Handprint Calendar 2018

Every year I make a Handprint Calendar for my students to give their families during the holidays. It is a calendar for the entire year and is such a precious keepsake for parents. My new template is up on Teachers Pay Teachers and I wanted to share it with you because it is the perfect time to begin working on this project.

Each day I will pull students back (or have a volunteer do it!) and paint students' hands. Some days I can do 2 different pictures at once and saves me a lot of time. Each month gets its own hand print that matches a poem that is printed on the calendar. You will place the hand print on the back of the previous month so that when the calendar is flipped you will see the painting! Check it out here:

Tips:

• Print every month on a different color card stock.

• Combine like colors when painting. For example, you can paint the pumpkin and the goldfish on the same day because the color is orange for both. 

• Make sure you paint the hand print going the opposite direction from the previous month printed on the other side. You want the direction of the hand print to flip when parents change the month. 

• DO NOT bind the calendar until after you have painted all of the hands. If you make a mistake, you can just change out one page instead of taking the whole book apart. 

• Use markers and glitter glue to decorate your hand prints. The more elaborate you get, the better they look!

Feel free to ask me any questions regarding the calendar. I hope your families love it as much as mine!

Christmas Activities

Here are some of the Christmas activities we have done this month. We made big paper candy canes. Students had to tear the paper stripes and I helped them glitter their names. (Ugh, glitter.....I use it but once a year!)

Another activity is our Grinch activity. We read the book and did a little brainstorming on what the Grinch could do to make Christmas better. Then we completed the story. Students colored a Grinch topper. I found this activity on a blog, but I can't remember where. The kids love doing it. Then we wrapped up the day by watching the movie.You can grab this activity here or by clicking on the picture.

We also made a Christmas tree by putting our numbers in order. Students colored their tree, then glued on the number ornaments and cut the whole thing out. We put them in our classroom window because they looked so nice. You can get this activity here or by clicking on the picture.

Enjoy your last week of school! I know I am!

Gingerbread Week

It is Gingerbread Week! We have a lot of fun this week, especially because it is the last week before Winter Break. But, I still want my students to work on language arts and listening skills. We do hunt the Gingerbread Man all over school. He's a sneaky little guy. We also make our Gingerbread Man: Escape Prevention Plan (a unit my class LOVES every year and available on TpT). This year we will be working on a story study. We will be comparing the different versions of the Gingerbread Man (and there are A LOT!) Below is a copy of the book we make about our stories. This book is for beginners. There are no writing lines. I chose to leave out the lines because I do not want my students to get stuck on the idea of writing a formal sentence. I want them to be brave enough to try and write about the story. Even if all I get are color words, I will praise their efforts and make suggestions so that next time that student will feel brave enough to try and write a little more. Take a look at this free story study and I hope you can do this with your own class.

Gingerbread Man Story Study

As a family project this week I am asking my students to decorate and write about their gingerbread man. I have formal lines on this sheet because I want parents to help them complete a sentence. They can make their gingerbread man into anything they want. Then they have to finish the sentence "My gingerbread man is ___________." This gets the parents thinking about their child's writing as well and helping the kids with their writing by providing a starter to the sentence.

My gingerbread man is ______________.

I hope you and your class have a MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

And a very merry WINTER BREAK!

Gingerbread Man: Escape Prevention Plan

I have put some Gingerbread Man activities up on TpT. My favorite is the Gingerbread Man: Escape Prevention Plan. This is a booklet that the students make, taking the Gingerbread Man apart so that he cannot run away. (Yes, we eat him.)

Our Gingerbread Man hunt starts after we read the book The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School by Laura Murray. We chase him into the library, the office, the cafeteria, the 1st grade, and then back to our classroom where he is "sleeping." After we find him students go out to recess and when they come back the Gingerbread Man has been taken to the office to talk with the principal who is "watching him."

 When we get back into class we talk about how we could have stopped the Gingerbread Man from running away. We then begin our Escape Prevention Plan. We all get 5 little paper gingerbread men. We color and cut them out. Then we glue them into our book one step at a time, like this:

As we make our book we also have little gingerbread men cookies. For each step we take the same bite in our cookie. I like the Keebler Gingerbread Men, but there are the Peppridge Farm one and the ones at Trader Joe's. This is probably the best part of the book! Yum!

If you would like to try out the Escape Prevention Plan in your class so that your Gingerbread Man doesn't run away you can get it at my TpT store.  This mini unit also includes some writing activities so that your little ones can write about the Gingerbread Man or can dictate what you write down. (The recipe activity in my unit always turns up some pretty funny kid answers!)

Enjoy!