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Monday, December 26, 2011

Near Disaster and My Top 3

Happy Holidays everyone! My house is still overrun with family but I snuck off for a few minutes to visit blogland. I love my family but a week straight of a loud {booming male voices and babies crying}, crowded, messy {I've lost count on the number of spills}, smelly {I've forgotten how odorous those diapers can be} bustling house is starting to get to me.

We had a NEAR DISASTER yesterday... Picture my husband taking the 20 pound turkey out of the oven. It may have been the disposable foil pan we were forced to use to get it to fit in our oven or it may have been the fact that my husband was partaking in the holiday booze with my brothers....but as he is transferring it to the counter the juices start POURING over the side onto the floor. My hubbie starts to slip on the fatty liquid and just manages to slide the turkey onto the counter before his feet go completely flying out from under him and he lands hard on his butt!  After making sure he was okay, I laughed my a** off! Making my gravy with MUCH less stock and cleaning up that disgusting, greasy mess wasn't so funny but at least Christmas dinner wasn't ruined.

I saw Fern Smith had a good idea to look back on the year to see what our most popular posts were so I'm linking up. You can click on the post name to read the original if you are interested.

My Top 3 Posts


#2 with 6,316 views Cutest 100 Year Olds Ever

#1 with 20,042 views Me on the Map

I think it will be interesting to see what everyone else's most popular are.  Okay, I am being called back to play Awkward Family Photos. This board game is hysterical to play, at least with my inappropriate family!

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Friday, December 23, 2011

Calling all clipart junkies

Do you love cute fonts and clipart like I do? Lettering Delights is having an amazing $1 SALE!
Aren't these cute?








I could go on and on. I can't pass up such great deals!!! If you want to go check out this amazing sale yourself I'd love it if you'd click on the Lettering Delights logo on my sidebar. Happy shopping!

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Saturday, December 17, 2011

No Grinch here

Ahhhhhh....I made it! My kids were less crazy than I expected yesterday AND my husband is home after 2 weeks away! Life is good! Here's what we have been up to since my last post...

We read How Santa Got his Job and then applied to be an elf. I used the fabulous Cara Carroll's Elf Application. Is there anything of her's I don't love? The templates for the face, mittens, and shoes are from Mathwire.
I am getting much better about letting things go. The girl's arms on the right would have driven the old me crazy {okay, they still do, but I didn't tell her to fix them so that is progress in my book!} Rainbow stripes and hair glued on top of your hat?? Welcome to first grade! Did you notice some friends switched mittens or shoes so they each had one red and one green? :-) I also let them pick out their own googly eyes which is why they are different sizes. I didn't get a pic but one girl has pink eyes. I did put those crazy colored eyes away after I saw that. So maybe I haven't grown that much.
This cutie braided her hair!

We watched the Grinch while we worked on our cards and I pulled small groups to wrap their present. Then we wrote and drew how we would make the Grinch smile (from my other favorite, Deanna Jump!)

And of course we had a holiday party!
reindeer hats
Polar bears
beading snowflakes
playing dreidels with gelt {chocolate coins}
sequin craft
 Notice the goodie bags? My smart room mom had their names on them and asked the kids to take them with them as they visited the stations. Everything they made got into their bag for a quick and easy take home! Well...not everything made it home...
cookie decorating and eating


Happy Holidays bloggy friends! Hang in there those of you who that still have a few days!!!!

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Tuesday, December 13, 2011

SHELTER IN PLACE!!!


Do you have one of these in your room? Have you ever had to use it?  I miraculously escaped today but many on my team were not so lucky.

It was 15 minutes into lunch. I had eaten scarfed my lunch and was debating staying on my diet or indulging in a lemon bar or chocolate cake. The sweets were winning since my husband has been out of town for almost 2 weeks and this supermom is TIRED!  Getting 2 kids to school before a 7:45 AM staff meeting this morning had just about sealed the deal when....

...our principal came into the staff room and told us we needed to go back to our classrooms immediately and gather our students. The police department had called and we needed to SHELTER IN PLACE. One look on her face told us this was NOT a drill. I grabbed both desserts {hey, I may need the sustenance, who knew how long we would be locked in} and herded kids on the way back to my room.


I don't know what you call it in your area, but Shelter in Place means we lock our door and may not come out until we are told it is safe. That means NO BATHROOM. First graders, after lunch, no bathroom. AWESOME.


I kept them busy and distracted so they actually did pretty well but...

