Silence and Prayers for Sandy Hook Elementary

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Christmas Literacy Centers, Holiday Traditions Traveling, and a Freebie

Hello!
This time of year is FLYING by in both our school and personal lives!  We are trying to fit in all of our fun holiday activities before the last day of school. (the 19th!!!!!)  At home we both have realized that, oops, Christmas is almost here and we might need to get to shopping!!
 I just ordered photo books on Snapfish yesterday and they are SUPPOSED to be here in time......fingers crossed!  Since we had the girls we do photo books for our parents and they love them, so I really need them to show up in time to be wrapped.  Just telling them the books are coming really doesn't cut it! :)
 My hubby has these grand visions of building our girls a little table and chairs to have in their room and getting them a tea set.  Adorable, but I am not sure when he will fit it in!  However, the furniture he wants to make is so cute and he said I could paint it however I wanted, so I am hoping he actually can find the time!  Oh well, they are pretty much currently just obssessed with emptying boxes,baskets, etc, and sitting in them so I guess if all else fails we could get them some empty boxes!  :)
On the school front we finished our It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas Literacy Centers.  They go great with our It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas Math Centers!  If you would like to check out either of them just click on the preview pics below!

We will give away a copy of the Literature Centers to the first person to comment about it!!!

We also have finished revamping our Holiday Traditions Around the World Unit!  We have done many of these activities with our kiddos for over 10 years and they always love "traveling" around the world to visit other countries and learn about their traditions!  If you would like to check it out just click on the preview page below!

We will give a copy of this away to the first person that comments about it!

We also want to give you a freebie from the literature centers!  Just click on either of the pictures below to head over to TPT and pick it up!

Enjoy and happy almost Christmas break!!!!

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December Currently, I only did that because someone told me to.... plus a freebie :)

It is December Currently time!  Yay!!!

My girls are LOVING helping with the tree this year!  They did laps around our main floor with beads until we got the ornaments out.  So stinkin cute!!!  Here is a pic the hubby caught of them with their beads.

(and yes we have already broken out the Santa and Christmas jammies at my house!!!  I can't get enough of my girls in them!!)

My girls are really into helping me with anything in the kitchen right now so I want to make cookies with them and then have them help me pass them out to some of our neighbors for our RAK activity!

Here is Katie's Currently!

I love this time of year before Christmas break.  We have so many fun things that I LOVE doing with the kiddos, but for some reason my group this year has set a new level of tattling and dislike for personal responsibility.  On top of that for some reason they have chosen this time of year to kick it into high gear!   I can't get a straight answer out of over 1/2 my class!  If I ask what that kiddo did they always answer with some version of, "so and so made me do it, told me to do it, everyone else did it too!", etc.  Grrrrrrr!!!!  I'm running out of ways to say, "I'm not asking about anyone else, I am only asking what you did". 

2 more weeks....2 more weeks....2 more weeks....

I am really looking forward to recharging over break and brainstorming some ideas on how to get through to these little darlings!!

On to a more fun topic!  My kiddos are obsessed with holidays (any of them!) and craftivities this year so I have been taking advantage of it big time!  For some reason they love to make seasonal craftivities with their spelling words on them and to have me hang them from the ceiling!  Hey, if it gets them to practice spelling I am all for it!!!  We did turkeys for Thanksgiving and wrote spelling words on the feathers and for Christmas we are getting ready to do a tree with ornaments tomorrow!  My kiddos saw a parent helper cutting out the pieces of the craftivity and have been talking about it all week!  If you would like to grab the pattern just click on the picture below!

(This is set to public so that anyone can have it, so if you get to google docs please just download.  You don't need to ask us to share....we already have!  :)


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Reindeer Food Freebie

Hello!  Happy almost Friday.  I am short a babysitter tomorrow so I get to take the day off and stay home with my girls!   I don't love doing sub plans, but I was actually excited when my hubby said he couldn't take the day off because of meetings and that I would get to stay home!   I love getting to be home for something besides my girls or myself being sick.

