More Excuses, What We've Been Up To, and Freebies!

If you are still here following my little blog, I truly apologize. I promise to get back in the blogging game, it's just been tough. I know I make a lot of excuses, but really... just listen to them all!

1. I have no internet--only the data from my iPhone. I'm hoping to get a better plan so I can do more blog browsing and updating my own blog!

2. Starting at a new school is always so busy. Add that to a new provincial report card and a new attendance/grading program, and I've got lots to learn and think about!

3. I'm slowly starting to think about our wedding plans... so far we have a date, a location, and now I have a dress! :) Each Monday, I model writing in our weekend journals. I remind students about capitals, spacing, sounding out words, adding details to our pictures, etc. Here is what I wrote about this Monday:

4. Which leads me into my last excuse... this summer we also found out we are expecting! I am about 15 weeks right now and due in April. It has been a lot to take in and think about. It also makes me have to miss some school for doctor's appointments and think about what I'm going to do when I go on maternity leave in April! It'll be a big life adjustment for all of us! :)

So life is a bit busy! I promise I am still doing fun and engaging things in my classroom, I just don't always take pictures or get around to blogging about it. But I'm going to turn this post over to my camera now and share some random pictures and freebies of things we've been doing since school started!

We started with an apple theme in September. We did a little KWL to see what we wanted to learn about apples. We didn't make apple smoothies (really?!) or jam, but we did make applesauce and decided which apple we thought was the best. 

Mmmmmm.... homemade applesauce. It made our classroom smell delicious all day! I need an air freshener that smells like this. This activity was definitely a highlight for the kids.

Yum yum! 20 out of 23 kiddos liked it. Not bad!

We did a fun making ten activity. After reading the awesome "Ten Apples Up on Top", we used colourful dot stickers to make combinations of ten on each character's head. I love that adding something simple like stickers makes math fun!

Here are a few apple freebies--title page (I like putting all my theme activities in booklets), sequencing apples, writing directions for applesauce, ten apples up on top, and colourful apples (for practicing colour words--print the large apples on different coloured cardstock). Click the picture below to download these freebies.

Next up, some fall writing and art. For the art project, we looked at different leaf shapes. On a piece of manilla tag the students drew a big leaf in pencil. Then they traced the leaf in black sharpie. 

After that, we modge-podged fall coloured tissue paper squares using a mixture of white glue and water.

Once cut out, they looked beautiful!

Looks great with our Hello/Goodbye poem.

For the poem we brainstormed fall things we will say hello to and summer things that we had to say goodbye to. A fun little writing activity for the season! You can download a copy of the poem {here}.

We also did some fire safety activities. We have weekly assemblies for the Grade 1-4 and each class is in charge of presenting about 5 per school year. We decided to do our first one on Fire Safety. We sang a couple of songs, put together a fire safety rule slideshow complete with photos of us demonstrating the rules, and just looked cute in our fire helmets and Clifford puppets.

Our second author study is Clifford the Big Red Dog. I did a little riddle/shared writing activity to figure out who are next author was. We have enjoyed reading Clifford books. My class especially loves the ones about Clifford as a puppy. They can't believe he used to be so small!

We did a little tree map about Clifford after reading the first story "Clifford the Big Red Dog."

Here's our author study wall.

We also had our (Canadian) Thanksgiving lunch. It's an annual tradition at our school. We provide the students with chicken noodle soup and a bun for lunch, and the whole school gathers in the gym to eat. Yummy and fun tradition for the kiddos. They had a table decorating contest while we waited for the food--our class one the prize for the Grade 1-3 category. They were so proud! :) Each class also made a list of all the things they are thankful for to hang up in the gym.

I was doing some organizing of my counters/cupboards and decided to invest in three palstic drawer sets. I wanted to get the big 12x12" drawers, but my Walmart didn't have them in stock anymore. I had to settle for 8.5x11" drawers, but they are working out just fine. I have a drawer for each day of the week, a drawer for extra work, and three drawers for stuff to file, copy, or laminate. You can download my drawer labels {here}.

Last up, my class really needed to work on an attention signal, so I pulled out my good listening poster from a couple years ago and turned it into a "Give me 5" poster. I got them really excited about showing me five by making it into a game--told them I would always be testing them and that it could happen at any time of the day! Sometimes they would even ask me if I was going to do the "5 Thing" today. If I try to get their attention another way, they usually remind me about it too. So funny, but it works! :)

And that's it for now! I promise I will be back sooner rather than later. I've got a few products in the works and a fun giveaway coming up soon! Have a great weekend all!