A FREEBIE Christmas Gift

For many years we gave our students pencils and erasers for Christmas, just to find them lying on the floor after they left.  A few years ago we decided to make a new tradition that focused more on spending time with our students.  We came up with “A Day Off of School...At School!”  Students come in their jammies, we enjoy morning cartoons together, eat donuts, play games, and over all spend a memorable day together.  The day before we give our students the special postcards that tell them about our exciting day and send a quick email to the parents (in case the postcards don’t make it home). It is a simple, fun, free way to create some Christmas spirit in your classroom.  Enjoy! BUT the BEST part is....we get to wear our matching jammies too!!!!

If you would like to grab this freebie just click here.

Keep On Dancing In Your Teacher Shoes!

Deanna and Jenelle

It is Better to Give, but Fun to Recieve

It is the "gimme" time of the year.  The commercials are telling our kiddos that they need everything.  The stores are stocked and overflowing with stuff that we start to think that we may need someday...or now. First and second graders are busy writing novels to Santa reminding him of ALL of the things that they WANT...or in their words, need.

It is the perfect time to step back and help them realize the true meaning of Christmas.  Using our favorite buddy, the elf we send Santa Christmas letters for someone else.  We ask our students to think about someone in their lives who really deserves something special from Santa.  They then write a letter to Santa telling Santa why this person deserves extra special attention..

They usually write about their parents or their siblings (especially since we share ours about our parents).  It is so sweet to read what they think Santa should bring them and why.  The day after they write them we sneak their letters into a sealed envelope "from the principal to their parents" and put them in their mailbox.
If you would like to download the paper click here.

Merry Christmas!

Keep On Dancing In Your Teacher Shoes!
Deanna and Jenelle

The Elf is Missing....

So Elfie forgot to come back to first grade today....busy elf?  Maybe.  Busy morning is more like it.  The second grade elf must have forgotten to bring him back with him. ;-) 

The best part about all of this is my kiddos are convinced that he is here....somewhere....just in a REALLY good hiding spot.  They have been searching nonstop since they arrived.  Hmmmm....how long shall I let this go on?  They are happy, and working together, and QUIET - incase he makes a noise :-)  Maybe he should "hide" more often.  

I should turn this into a writing project.....Or should I just kick back and watch them carry on while I sip my coffee and enjoy their cooperative spirits!?!?!?

Isn't teaching fun.  I love my job!

Keep On Dancing In Your Teacher Shoes!

Deanna and Jenelle

Game Day Freebie!

Our kiddos are getting STIR CRAZY!  Bring on Christmas break!!!!  Wishful thinking I guess since it is only Tuesday and it feels like next Friday will never come.

Here is a little Freebie to lure them in and practice some much needed listening skills.

Enjoy!

Click here to grab it from our store!

 

Keep on dancing in your teacher shoes!

Deanna and Jenelle

A Techie Tree

We are beginning our "BIG" word processing unit in the computer lab.  Wahoo....watch out computers...here we come!  We are working on shift key capitalization, beginning keyboarding skills, and highlighting and changing text.  Needless to say...it takes all three of our computer lab visits to finish, but at the end they think that they are typing wizards!!!

The end result is a Christmas tree that they print and take home...in COLOR...I know, how exciting!  They love it though.  

The directions are simple.

1.  We brainstorm Christmas words and put them on chart paper.

2. We type using an * as a space instead of a space bar.

3. Everytime our line gets a little bigger than the one before we push RETURN and move on to the next line.

4. When it looks like a tree, we learn how to highlight and change the test to green and the * to any colors we like.

5. PRINT and send home an e-mail reminding our parents how much work this project is for a 6 year old.

And it looks like....

We do a tree, but you could get creative. A snowman....a mug...the possibilities are endless!

Keep on Dancing in your teacher shoes!

Deanna and Jenelle

Catching Up and a Freebie!

Conferences....Check.  Thanksgiving...Check.  Flu shots for the kiddos...Check.  Get our act together on blogging...check.  Get a few of our new TPT projects finished and uploaded...check!  Seems like lately the more we check off of our to do lists the more we add to it. I'm sure many of you can relate! We have been busy playing catch up this week after some well deserved family time over Thanksgiving break.

Along with checking things off of our lists our very favorite Elves on the Shelves have come to visit our classrooms.  The students are enthralled with "Elfie" (creative name choice...we know!) and "Jasper".  Elfie is just visiting for the first time in first grade.  They have been practicing their good behavior so that Elfie can give a good report to Santa each night. Jasper on the other hand has returned to visit the second graders and has brought with him a top secret mission from Santa.  SHHHH!  Santa has spilled his hot cocoa on his laptop and lost all of his data on Christmas customs around the world!  He has asked the second graders, with the help of their elf Jasper, to collect data on Christmas customs so that he can be ready for Christmas (See our Christmas Around the World with Elf on the Shelf Unit on TPT for more details).  So far Jasper has visited Germany, Holland, and Mexico this week and has brought back information for the second graders to to take notes on for Santa as well as some very nifty art projects!  All in all they are having a blast while learning about Christmas around the world.

We have also begun playing winter morning meeting games from our brand new collection of Winter Themed Classroom Meeting Games on TPT.  Check it out!  They are so fun...who wouldn't want to throw "snowballs" at their teacher? or at their students? :)

We have also been working on a FREEBIE for all of you for a while and have finally found time to finish it and get it up on TPT.  Both of us utilize literacy centers and Daily 5 for our language block and are constantly looking for new word work activities for the kiddos to keep busy with while we meet with our guided reading groups.  Spell-O-Rama was born out of this need.  Please go to our TPT store to download it for FREE.  The students absolutely love it and it can be differentiated to meet many different phonics and reading levels with little prep for the teacher...which is always a plus in our book!  Oh, and the suoer cute font that we used in this game is called No Bullies Allowed by Alyssha Swanson over at Teaching and Tapas.  Best of all it is FREE too!

Keep on Dancing in Your Teacher Shoes


Deanna and Jenelle