Gingerbread Fred & Gingerbread Sally are back!

I can't believe it is almost December.  When we go back to school it will be December 2nd!  Wow, this year is flying by already!  Anyway, December means that it is time for Gingerbread Fred and Gingerbread Sally to make another appearance in 1st grade.  Each year they come and visit 1st grade and we have loads of gingerbread fun with them.

As soon as we get back to school, I will introduce our new gingerbread friends and share the exciting news that Gingerbread Fred and Gingerbread Sally will be going home with each of my students to spend an evening with them.  Students have a blast taking the gingerbread friends home, taking pictures of them and writing in their journal.  Check out the the whole unit here in my TPT store!  I bought these cute little friends at CVS a few years ago but you don't even have to have the cute fluffy versions, just print the gingerbread friends in the unit and laminate them for durability like the rest of my team does!!

 Gingerbread Fred and Gingerbread Sally really kick off my month full of gingerbread fun!  We love reading different versions of gingerbread stories, making gingerbread fact families and check out my Gingerbread Adjectives Freebie!

 What fun holiday activities are your favorites?

My favorite activity for Thanksgiving!

Hi and happy almost Thanksgiving!  I wanted to share this fun Pass the Turkey Please Thanksgiving craft with everyone.

I started this activity last year in my classroom and will do it every year from now on because it was so wonderful!  We have been learning all about culture and what makes our families special so this was a perfect activity to tie things together before the holiday.  We created turkeys in class and then they had a class meeting to talk about all the things we were thankful for.

My sweet kiddos each wrote one thing they were thankful for on one of the turkey's feathers and then I explained what they were going to do with their special turkey creations.  Their job was to take the turkeys home,  bring them to the table on Thanksgiving day and ask their family what they were thankful for.  I sent a letter home to parents explaining the project and reminding them to have students bring turkey back to school on Monday.

On Monday morning all the turkeys came back to school and everyone got a chance to share what everyone in their family had written.

The responses were wonderful and filled with love.  I was totally crying by the time we were done sharing!  A few parents told me at the end of the year that the turkeys were one of their favorite projects all year and that they planned on bringing their "thankful turkey" out each year.

I can't wait to do this with my class this year!  Hop over to my TPT store and grab the project that comes with a parent letter and all the templates you need to create your own "thankful turkeys".

This year I have so much to be thankful for!  I thankful for my friends, my wonderful family, my amazing team at work and all of the amazing teacher bloggers who help me become a better teacher every day!

Thanksgiving Linkys and a FREEBIE!

Hi!  Between report cards and parent teacher conferences, I feel like I am just coming up for air and it is already 2 weeks into the 2nd quarter!  Wow!

I have been surfing around tonight and found a few cool linky parties with all these fun Thanksgiving activities and I thought I would share them with you.

Mrs. Thompson's Treasures and My Kinder Garden Blog!  Hop over and check them out!

Also, check out this fun word work freebie from my TPT store!

If you like that, them you will love my other work work units!  :) 

I'm so thankful Blog Hop!

We are celebrating all that we are thankful for and that includes teachers!  We want to show all of you how much we appreciate you.  Teachers do so much and this is our time to give back and say thank you!  Thank you for following!  Thank you for participating!  Thank you for collaborating!  Thank you for sharing!  Thank you, thank you, thank you!!

Join us by hopping through each blog and gathering lots of Thanksgiving and autumn freebies.  In each freebie you will find a picture of a pie with a word on it. That word will tell you something that teacher is thankful for.  Record all of the words on your recording sheet and follow each blog along the way so that you can enter the amazing giveaway at the end!

You may start anywhere along the hop, but if you would like to start at the beginning you may go here.  This is also where you will go in the end, for the giveaway!!

You have made it to blog stop number 13.

Some of my favorite Thanksgiving stories are Bear Says Thanks, Turkey Trouble and Run, Turkey, Run.  My freebie included organizers for all of these stories and a generic organizer that you can use for your favorite!  Enjoy!

Now hop over to the next stop on your journey:

A Day In The Life of  First Grade Teacher

Superhero SALE!

I'm having a Superhero SALE on two of my Superhero themed reading products plus a few other best sellers! ;)

My students have been having so much fun practicing their nouns, verbs and adjectives with this Superhero themed center!  There is just something about these cute little superheros that keeps my kiddos engaged!  I use the worksheets in the word work center as a terrific follow up to reinforce their learning.

Check out my Superhero Sentences Reading Language Arts Pack, it's on sale too!  It has posters for the punctuation signs and plenty of worksheets to help students practice each punctuation.   My kiddos need lots and lots of practice writing sentences with the correct punctuation and these posters and worksheets are another way to keep it fun while they are practicing these skills!