An Oriental Trading Holiday {with a Thanksgiving FREEBIE!}

Can I just shout from the mountain top that I LOVE ORIENTAL TRADING?????

They sent me this...

... full of these Christmas goodies...

Be sure to check out their HOLIDAY stuff.  It's pretty rad!

I will have each class down to the library in December and I will read my favorite Christmas books to them.  Then I will give each kiddo a candy cane and a holiday sticker.  I did this for Halloween and the kids LOVED it!  And my teachers loved getting a little breather too!

...I got these winter items for my school prize box!

...and these for my teachers!  Every holiday I have the staff do a little activity and the prize is a box full of goodies!  I can't wait to fill these cuties for them!

...I also got these stockings and fabric markers.  Shhhh... it's for a Christmas surprise for my staff!

I am so thankful for Oriental Trading sending me these goodies.  Head over to their site to get some great goodies at some amazing prices!

And now... for the Thanksgiving FREEBIE!

I said above that I do a little goodie box for my staff.  This month, I used the "pie favor boxes" that Oriental Trading sent me in October.  I put one card from the pack below in each staff member's mailbox.  They had to find a complete meal and then come show me to get their "dessert"... a cute pie shaped box full of goodies!

Click the link below to download the freebie and spread some Thanksgiving love around your school!

Odds and Ends {file update, don't forget to enter, and this week in 3rd grade with something for you!...}

This is a random blog post.  The Lions lost a game they TOTALLY should have won today... in fact, they didn't just lose... at times it seems like they had gift wrapped a victory and handed it to the Buccaneers!  So I'm feeling a little jilted and sad!

So... just a bunch of randomness is about to ensue...

1.)  File update:
My "Christmas Around the World Flippy Books" have gotten a major update.  New fonts, new graphics... I'm really excited about the new look!  If you have them, please re-download.  I hope you'll like the update!

2.)  Don't forget to enter:
You can win a free year's subscription to Flocabulary!  Click the picture below to head over to find out what you have to do to enter.  It's an AMAZING website... I hope you'll check it out!

3.)  This week in 3rd grade:
We're departmentalized (which I love) but I also love random days around the holidays when I keep my own kids and we can do fun classroom things together.  On Monday, we're switching like usual.  Tuesday is fun stuff... throwing water balloons at the principal as an AR incentive, making pumpkin pie in a bag, watching the animated "Charlotte's Web" since we finished the book a few weeks ago... then no school till next week!

My ELA plans for Monday include taking a unit spelling test, adding spelling words to our dictionaries, talking about our upcoming Christmas Around the World research project (click to go to freebie!!!), and re-teaching how to identify verbs in sentences.  We assessed on this on Friday and my kids TOTALLY got the "identify whether a sentence is past, present, or future"... but the part where they had to find the verb in the sentence... not so much.  We'll be doing this verb tense game for extra practice.  I am so thankful for YOU all so it's free on TpT!

I'd love to hear what you think!

Happy TG week... I'll be back on Wednesday to announce the Flocabulary winner!!!

Twas' the Week Before a Week Off...

...and all through the classroom, the teacher was freaking out about doing crafty projects that have some meat to them, wrapping up studies, and then... getting a whole week off! :)

So, it doesn't rhyme, but that's how I'm feeling right now in a nutshell!

This week we've done two little projects... one was inspired by Mrs. Carroll over at The First Grade Parade. When I saw her little scarecrows, I knew I had to do something similar. Since we studied possessive nouns this week, we read lots of scarecrow books and my kids created scarecrows and then wrote sentences containing possessives in them to display with their scarecrows. Take a peek!


Today, we watercolor painted a turkey because I realized I had done very little "fun" stuff for Thanksgiving this year... it just sort of snuck up on me! So, we did this quick activity. As my students were watercolor painting, I called each one up to my computer, typed their quote about what they were thankful for, and compiled everyone's quotes into one document. Then I added a text box and pasted in what each individual student said and they attached that to their painting. I love it! :)


And this last one just made my heart happy! :)


Happy week... tomorrow's our last day for a week!