 I kept looking at the clock,  dreading when someone would finally need to go.  An hour and 5 minutes in, someone finally asked. I was AMAZED it took so long. It was probably due to the rant I went on that morning about using the bathroom at recess and me taking away points.  I broke it to the girl that if she couldn't hold it she would need to pee in a bucket. She wisely said she would hold it.

We make it 1 hour 15 minutes and finally a tiny blonde girl pleads, "I need to go. I know it means the bucket." Ugh. I start to arrange a privacy shield and then hear those magical bells. Okay, maybe they were more like intercom beeps but it felt like a Hallejuah moment. Shelter in Place was over!  I didn't even let my principal finish before I let blondie out the door.

We are given a 20 minute recess to recuperate. The staff lounge is all abuzz. Apparently other teachers are nicer than me and did not rant at their students this morning because the teammates on either side of me each had 4 kids go potty in the bucket! Their rooms had a wonderful aroma. I guess being a Grinch sometimes does pay off.

I know you are all wondering what caused all this. Word is there was a home burglary right across the street that was interrupted by the police. The intruder barricaded himself in the home and our neighborhood was swarming with cop cars. Good to know since I live down the street.

On a different note, if you downloaded the Holiday Syllable Sort freebie you will want to go download it again.  I replaced fireplace with mistletoe so their were an even number of each. Sorry, I am sure you understand how crazy things are this week.

I hope your last few days are less eventful.

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Sunday, December 11, 2011

Holiday Fun and a Freebie

There are just too many cute projects out there! I can't fit in everything I want to do! This week we made ourselves into reindeer and applied for a job pulling Santa's sleigh. I believe I got this last year from the girls over at What the Teacher Wants but let me know if I am wrong so I can give credit properly.
Love how she kept her hair bow in.

This one cracked me up! I assume "I run God" was not the intention.
Aren't they adorable?! I am a sucker for any project that uses their picture. I read this story with it which puts a modern spin on trying to win a position on the team.

 We also did a project that I saved since last year when I saw it on Cara's terrific site The First Grade Parade. After reading Santa's Stuck, as suggested by Cara, we made these.

 I recreated what Cara had done with one change. For the snow on the chimney we painted with equal parts shaving cream and white glue. I held mine up while it was still wet and purposefully let it drip down a little to simulate icicles. The kids were amazed how it dried puffy.

To say thank you for all the wonderful ideas I get from you all, here is another FREEBIE  for you.
 Click HERE to get a FREE copy of this Holiday Syllable Sort I plan to use this week.


This week is going to be cra-zy! In addition to our class party on Friday, we have 2 singalongs {we can't fit the whole school in the auditorium at the same time} and the whole staff gets up on stage and sings as reindeer dressed in a different theme every year. This year is PJ reindeer which I am pretty darn excited about.  I love to read comments so let me know what fun things your school does this week.

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Friday, December 9, 2011

Menorah Making Ten Freebie

"Do you have any Hanukkah math games, Mrs. Bates?" I didn't.  We read some stories and play with dreidels at our holiday party but I had no math games in my tubs. So I whipped up this concentration game that practicing making 10. I am amazed when I tutor older children who still need to count up instead of knowing the parts of ten so I try to give my firsties lots of practice.

My active boys were surprisingly engaged by having to try to remember where the cards were. It made me wonder how many of my students have never played memory/concentration before. I always forget that not every parent takes the time to play these types of games with young children.

If you are worried about the game being too quick, simply print out 2 copies to make it last longer. My kids were happy to keep starting over, keeping track of who had won more rounds.

Click on the picture or HERE to go download this FREEBIE.  I'd love you to leave feedback if you like it.

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Thursday, December 8, 2011

And the 12 winners are....

Congrats to the following 12 Blogiversary Giveaway winners!
Send me your email and what item you would like and I'll send it right over. :-)

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Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Blogiversary Giveaway Last Day & photos

Don't forget to enter my Blogiversary Giveaway by midnight tonight to be one of 12 winners to choose any item from my store. Have you had your eye on...
See my original post HERE to enter.

I unloaded my camera last night and realized I had never posted these cute Thanksgiving pics.
Pretending we are pilgrims.

Yes, this artist is Asian. Love it!

The bland colors really bothered his sense of style.

"..because you can only speak if spoken to." acting this out was the best part of my day!
 I do the turkey disguise project every year as homework.

The turkey is behind there.
Okay, thanks for going back to Thanksgiving with me. I promise my next post will be in the current holiday.



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