Happy New Year + Another Freebie!

Happy New Year everyone!  Here's to a safe and happy one!  Let's kick it off with 2 winter freebies! :)

Jan Brett Unit with Freebie!!

While relaxing and enjoying the first days of break, I've been working on a little Jan Brett literacy unit! Head over to my TPT store to check it out, and download the preview for a

write-the-room freebie! :)

Also, I saw a cute linky party over at Live, Laugh, I Love Kindergarten!

 

The perfect gift from . . .

1. My students - Gift cards to my favorite place!!


2. Kiddies - Don't have any yet!

3. Hubby - My husband and I have a tradition of opening our presents a week before Christmas because of all the traveling/family visits we do.  This year he bought me a new MacBook Air since I'm starting grad school in a month!! Best. Husband. Ever. :)



4. Parents/family - Quality time with them!  We live pretty far apart, so I'm just looking forward to spending time with my family.

5. BFF's - Maybe a girl's night out? ;)



6. Santa - A down payment for a house!  I'm tired of renting!

Gingerbread Part 2!

We finished our gingerbread traps this week and loaded them up with bait!  Imagine the surprise when the kids came in this morning and saw that they had caught not one, but 6 gingerbread men!

Before building the traps, we drew blueprints on big paper.

Then we got to building!

And finally, we caught our gingerbread men!

It's Gingerbread Time!!

It's Gingerbread Time!!  Each year we send home a paper cut out of the gingerbread man, and ask families to decorate it at home and then send it back.  I like to make a big display on one of my bulletin boards, complete with a construction paper gingerbread house.  Some of the students get really creative with this!

We've been reading several different versions of the gingerbread story, and comparing and contrasting.  In "The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School" by Laura Murray, students create a gingerbread man in their classroom, but then leave to go to recess.  The gingerbread man runs through the school trying to find his class.  While looking for them, he sees "missing" posters hanging on the walls.  He realizes his class his been looking for him as well.  We paused at this point in the story to make our own "missing" posters!

While reading another version, we decided that maybe we should help the gingerbread man hide from the old man and the old woman!

Our classes have also been working on a STEM challenge this week, designing and building a trap to catch the gingerbread man.  We brainstormed ideas, drew our designs, and then voted to pick the top four class designs.  Next week we will be working in teams to draw blueprints and then build our traps!  I wonder what we will catch...?  Stay tuned for pictures!

Spilt Milk

This week marks the start of our holiday and gingerbread units!  But before I got started this year, I wanted to have some fun with "It Looked Like Spilt Milk" by Charles G. Shaw.  If you aren't familiar with this story, each page shows a different white shape (bird, cake, squirrel, tree, etc.)  There is a repeating phrase on each page, "Sometimes it looked like a bird, but it wasn't a bird!"  At the story's end, you find out each of the shapes was a cloud in the sky.  After reading this with my students, we decided to make some of our own cloud shapes.

 

I gave each child a piece of white paper to draw and cut out their cloud design.  We then wrote our own story pages, modeled after the pages in "Spilt Milk".  The kids had a lot of fun with this one!

^ This one might be my favorite!  I love the clown drawing!! ^

Such creativity! =)