Gingerbread Math Freebie!

Gingerbread Math day is on Friday (which is also a half day of school... WOOHOO!) We have already received quite a few donations and plan to pick up a few last minute things tomorrow afternoon. Please feel free to grab our freebie pack for Gingerbread Math! Hope your class has a great time participating!

Gingerbread Math Pack

Who knew math could be so much fun?!?! Not to mention, DELICIOUS!

Ugly Sweater Staff Party

Being two of the four "Cheer Committee" members at our school means we have to put on most of the events. Each year our school usually puts together a potluck to celebrate the holidays, but we decided to spice things up a bit and add a few twists! We are doing an UGLY sweater party with a white elephant gift exchange. This should make for some great pics for the end of year video and some big laughs!

What does your school do to celebrate the holidays??? 

Stocking Day

Stocking day was OH-SO-MUCH-FUN!!

We spent our morning talking about the traditions of stockings. (Sidenote: be prepared for MANY different stories) We enjoyed learning the different "stories" about how the stocking tradition came to be. We also read some wonderful Christmas books today and did a lot of think-pair-share (LOVE ME SOME KAGAN) to discuss different Christmas traditions around the world and within our classroom. 

In the early afternoon we discussed LIST WRITING. We haven't really touched on this type of writing yet this year, so we had fun developing lists of "what we hope to find in our stocking on Christmas Day." We added popsicle sticks to the top and bottom of our list to make it look more like a scroll. So many of our little artists added "art supplies" to their lists *adorable* and way better than a play station, which doesn't fit in a stocking ANYWAY! Still, many of them managed to squeeze it onto their list... sigh. 

We finished off our fun-filled day with some stocking decorating. The only table clothes available were from the luau we had last year so they were very "florida festive." Everyone had a blast decorating their stocking. We hung them all up next to their lists and they now serve as a fabulous little decoration in our classrooms. 

Check it out: 

Tomorrow is Snowman day and we have lots of great writing activities and crafts to go along with this chill theme! Brittany is going to a CCSS meeting all day so Melissa is taking on snowman day alone... no fun! Hope the sub is ready for a warm Florida day filled with snow!

Christmas Theme Schedule

This is our schedule for the last two weeks before winter break:

Each day we will do a read aloud or five and some sort of learning activity to go with our holiday-theme-of-the-day. Tomorrow is STOCKING DAY! We will be decorating stockings to hang in our classroom. We will be reading, "Merry Christmas Stinky Face" for no particular reason other than THEY LOVE THAT BOOK! Also, we will be learning how to create a list. Student's will make a list of what they hope to find in their stocking on Christmas morning. We also hope to incorporate patterns in our stocking craft to tie in a little bit of math.  Our first "themed" day of December is filled with lots of other learning activities that we borrowed stole from other AMAZING bloggers! 

We have so many festive things going on in our rooms this week! Can't wait to share the fun with all of you! 

Gingerbread Math

Even though Gingerbread Math Day is a few weeks away we thought it may be helpful to post our parent letter. We've been doing Gingerbread math day for a few years now. Our first year doing it together we made three big mistakes.
1. We didn't ask for volunteers. Bad move.
2. We bought everything ourselves. Holy expensive!
3. We thought peanut butter would hold the houses better than icing. WRONG on so many levels!!!

Even with all of the errors on our part, we still had a blast making houses and making this fun activity all about math. The last two years we've had opened our doors to volunteers (at least 3). We assign each student something to buy for the houses. Most importantly, we use ICING!!! It has gone much more smoothly. We will be posting our math recording sheets as soon as they are completed. In the past we have used other fabulous blogger ideas but this year we want to try and create our own. Please feel free to download the parent letter. We are doing our gingerbread houses the last day before winter break (December 14th)!
                                          Gingerbread Math Parent Letter

Festival of Trees

Every year for Thanksgiving Break homework we give a fun little activity for our first graders to do at home with their family. We send home a large piece of green construction paper with a Christmas Tree stenciled on in pencil. The assignment is to decorate the tree at home with your family over the Thanksgiving holiday. We ask them to send back their finished product. We hang all the trees in our classroom windows for everyone to enjoy. We call this the festival of trees.

Feel free to download the parent letter by clicking the link below:

Festival of Trees Parent Letter

A few of our trees!