Happy New Year! Winter Word Work, January Currently, and a Sale!

Hey everyone! Welcome to 2013! I hope everyone had a safe and fun New Years with friends and family. We just had a quiet, little gathering at our house with a few of our close friends. There were 8 people... and 7 animals. We had our two cats and two dogs, our friends brought their two dogs, and our other friend brought her pug. It was quite the party! :) The four big dogs played in the yard all night, while the pug hung out with us. We ate our way into the new year, as I made *way* too much food.

I have been taking some time off blogging and planning and creating during this vacation. Instead I have been doing some work and cleaning around the house, giving the puppies lots of playtime, visiting with my friends and family, and just spending some good ol' couch time at home! It has been a fun and relaxing week and a half... But now that school is creeping closer and closer, I have started getting some ideas together. I will be doing a bunch of fun bear and penguin activities in January. You can see what I did last year {here} and {here}. I also created some winter-themed activities to place in my word work centres this month. Click the picture below to check them out at TpT.

 

There are five word work centres:

1. Winter Stamping Fun -- The Christmas one was such a hit in my class, so I created a winter one too! Students stamp winter words in a little book. There is a word bank to help them.

2. Winter Race Sight Word Game - A fun board game where students practice reading sight words. It includes 60 Dolch word cards and 15 blank cards to write your own.

3. Winter Word Family Sort - Sorting picture cards into three long "a" word families (ay, ail, ake). There is a cut and paste recording sheet for this centre.

4. Snowball Soup - This is my favourite centre! I mix letter tiles with white pompoms or cotton balls. Students use a spoon to scoop out letters to build CVCC words. There is a recording sheet to record the words and pictures.

5. Mitten Compound Words - Students match up mitten cards to create compound words. There is a recording sheet to write down all the words.

So much fun! Most of the clipart is from KPM Doodles, so it matches my Winter Math Centres!

 

And of course a new year and a new month brings CURRENTLY! If you have not heard of a currently before (and really, who hasn't??) then go check out Farley's blog Oh' Boy 4th Grade to check it out!

My one little word for this year is PLANS! My goals for this year are to make some plans and timelines for our house renovations and to be better at long-term planning for school. I want to redo my day planner for school before I go back on Monday!

As you can tell, I am very excited about our new appliances! We live in a small, dumpy little house that we are planning on renovating entirely from top to bottom. The kitchen is definitely in need of renovations--fridge from the 80's, broken dishwasher, cupboards made out of plywood, fake gold chandelier.... ugh! Well even though we aren't starting the renos yet, we found some awesome sales on appliances. So we went ahead and bought a new stainless steel fridge, smoothtop range, dishwasher, and over-the-range microwave. Just having these appliances in the kitchen will make a world of difference! (And maybe get our butts in gear to get these renovations rolling!)

Well in celebration of new appliances and sales, I am having a sale at my TpT store. It starts now and goes until Friday! 20% off everything! Click the picture below to check it out! Enjoy the rest of your vacation, or your first week back if you have already started!

 

(Clipart from KPM Doodles)