The "12 Days of Christmas"

First off, I'm super excited about joining up with my first linky!!  I feel so privileged to be collaborating with such a talented group of people! I hope you will get lots of great ideas from my blog and others joining the linky! 
 

I don’t know about you, but I LOVE this time of year!!  I love all of the time that I get to spend with my family and friends, and I love all of the activities that we get to do and make memories from.  My family and I have a “12 days of Christmas” tradition!  We do various things such as go see a Christmas puppet show, paint a Christmas picture, make homemade ice cream, have a cookie decorating party with friends, and go see Christmas lights, to name a few!  It is so fun and really gets us in the Christmas spirit!  Below are some of the things that we did last year!

I encourage you this Christmas season to plan some fun activities with your spouse, children, family, friends, and coworkers!  We all live super busy lives that can consume us at times, but we are not promised tomorrow.  I have to remind myself of that daily!  Take some time to plan some fun things.  It might seem a little daunting, but it does not have to be!  Just pull out your calendar, see what is going on around your town, and jot down some fun stuff to do!  We do the 12 days leading up to Christmas.  Here is our tentative schedule for this year:

December 13^th: Melt crayons (that I give as gifts to my students and my kids give to their friends as gifts)

-Here are the molds that I purchased, and I looked up a few videos on You Tube to make sure that I do it correctly!

December 14^th: Go visit Santa at Bass Pro Shop at 5:00 (this is FREE and is the best time to go...right after school gets out for the day but before the holiday break) and go shopping for last minute Christmas presents while we are at the mall

December 15^th: Paint a Christmas shirt (you can purchase these on sale at a local craft store...use those coupons!)

December 16^th: Make chocolate dipped pretzels for teachers and friends and top them with Christmas colored sprinkles

December 17^th: Go see our annual Christmas puppet show (Be sure to check it out if you are in the Houston area!)

December 18^th: Go see “Zoo Lights” at our local zoo

December 19^th: Have a cookie decorating party with friends and let them decorate a coloring sheet (and a coffee bar for the adults)

December 20^th: (Try to) construct a successful gingerbread house

December 21^st: Make homemade ice cream (I love to add fresh strawberries and sprinkles)

December 22^nd: Make our “reindeer food” and decorate Christmas cards for family and friends

December 23^rd: Go to our “Christmas Eve Eve” service at church and then go out for a family meal

December 24^th: Drive through Starbucks to get a warm drink and drive around looking at Christmas lights; open up our Christmas PJ's, feed the reindeer and the kids get to open up one gift from their sibling

I hope this list might give you a few ideas of ways that you can celebrate the “12 days of Christmas” with your family and friends!  It will be something that you will want to do every year!  

I hope you have a joyous Christmas season!

 

An InLinkz Link-up

An InLinkz Link-up

Getting in the Spirit!

Well, I have not had much time to blog lately!  I have been working hard on getting some new Thanksgiving and Christmas products out and a couple of other things.  I wanted to share a few of them with you!  

      

At our school, we did a fall party the Friday before Halloween.  I wanted to incorporate some fun activities, and one of them was bingo!  It was Thanksgiving Bingo, but they didn’t care! The kids LOVED this.  They kept asking me the next week if we could play again.  I plan to make a Halloween one for next year!

      

While I was on a roll of making bingo, I make a Thanksgiving DIY Bingo, a Christmas Bingo, and a Christmas DIY Bingo.  I have already had a few people tell me that their kiddos really enjoyed it! 

I also have some cute Thanksgiving and fall cards.  I usually get some baked goods or something small from my kiddos for Thanksgiving.  During this time of year, my kids love to bake cookies and they know how much I love yummy treats!  I like to thank them by sending home a small thank you note! 

Click to get your FREE Pumpkin Investigation Sheet!

We also did a cute pumpkin measuring lab in the classroom.  Each student brought in a small pumpkin.  They got to measure it, see if it floated or sunk, and more!  They were really hyped up about this day!  I made a page to go along with it!

