Holiday spirit and craftivities

Its beginning to feel a lot like Christmas!!

I am officially on break and have been since Thursday!! We have two full weeks off, which is apparently more than some schools :))  Hubby and I are going to enjoy every minute of it.

The last week of school was crazy but I will post more on that later.  For now holiday activities.

I tried to be a little crafty this holiday season.  We dont have much decorations other than a tree, but I did try one thing.  I put tape on cardstock.  Painted over it.  Glitterized it a little :)  Only sad thing is I havent hung it up anywhere!

  

At school we were a little crafty too!! We made strings of lights with colored paper and string.  Here is mine: We wrote one letter per light to spell out our names.....

On the back we wrote adjectives about the person whose name was written on the lights.  

Here are half of the kids ones hanging up in the class.  It was really fun and educational :)

We also made button ornaments.  Mine is the one on the left.... I was going for a random look.  I was then showed up by a kid who made the one on the right... very festive!

Another teacher donated this tree to us, so we decorated it with our button wreaths.  Some girls made the snowflakes for me so I put them on the tree too!  

What kinds of crafts did you do this holiday season?  I hope you all are enjoying time off and finding time to relax a little.  May the holidays be just as good for you wherever you may find yourselves this year!

Harvest Party fun

Today was our school "Harvest Party"  basically a mix of a Halloween party and a Thanksgiving party.  It was quite a day filled with craziness, excitement, and fun.  It started with costumes but sadly I forgot to get pictures of the costumes :(  We were supposed to dress up as something we are thankful for.  We had princesses, and bears, and skateboarders, and pirates.  I myself was a cook/chef because I am thankful for others who can cook!!  But again sadly no pictures.  I might have to beg some parents for pictures.  That is allowed right!?!

We began by doing a scavenger hunt where they found things they were thankful for.  For some this was the first time doing a scavenger hunt.  Most got the hang of it fairly quickly.  I had clues like "Lunch is when I get my nutrients for the day.  I am thankful I can eat at the ______"  They would run to the cafeteria and find their next clue.  It took them all over school, well the outside part at least.  Most of the kids were running and having a great time.  I tried to put them in groups and that was a bad idea.  Some of the groups did not work well together and left their slower group members.  So next time I won't do that.... I think.

I DID manage to take some pictures later in the day though.  This website was the inspiration for my day.  I did the craft shown here.  The website has a great tutorial for how to make it.

Our class used orange and yellow paper.  Plus we made our own stems rather than using pipe cleaners.  I think next time I will use the pipe cleaners.  It just adds a little touch of cuteness right?! I had the class write 10 things that they were thankful for, one for each paper.  Here is how they turned out!!

This is a close up of the one that I made to show the class.  

Here are some more of them.  

Aren't they adorable!!  I was very very pleased with the whole thing.  The kids enjoyed them too.  

 Then we made some toilet paper roll people or monsters.  I basically said you may use anything in the classroom and they went nuts.  They were so creative.  These were the only ones I was able to capture pictures of but the kids were having a blast with these.  We had all sorts of creatures :)

Last period was our actual 'party'.  We had lots of parents and lots of food.  We ate until we were happy and then played a game... probably should have played the game first though.  The class was separated into groups of 3 and they had to wrap one of their teammates in a roll of toilet paper.  The goal was to see who could do it the fastest, but some were very slow.  After they were wrapped, we had a race to see which mummy could move the fastest.  It was a simple game and the kids enjoyed it also.

All in all it was a great day.  We had lots of fun and the kids left with smiles on their faces and stories to tell.  I left one happy but EXHAUSTED teacher :)  

I hope you had a good Friday too.  

DRA2 Update and Crafty

Today, I did my DRA testing and it was a lot better than I thought.  I definitely had my freak out moment this morning and almost lost it but once I got rolling it wasnt that hard.  I have a handful of readers that are well above grade level reading at a 50 independent at the beginning of 3rd grade.  I was told not to go past that this early since they wont have any where to go by the end of the year (we are supposed to stop at 60 in grade 4).

There were a couple times that I had to ask a pro for help about how to mark something or where to even start a new child who I knew was a struggling reader.  I was surprised at how serious some of the kids took the assessment.  But of course I had a couple who did not care and did not try as hard as I knew they could.  That is always disappointing.  Overall though it was a great experience and learning time.  I will be much more prepared and knowledgeable about it next time!

Since I was testing all day I wanted an activity that would allow kids to be pulled out.  So I had the kids do a craft!  They loved it and did awesome.  I was so pleased.  You may have seen this picture on Pinterest

bummer it doesnt link up; if you know where this came from let me know!

I LoVE this quote.  I have been wanting to post it in my class since the start.  Especially working at an Asian school, I feel it is important for them to know that mistakes are okay and that we just need to try our best.  Sometimes that is overlooked in this culture.  Anyway,  I wanted the kids to have some ownership over it so I outlined the letters and had them color it.  Since I have 17 students, half of the class had 3 letters and half had 2 letters.    We will glue them onto colored paper for a background and post it in our room.  This will be our daily reminder!  I was so proud of them when I saw how hard they worked on their letters and made it beautiful.  I can't wait to hang it up!