It's been a week since I've posted.  We ended school last Friday and with the tragedy, I've spent the week lovin on my daughter.

That being said, Casey from Second Grade Math Maniac is hosting a blog hop for her Welcome Winter Sale!

 

Starting Friday through Sunday, everything in my TpT store is 20% off!

 

If you want to join in the fun, link up with this blog hop.  Have fun shopping around with some great sales on great products!

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Brandi

Just wanted to give a quick heads up that I'll be participating in the Welcome Winter Sale from December 21-December 23!

 

You can enjoy 20% off my entire store!  I'm hoping to have some new products for New Years and some language arts and math activities!

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Brandi

Casey from Second Grade Math Maniac is hosting a holiday freebies blog hop!

 

I've linked up my Missing Addends Snowmen.  

Happy hopping! 

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Brandi

Sorry for posting this so late!  We're in our last week at school and it's been CRAAAAAAZY!  The past week or so we've been working on our parent gifts.  Everything is inspired by Pinterest!

First, we made snowmen hot chocolate!  The kids brought in baby food jars and we filled them with marshmallows, chocolate mix, and peppermints.  Then the kids decorated them.  I think they turned out really cute!

I let the kids decorate a paper bag to put it in (hoping they make it home okay.....fingers crossed!)

Next, we made glitter ornaments.  I blogged about making them with my daughter for December Monday Made It and decided if my 4 year old can do it, my second graders can do it!  Here's how they turned out:

Then we put them in an ornament box that the kids decorated.

The final project was the snow-paint card.  This was so much fun and so easy!  I mixed shaving cream and glue with a little glitter.  The kids painted a snowman on the front and on the inside wrote "I love you SNOW much!"

sorry for the sideways pictures!

I hope they made it home in one piece and the parents enjoy them!

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Brandi

So I'm breaking bloggy rules and double posting, but it's monthly link up time and I love these link ups!  First, let's start with Farley's Currently:

As much as I love the Disney Princesses, my daughter is addicted to this CD and listens to it to fall asleep to so it's playing right now!

I love the holiday season, but in college we had a rule that we couldn't listen to Christmas music until after Thanksgiving.  I've been good with that rule, but now it's on!  Christmas music all the time (except for the Disney Princesses!)

In keeping with Disney, I want to take Lauryn to Disneyland during the holidays.  We went for the first time at Halloween and had a blast even though we were only there for a few hours.

Wanting and needing are pretty standard!  For RAK, I'm determined to do more small things for friends to really celebrate the season!

Now on to my December Monday Made Its!

First up are a couple of TpT products I've made to use in the next 2 weeks before vacation.

The first is my Dear Santa writing pack:



We started with the Elf application and here are the finished products:

 



 

 

We're moving on to the Santa letter next!

The second product is my Gingerbread Writing Directions and Flat Ginger Activity pack:

I plan to use this next week so I'll post pictures then.  For this activity students create a gingerbread man and write detailed directions for another student to use to recreate the original gingerbread man.  After that, kids will take their gingerbread kid home for a "Flat Ginger" activity where they write about their holiday adventures with "Flat Ginger" (just like Flat Stanley).

The last product I made is a freebie for kids to practice missing addends:

You can download this Missing Addends Snowman freebie by clicking here.

This past weekend, Lauryn and I spent a rainy California Saturday crafting.  Here's what we made:

I was inspired by this pin:

Now, I didn't read the post, we just tried to create these beautiful ornaments.  Instead of putting in single drops and shaking, we put in a lot of paint and swirled it around.  Still came out pretty nice!

My next Pinterest inspiration was this:

Mess free glitter ornaments!  I loved making these!  I put in the mop and shine (from the Dollar Tree) and Lauryn put in the glitter!  I love how these turned out and will probably be making a ton more of these!