I also like to plan something fun for the students to do around Christmas.  I do a traveling snowman since many of my students don't celebrate Christmas.  Many teachers though like to use an Elf on the Shelf or another fun stuffed animal.  I created this to go along with this activity.  You just need a stuffed animal, a reusable grocery bag (I got a snowflake one), and copies of the activity page and color sheets.  I make this into a book and a different student gets to take the bag home nightly.  They love it!

I hope you find some of these products usefully as we zoom into the holidays!  I will be giving away a FREE holiday set of your choosing to one of my lucky followers.  So, be sure to follow by blog AND comment below with your favorite holiday activity to be included in the drawing!   

Big Sale over at TPT for World Teacher Day!

Hey there!  Wow, I don’t know about you, but I can’t believe it is already October!!  That is just crazy!  It seemed like school just started!

Today is World Teacher Day!  To celebrate all of the wonderful teachers out there, most of the I Teach Bloggers are having a TPT sale today only!  Head on over to my Busy Me PlusThree store to check it out!  Also, head on over to our I Teach Second Blog to see what other teachers are having a sale.

Thank you teachers for all that you do!  I know our job is not always easy, but it is always worth it!  We are making a lasting impact on the lives of kiddos, and that is what counts!

Happy Shopping!

Healthy Habits Stations

Wow…it has already been an amazing school year! I hope your year is going well too!  We are off to a running start and the kids are loving it! 

One of our first things to teach in science is healthy habits.  My planning partner and I decided to do something fun with this since we don’t have a lot of resources on hand.  We decided to make this a rotation for the students.  Well…they LOVED it!  It was so engaging and fun.  I thought that maybe my second graders would find “flossing” the “teeth” a little boring, but NO!  They had a blast. 

First, we gathered up all of the materials. We asked parents to send in empty egg cartons.  We cut yarn and has some new toothbrushes laying around our houses.  We also collected some cooking magazines and grocery ads. 

Next, we set up 5 stations around the room.  We had a doctor station, dentist station, healthy plate station, healthy and unhealthy sorting station, and an exercise station! 

At the doctor station, the kids has a stethoscope.  We had this at school, but you could also purchase a pretend one!  The kids pretended they were a doctor or a patient.  It was so cute!  They were really getting into it!  They also watched a video!

At the dentist station, the kids used a toothbrush to brush really well.  Then, they used yarn as floss and flossed their “teeth” (egg cartons)!  They watched a video at this station too!

The healthy plate station had food magazines and grocery ads.  The kids has to cut out healthy food and paste on a paper plate.  There was lots of conversations going on at this table!  Kids were questioning if some items were healthy or not.  It was great because we discussed that just because something had strawberries on top, for instance, didn’t mean the whole thing was healthy! 

There was also an exercise station.  The kids had a lot of fun with this one!  They danced to three different videos by scanning their QR codes.  They used the iPad and just put it up on the board so that all the other team members could see!  I didn’t want it up on the board (as others might get every distracted), and that worked out perfectly!  There were only about 2 kids that didn’t want to dance, so they just did some sit ups, jumping jacks, and push-ups!  They thought that was really fun too!

Our last station was the healthy and un-healthy sort.  The kids colored their sheet and then cut out the little icons at the bottom of their sheet.  They pasted them into the correct column.  This was a good grade in my class.  

We wrapped up the unit by discussing what they learned and doing our Healthy Habits Review. 

The kids has tons of fun and I can’t wait to do this again next year!

Back to School Giveaway!

I’m excited to announce a big back to school giveaway for all primary teachers out there!

All of us over at the iTeach Second Blog are giving away an iPad Air, a cute owl case, Stylus Pen, and an iTunes gift card!  Wow…what a way to start the year!

 

 

You can use this iPad as a personal device to help you get organized and lead whole-group activities, as a small group learning station, or as an individual choice time or enrichment activity. With so many free educational apps to choose from these days, the possibilities are endless. No matter how you chose to use it, I know that it will become a favorite resource in your classroom this school year.

To enter, just head on over to the iTeach Second Blog!

Looking for more K-2 resources for the new school year, check out our freebies & resources.