New Year, New Me (+ a freebie!)

And cue the eye roll.

While I believe strongly in the idea behind New Year's resolutions, I also believe that saying, "This is the year I finally lose those last few pounds!" for the fifth (of fifteenth) year in a row maybe isn't the best use of my energy. (To continue with this example, my health and fitness is an ongoing journey and won't have a specific "end point.") So, instead of making vague goals that will only potentially benefit myself, my New Year's resolutions are centered around relationship building. In 2015, I am going to:

1. Catch up with at least one person I've lost touch with each month
2. Attend at least one MeetUp each month
3. Have one "Treat Yo' Self" moment each month (to build my relationship with myself and the characters on Parks and Rec haha)

What are your New Year's resolutions? Leave me a comment below! 

As a reward for reading a post that has NOTHING to do with teaching, I have a freebie for you! 

This freebie is winter-themed, not holiday-themed, so you can use it all winter long! In this activity, students pick a snowman and measure it against various winter images to practice using the phrases "shorter than" and "longer than." On their recording sheet, students color the images according to whether it was longer or shorter than their snowman. AND, all of the snowmen are different lengths, so they can do the activity multiple times without getting the same results or getting bored!

You can download this activity from my store for free here!

I have to be honest with you... When I made this activity for my class, I was lazy and just printed them on the school computer instead of color printing and laminating them like I usually do. With all the craziness that is December, something had to give. But my kiddos loved it anyway, which means yours won't mind if you take the easy route and black-and-white print it too haha!

I hope you and your little snow angels enjoy it! Hopefully you are having a restful and rejuvenating break and doing nothing work-related (other than reading this blog). See you all in 2015!

December (Okay, and November) in Review

OH. MY. WORD.
Where did 2014 go?! Seriously, 2015 is mere days away, and I have no idea where the time has gone. I'm halfway through my second year of full time teaching, I'm living on my own, and (although I definitely don't feel like it) I'm finding myself leading the life of a "grown up."
In the course of being a "grown up" and being in disbelief that I may actually be a grown up, I have let over a month go by without posting on this little blog. I'm still on track with my goal of one post with pictures each month, but this means that I have A LOT to catch you up on.

Let's start with science. In addition to our FOSS kits, we also get a lot of science through our reading comprehension curriculum. We recently finished up our comprehension unit on plants, where we learned about plant parts, the life cycle of a plant, and what plants need to survive. As one of our review activities, we made a class book. Each student chose one of the categories from above (plant parts, life cycle of a plant, plant survival) and made a page for our book. They then labeled their page, I separated the pages by category, and made it into a little book. Their pages came out really well!

I love seeing their kid spelling! We are working on our letter reversals, but I'm just so proud of how good they are about writing the sounds they hear!

We took a field trip to the Boston Museum of Science in early December. It was my first time there, and we had a blast! Next year, though, I want a pre-field trip field trip where we just practice going up and down escalators... man were those tricky for some of us! Thankfully, they "weren't tired at all" by the end of the trip ;)

We also have been chugging along on our FOSS Animals 2x2 kit. We love our worms! I never think to take pictures of the anchor charts I make (I need to get better at that), but here are some pics of my nuggets being fearless in their exploration of the worms. 

Ahhhh this one is my favorite! She loved the worms so much!

I'm now realizing how long this post is turning out to be, so I'm gonna divide it into two posts I think. To wrap this one up, I'll show you a little of our holiday fun! We had a door decorating contest at our school. We didn't win, but we sure had fun making it! Our theme was "Kindergarten is SNOW much fun!" Ahhh how I love a good pun. 

We made the reindeer out of handprints, and the trees out of our footprints! They thought it was so funny and gross to have the bottom of their feet painted. This was definitely one of those times when being a teacher is just plain FUN!

I'm actually incredibly proud of this. I saw a writing activity on Pinterest where students were trapped in individual snow globes made out of plastic plates. Me and my more-is-more personality then took it to the next level and made the entire bottom half of our door a snow globe! I had each of my kiddos pose like they were playing in the snow. I took a picture of each of them like this and then printed and cut them out. Their expressions and poses were so cute! Some of them were throwing snowballs, some were leaping through the air, and others were shivering from the cold. 

For our holiday celebration, I kept it simple and just did a fun snack-tivity. I wanted to make gingerbread houses, but thought that might be a little complicated for my kinders. So instead....... we made Christmas trees! To do this, I used ice cream cones, frosting, food coloring, and candy. To start, I gave each student a plate with an upside down ice cream cone, a glob of green frosting, a candy star (I think they were technically flowers), and a spork. I showed them how to use the spork to put the icing on the cone, and they were off! 

I intentionally didn't advertise that they could eat while they worked because I wanted at least SOME of the frosting and candy to make it onto their trees. But I certainly didn't discourage them from snacking! 

The finished trees came out so cute! To make sure they survived the trip home, I put each tree in a plastic cup, put some plastic wrap over the top, and secured it with a rubber band. 

SO CUTE!!!!! My goal for my January post is for it to include upcoming activities instead of a review. I feel like that will probably be more useful for you. Let me know if there's anything specific you'd like to see! As always, thanks for reading!