Katie just finished up our reindeer food buddy activity that we are going to be doing with our 5th grade buddies.  This would be a fun activity with just your class or with a buddy class.  Just click on the picture below if you would like to grab it!

Happy almost weekend!!!


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I LOVE the weeks leading up to Christmas Break!! (and a freebie)

I absolutely love this time of year!  These 3 weeks leading up to Christmas Break are so incredibly busy and chock full of activities.  Both Katie and I find new books and activities every year and just keep adding them to our stockpile of Christmas fun.  Starting next week I think we have at least one Christmasy activity a day (if not more!!).  We also have both hit the easy button jackpot with our classes this year. In the past we have had kiddos who don't celebrate Christmas so we have had to adapt activities.  This year every one of our kiddos celebrates Christmas.  This makes life REALLY easy as far as holiday fun planning! 

Katie is finishing up a really cute buddy activity that we are going to be using with our 5th grade buddies next week and when she is finished with a sample we will post that as a freebie for you.  We also just finished our It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas math centers.  Here is a freebie of one of the centers for you!  Just click on the first picture to head over and pick it up!

Enjoy!!



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It has been awhile and some freebies!

Yikes!  It has been quite awhile since our last post!  I have to hand it to all the bloggers out their in bloggy land who do a blog, tpt store, etc. all by yourself!  There are two of us here and we STILL feel like we can't keep up with life!
So personally life has been a whirlwind for me!  My grandpa has been having some heart trouble for the past 3-4 months on and off.  He has been in and out of the hospital while they have been trying to figure out what works to keep his heart rate from getting too fast or too slow.  All this heart trouble means my grandpa and my aunt (who helps take care of him) can't travel.  This kills them since they are missing out on seeing my girls as much as they would like! So recently while my husband was away for work I packed up my girls and we flew from Kansas to Florida for a REALLY quick visit.  I'm so glad that we went because while we were there my grandpa ended up back in the hospital again!  It was good to be able to be there and visit him with the girls.  I think that that helped cheer him up.  So they FINALLY think that they have figured out a combination of medicine that will help him out and he and my aunt should be able to fly at Thanksgiving.  Yay!!!!!!!

The other thing that has been keeping me from blogging as much as I would like is......

So far my doctor says she is pretty sure it is just one baby, but they thought my girls were just one baby until 5 1/2 months!!!!!  So I am not counting my blessing either way for a little bit yet! :)

On a school note we have been BUSY, BUSY, BUSY!!!!  We are only at school today and Tuesday of this week. Woohoo!!!!  Then after we get back from Thanksgiving break we can start the Christmas break countdown!  What a whirlwind.  The countdown until Christmas break is our favorite because we have SO much stuff that we love to fit in.

If you are still looking for something to do this week with your kiddos here are a couple of class books to go with some of our favorite Thanksgiving books.
Click on the  picture below to grab the class book we do with  A Plump and Perky Turkey by Teresa Bateman.

Click on the next picture to grab the class book we do with The Great Turkey Race by Steve Metzger.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving Break!

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The Day After Halloween....

Did anyone else have trouble getting up this morning?  Did you drive to work with more then a little bit of dread??

 It has been a LONG day for us!  Our kiddos came in sugared UP!  Both Katie and I were standing in the hallway outside of our rooms greeting our little cherubs as they came in this morning.  Yikes!  When the first few kiddos came tearing around the corner, pushing, shoving, and running full speed we knew it was going to be an interesting day.  Most of the rest of the kiddos came in full tilt, but there were also a few who stayed up WAY too late and d.r.a.g.g.e.d themselves in to the classroom after the late bell had rung.  Apparently some of the houses were giving away sugar iv's instead of packaged candy last night!!!!

Luckily for us we had not gotten through all of our activities earlier in the week so we were able to grab at least a tad bit of their attention today by finishing some Halloween related activities. 
We did this cute compound word spider and web match activity from Andrea at Reading Towards the Stars.

