My Pet Reindeer

Hi Friends!

Are you counting down the days until winter break? Me too #about15togo

As much as I cannot wait for a solid two weeks at home, where getting dressed is purely optional, I really do love this time of year at school. It's like holidays 24/7 for all of December for teachers. I mean there's books upon books dedicated to the holidays and we get to decorate our homes and our rooms! Okay, that's not always the funnest for some of us :)

I'm here today with a sweet little creativity unit I whipped up just in time for winter. It's all about adopting a pet reindeer, so it's tons of fun for Christmas, but it's also a lot of fun if holidays are a no-no in your school, but you still want to sprinkle a little cheer in your room!

In this unit, students adopt a pet reindeer and write all about it! There are tons of different writing papers and prompts to appeal to students of all ages, but the funnest writing activity comes in the form of a pet manual. You have to love the activities where students don't even realize they're doing work because they're having so much fun.

And if they get to use their imagination? Well, I'm ALL OVER THAT!

We're just getting this little unit started in my pull-out groups. Because I only have them for small periods of time a few times a week. I have to really break up the lessons.

We started by adopting a class reindeer we named Bernie. We talked about all the ways we could describe the way Bernie looked on the outside. Then, we read "Olive, the Other Reindeer". We talked about what skills and characteristics Olive had that made her a good reindeer.

We went back to our chart and added personality traits. I also asked them to think about their pets at home. How would they describe their personalities? We added a few of those suggestions to our cart as well.

{{Sorry our chart is a little wrinkly. I had an overzealous volunteer grab it for me!}}

That's as far as we got last week. This week we will use our characteristic planning sheet to plan out our own reindeer's personality and appearance. We'll use them to make our reindeer and finally to fill out our pet manual.

Lastly, my students will receive adoption certificates and they will officially be reindeer parents!

Here's a closer look at most of the components of "My Pet Reindeer"

This unit includes tracers for the pet reindeer. I plan on only giving my students tracers for the reindeer heads and possibly antlers because they need help with scale, but I want each students' reindeer to look different and be reflective of the characteristics I gave them.

I will post pictures once we finish them! I'm so excited to see the final result!

You can grab this little unit from my TpT store by clicking the cover image below:

Happy Holidays :)

Wants and Needs Fun!

 We’re all up in our economics portion of our communities curriculum.  This means teaching students all about wants and needs. 

I love this unit for 3 reasons:

1} They inherently get it.
2} This is real life stuff, people.  I know grown adults {me included} that constantly need to weigh what exactly they NEED vs. what they WANT.
3} I made up some fun craftivities to reinforce the concept.  And let’s be honest, we all NEED craftivties in our lives.

After a quick discussion on wants versus needs we whip up these cuties:

{Looks like this kiddo prefers his shelter in the form of a big, brown cave}

We put our needs on our “heart” because we need them to survive.  Students were allowed to choose which needs were most important to them.  I strung all of our needs together and they’re hanging out on our white board.



They look sooo cute I might add!

Wants are like wishes, so we put our wantiest {made-up word} wants on genie bottles!







I didn’t get a chance to hang up our wants yet because we were busy doing a HALLWAY HUNT!!!!!!!!!!!!



Students combed the hallway for images and classified them as wants or needs.  Fun for them.  Instant assessment for me.  I so NEEDED this!

{We classified all healthy foods as needs}

{Need. Duh. Speaking of needs, I definitely needed to refill my ink before printing these cards out.  The original image is actually a healthy green tree, not a dying yellowish-green one}

{One of my students told me a ring was a NEED as in “you NEED it to get married”.  Who was I to argue?}

{Packed up in the binder and ready to go for next year!}

So fun and so easy!  Now you see why I LOVE teaching Wants and Needs!  All of these activities come from my Wants and Needs Mini-Unit.  It’s been a staple of my little shop for awhile, but it recently got a make-over to include the Hallway Hunt.  {It also has 2 printables, one for wants and one for needs}.

{Click the picture to check out the unit on TpT}

I’d love to give a copy or two of this unit away!  If this looks like something you could use in your classroom leave a comment below.  Give me your #1 need and your #1 want!  Don’t forget your email. I can’t wait to read your answers!  I’ll pick a winner by tomorrow night!

Now I ‘m off to dinner… I NEED some sushi ;)

~Halle

Snowman Ornaments & December Happenings

Hi Friends!

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday surrounded by everything they love.
For me that meant my husband, my family, Georgie Girl, good food and wine, and games!
And lots of fun times with friends while we’re on break!

We had so much fun in 2nd grade leading up to Christmas Break!  The good news is that I took a TON of pictures.  The bad news is that most of those pictures were of their adorable faces, and therefore not blog approved.  I did manage to sneak a few sans faces though!

Hadar posted this adorable Name Tree Craftivity right before Christmas Break.  I loved it, but I thought it was a little to young for my 2nd Graders, so I used her idea as inspiration for our “Odd and Even Trees”

Click the picture to head to Miss Kindergarten’s blog to see her post and get the stars for free!

