couldn't let them go home just yet!  So, my super awesome para made a pirate ship for our little land-lubbers to hang out on.  How cute is this:

 Do you visit the library with your kiddos?  If so, how often?

Welcome to our gingerbread house!

So, I found this on Pinterest about a week ago:

Source: bulletinboardideas.org via Laurie on Pinterest

And, I showed it to my para because she loves all things cute like me and she's super crafty!  She of course jumped at the chance to make this.  And, here is our adorable classroom door:

It is the talk of the school!  Unfortunately, we are down on the end of the hallway and not many people can see it, but, we've had a lot of visitors!  It definitely puts a smile on my face every time I walk in the door!

December Currently!

Time to link up again with Farley over at Oh' Boy Fourth Grade...

Elf Journals Cont.

Yesterday we found Rosabelle on our cabinet with a note from Santa.  Here are two writing examples from yesterday:

The students copied the sentence from the whiteboard and had to draw their own picture.  The first example is from one of my regular ed students.  She has super handwriting and she is very detail oriented!  The second example is from one of my ASD kiddos.  He is a repeater and has worked so very hard last year as well as this year and he is doing so well!

The day before yesterday, Rosabelle was on the shelf.  How appropriate!  She was sitting beneath the palm tree and next to the luau pig!  The examples here are from the same students shown above:

Again, the students had to copy the sentence from the whiteboard and draw their own picture.  The students are doing really well creating these sentences together as well as copying them from the board.  They are putting their sight word knowledge to good use!

Here is what Rosabelle was up to today:

She made a mess of our name card on the chart and she added her own name!  I'll post some student writing examples tomorrow!  Rosabelle might be staying in the North Pole tonight as the kiddos were a little out of hand today.