Our next project was inspired by this pin:

During the summer we made a Bible verse canvas art, so when I saw this I knew we would do it.  Here's how Lauryn's turned out.  She didn't want to mix the colors, but wanted to have a pattern!

 

Here's my next Pinspiration:

While Lauryn was watching the newest Tinkerbell movie, she "helped" me make 5 of these.  It's not absolutely done-----I don't have the red ribbon or the flowers in them yet because we aren't giving them for another 1-2 weeks.)  I plan to give them to 4 teachers at her school and my room mom (along with gift cards).

 

Right after Thanksgiving, I ran across this pin:

I went to the Dollar Tree to pick up the supplies, but was pulled in a different direction.  So Lauryn and I ended up making this:

The Santa and the bow are from the Dollar Tree.  I hot glued them together.  I had extra clothespins from some summer projects, so we mod podged to create glitter ones, then attached them to the ribbon, along with the pictures of what she wants Santa to bring her.  The final project is hanging from her bedroom door.

Guess I've been busy the last few weeks!  I just love this time of year and I want to create memories and traditions that will last for me and Lauryn!

 

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Brandi

I feel so behind in the blogging world!  I can't believe it's December.  I need to link up with Tara for the December Monday Made It and with Farley for the December Currently.

 

As for this week's What's Working Wednesday, I'm going to share something super simple that's working in my room and cutting back on a pet peeve of mine.

Over the summer when I was doing weekly Monday Made It's, I made this bucket for highlighters:

This simple bucket has been a lifesaver.  My students go up and highlight their name before they turn anything in (I have these great baskets that I got from Big Lots that students put their papers in.  I'll talk about these soon....they've been an organizational lifesaver too!).

They are so excited to highlight that they never forget to write their name.  No name papers are one of my pet peeves and I no longer not as often have to deal with it!

So there's my super simple, yet wonderful resource.  What's working in your room?

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Brandi

Hey everyone! I hope you were able to pick up a bunch of great items at TpT's huge sale the last 2 days! I know I did!

Well, it's Wednesday so it's time to talk about what's working in my room. Now, this is the first one that Gina (Third Grade Tidbits) and I are hosting as a linky party so please link up and share what's working in your room!

This week I wanted to share a motivational bulletin board that I have in my room. I'm blessed at my school that my students use ST Math....affectionately referred to as Jiji in my room.

My students are able to play Jiji at home and they go to the computer lab once a week and spend a little bit of time working on it there.  If you've never seen it, it's amazing!  It's a visual way for kids to practice math.  At my school grades 2-5 do Jiji.  They solve "puzzles" and progress through the various levels.  I've set up the content to align with what they've learned or are about to learn in class.

As they progress, I use this bulletin board to document their growth.

As Jiji (the cute little penguin) completes 10% intervals, I get an email postcard saying where she has travelled to.

Last year I would just show the kids the postcards as I got them, but this year I wanted to highlight individual students as they work hard to complete the program.  So the bulletin board was created.

After a little bit of searching I was able to download the postcards.  If you use ST Math, you can find them by clicking here.

Then I created a little "personal Jiji" for each of my students.

click here to download this template. 
when it shows up in google drive the background is white, but when you download it you can see the background

As they move through the program, I'll move their Jiji to the different postcards.  That way if the class is only at 10% completion, but they're at 30%, they can say their Jiji is in Paris.

I also made a "class Jiji" to show where we are as a class.

So far the kids love seeing their progress.  They come in and let me know they did Jiji the night before and I try to check progress multiple times a week and move the Jiji's so that the reinforcement is relatively immediate.  It's also helped get the kids motivated and excited to complete the program.  I don't have to assign it as homework because most of them want to do it so they can see their progress......a definite win for a teacher!

So now it's time to link up!  The link will be open each week from Wednesday to Tuesday.  Gina and I love Farley's rule of 3 so we're adopting that.  Please remember to comment on the one (or more!) before your link and the two (or more!) after your link!  We all love the feedback! 

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Brandi