I had my kids randomly draw an odd or even number.  If they drew an even number, they used the directions on the projector to make your standard looking Christmas tree.  If they drew an odd number they used the directions to create an odd looking tree.  They LOVED this activity!

Wish this picture was more clear!

I   Our awesome ESL teacher also read “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas”.  She did such a great job…the kids were in a trance while she read. 

Thanks Maria!

Afterwards, students wrote what they would do to make the Grinch grin.  {No pictures, sorry!}

The next day, we watched the cartoon version movie, and drank Grinch Floats {lime sherbet and Sprite}.

The Thursday before break, we arrived in The North Pole on our Christmas Trip Around the World.  We celebrated by watching The Polar Express and drinking hot chocolate in our PJs.



Right before our North Pole Party we hosted our first ever Mug Exchange!  Students brought in a wrapped mug and swapped with their friends!  In the past we did a book exchange Pollyana for our holiday party, but I liked the Mug Exchange much more, for a a few reasons:

* Mugs generally cost less than most books
*In the past, I had many students receive books that were well above, or well below, their reading level {even though we sent home suggestions}.  They were great books, just not great for them!  Mugs are pretty universal!
*They’ll hold on to their mugs for a loooong time, and have such a fun memory associated with it!  I love that!

We’ll definitely do the mug exchange again!

A few days before Christmas Break, we made Salt Dough Snowmen Ornaments for our parent gifts.  This is the second year we’ve made them.  We teachers were older and wiser this year, and we were so excited about how these little guys turned out this time!!

Love how they each have their own personality!

We use the recipe and directions from Kaboose but we’ve altered it a little bit.  I know Christmas has come and gone, but these would be great to Pin for next year, or for a snowman unit in January!

Grab our directions below:

Click here to grab the file.

Painting our noses!

The final product.

Tips & Tricks for Success:

*Let noses and faces dry separately {last year, we made the face and nose out of salt dough and let it dry together.  It was EXTREMELY hard for our 2nd graders to paint the noses orange, and faces white when they were attached  It looked veryyyyy sloppy.}
*Set up an area with orange paint, and an area with white paint.  {I had half of my students paint their faces white at their desks and half paint their noses orange at the back table with me…then switch}.  This meant we didn’t have to wash paintbrushes in between, and orange and white stayed separate!
*Use black sharpie for the faces.  Painting details that small is really, really hard for little hands!
*Give students creative freedom. You can’t see it here, but we had snowmenwomen with eyelashes and lips, and they were pretty darn cute.
*DON’T use acrylic sealer…it will cause the sharpies to bleed.

I hope all this December fun was inspirational for you for next year!  Pin it so you don’t forget!

I’ll be back later this week with Giveaway news and a few new products I’ve been working on!

Keep on enjoying this wonderful break we SO DESERVE!!!!

~Halle

Halloween in Mrs. Hird's Room {which could mean a freebie for you!}

We’re doing Halloween BIG this year in 2nd grade.  We’re still not done, but here’s what we’ve been up to so far!  Keep reading to see how you can win one of my Halloween activities!

I reviewed introduced adjectives to my class this week, and we made Adjective Spiders to show off our new skills, not to mention brag on ourselves a little! 

 Each student had to choose 8 adjectives to describe themselves.  I’m pretty obsessed with how cute they look hanging up in our room. 

You can grab this activity from my TpT shop by clicking any of the pictures below. 

I even included two banner options to use when displaying your spiders {I just didn’t have time to put mine up yet, but it’s adorable, if I do say so myself :)}







Here’s a preview of Spider Adjectives:



There are a ton of options.  If you don’t want your little ones cutting and tracing, there’s a ready-to-go printable option, though I must say my kiddos did an awesome job building their spider selves…and we were under the time crunch of a half-day! 

We’re also hard at work on our Wizard’s Hex and Witch’s Spell activities.  

Right now we’re getting ready by reading witch and wizard poems and talking about spelling ingredients and rhyming words {included in the packet}!  

They are ENCHANTED by it!!!









You can grab this activity by clicking any of the above pictures.  It’s perfect for any elementary grade!

We also made our October Bulletin Board thanks to Valerie.

This craft was surprisingly tough for my 2nd graders to put together.  They had to decide where to paste certain pieces, but it was a good critical thinking exercise!









We’ve still got a few more fall/Halloween projects planned, but I wanted to share what we’ve done so far!


Now on to the good stuff.  I'd love to give a few copies away of either my Wizard's Hex and Witch's Spell activity, or my Spider Adjectives activity.  

Leave me a comment telling me your favorite Halloween candy, and I'll randomly pick a winner or two by weekend's end.

Hope you’re enjoying your weekend!

Halle

Wants and Needs Craftivity

My Wants and Needs Craftivity is now available on Tpt.  I gave it away as a flash freebie here, but you can now grab it on TpT!


Enjoy the last few hours of the Teacher Appreciation Sale!

Click the picture to purchase the activity

If you enjoy it, please leave some feedback!


Happy Shopping!


Halle