Reindeer Games

For those of y’all that have 2 days left until Winter Break, can I get at “Woot! Woot!”?!?!? As my dear friend, Abby, would say, “PTL!!!!!!!” This week has been crazy insane…and the scary thing is that I know I’m not alone!!! Between gift making, gift wrapping, station work, and catching up, my classroom looks like a scene straight out of The Wizard of Oz :)

Reindeer are one of my favorite things to learn about, so this week has been all about reindeer fun & games!!

We’ve started each morning with the AMAZING Word of the Day sheets from Made for 1st Grade.

source: Made For 1st Grade

I LOVE these!! And it’s SO fun to see my kids use these words…spelled CORRECTLY {halleluia!!!} in their writing!!!!

We’re also finishing up the last few activities from my Christmas units {Merry & Bright Math Tubs & Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree Literacy Centers} This season, my kids’ FAVORITE game has been the “Punctuation Present”!! I’m definitely NOT complaining because they’re *finally* starting to understand the difference among these types of sentences! Woo hoo!! Because they’ve played it so much, I’ve had to come up with a few extension activities for it. We made little “punctuation presents” today {I forgot my camera!!!} and the kids loved it! Basically, I cut out a gift template for each of the kids and that was the cover of their book. When you open up the book, there’s a ‘telling’ page, a ‘question’ page, and an ‘excited’ page. The kids had to write & illustrated holiday sentences for each type of sentence. They LOVED it! ANDDDDDDD…they’ve requested another round tomorrow :) You can download a copy for your classroom, too! Just click on the pic below….

I’ve been using Sarah Cooley’s Reindeer Games unit and I’M.IN.LOVE. Her illustrations are DARLING and they straight up make me smile. The kids have loved them, too!!! She always has such original ideas and the kids love her activities! If you’ve still got time left and need more ideas, you need to check it out!!

We made these cute little reindeer to practice reindeer name ABC order. I haven’t scanned the tracers because I’ve been all kinds of busy, so I’m sorry I don’t have that to share!!! I accidentally missed a reindeer, but my kids were quick to solve the problem and make their own corrections.

We read a few fiction stories about reindeer and then the kids wrote letters to Santa telling him why they’d make good reindeer. Their writing has improved SO much this year…especially their handwriting!!! We’ve still got lots to work on, but I’m SO proud of how far they’ve come!

Speaking of reindeer, I made these little “Reindeer Noses” packets for the boys in my oldest son’s playgroup. Of course, I found this idea on Pinterest. Love. I also found the cute little label online. The little brown bags are from the craft section at Hobby Lobby {12 for $1.99} and the bag is filled with little red & green M&M’s. If you’re still looking for a little class gift….and don’t have any allergies in your class…this is the perfect little something to give! Inexpensive and absolutely PRECIOUS!!! They’d also be perfect to give after learning about reindeer, too!!

Now it’s time to get back to baking!!! I’ll be up to my ears in sugar & flour for the next few days!! LOVE IT!!!!!

And everything in my little TpT shop is 20% off through Friday!

HAPPY WEDNESDAY, PEOPLE!!!!!

Reindeer Games

I feel like the 3 weeks in between Thanksgiving and Christmas break are so RUSHED! Not that I’m complaining…I LOVE breaks :)…but there’s always so much I want to fit in in such a short amount of time! Last week we started learning about reindeer. Before we continue on with more reindeer fun this week, I wanted to start with some non-fiction reading and fact gathering, so that’s just what we did!

We started out by reading this non-fiction book about reindeer…

I love reading non-fiction books because my kids just eat it up! They’re SO engaged when it comes to learning new facts. Plus, it gives me a chance to teach them about the table of contents, index, vocabulary, etc. At the end of each chapter, we stop to jot facts. We started with a KWL, and it was so fun to see what they thought they knew about reindeer {they live in the North Pole, they fly, they only eat carrots :)} After we gathered all of our “What I Learned” facts, we organized them onto our Reindeer fact chart.

The kids used the fact chart for some independent writing. They had to choose three facts to write about and then make their own reindeer.

We also organized our thoughts onto a tree map and used it to sort nouns/verbs/adjectives. I used a great little printable from Deanna Jump’s Reindeer Unit for the kids to create their own tree map. There are LOTS of great ideas in that unit!!!!

We’ll do a few more little reindeer activities this week and then get ourselves ready for a BREAK!!! Can’t wait!!!