In addition to our reading story for the week and our math lesson we also found time to do a Halloween Class Joke Book and a class book for A Job for Wittilda.  It seems that even on the day AFTER Halloween anything Halloween related is still a hit. Our kiddos worked pretty hard to complete what they had to do, so that they could get to the activities that they wanted to do!

Here is also a peek at some of the activities we did in my classroom yesterday!

We did a super fun activity with our 5th grade buddy class.  I LOVED getting to do this, because our currrent 5th grade buddy class has some of my favorite former 2nd graders in it!!  Not to mention that I got to hang out with a fun 5th grade teacher friend who I never get to see! (Our rooms are on opposite sides of the building)  We did a venn diagram with our buddies and then made some frankenstien friends.  Sooooo cute!!!  I bought this unit from Cindy at Granny Goes to School.  You can check it out here if you are interested. It was only $2 and both the 2nd graders and 5th graders loved it!

We also made Spelling Spiders with our spelling words.

I also got to take my own little cuties trick or treating last night.  The hubby and I met up with our good friends to take our kiddos together.  My friend's hubby is a youth pastor so we did the early trick or treating so that he could still get to church early enough to set up!  It was a BLAST!  My friend's little girl is 4 and insisted on pulling my girls in a wagon.  She took them up to each door and made sure each person gave her "little honeybees" candy too!  It was precious!!!! 

We laughed ourselves silly because the girls are really into purses right now and thought that their bags were purses.  They were so thrilled that people were putting things into their bags that they went crazy each time!  In the wagon Brylee kept taking her candy out and setting it down in the cupholder.  Each time she went back to dig for more in her bag, Rylan took the candy Brylee had just set down and added it to her own bag!  Hilarious!  Rylan ended up dragging a bag full of candy and Brylee had about 2 pieces!!!Thank goodness that they don't eat candy yet and didn't know the difference!!!  My hubby had out the fancy camera and was snapping pics, but I haven't seen them yet...so in the meantime here are a few blurry camera phone pics of my little honeybees!!



I hope your Halloween was great and that you made it through the dreaded Day After Halloween!

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Here Comes Halloween and Miss V's Busy Bees Giveaway

Happy almost Halloween friends!!!  We are BUSY with Halloween related activities here in 2nd grade.  We have figured if we can't beat them we might as well join them!  Our kiddos are so excited that if we even vaguely relate something we are doing to Halloween they are excited about it.

Here is one of our favorite art projects that we do around this time!  We do a little research on owls, read some of our favorite owl books and then make this little friend. 

We are also participating in Sara's giveaway at Miss V's Busy Bees.  It is a HUGE giveaway so make sure you check it out!!!!

Also, don't forget about our sale! Click on the picture to head on over and check it out!

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Late to the Party...

Hello and happy Monday!
  We have been MIA this past week!  Katie was hit with bronchitis AND the flu at the same time.  She was actually gone from school for 3 days, which is NOT a normal occurence!!  She finally was able to get into the Dr. (again) and got some great antibiotics.  Thank goodness she is back at work now because I have missed her!

  In my life...well...my twins are 17 months old and have become VERY possessive of Mommy!  I am so blessed because my husband's days off are during the week and he is home with the girls 2 days and my parents watch them the other 3 days.  So I know they are in good hands when I have to be at work.   Lately when I walk in the door my girls don't want to leave my side (which I kind of love:)  for the rest of the day.  Weekends are the same!  Sooooooo, while I absolutely LOVE getting to spend so much time with my girlies, I don't get anything else done!  For the past few weeks I have been on the, if I can't do it on my phone it doesn't get done, plan!  Oh well, such is life!!! :)

So all of that explanation to say that Katie and I are WAY late to the Halloween sale party that everyone in blogland has been having!  We are finally catching up and everything in our store will be 20% off from now through Halloween!  Enjoy!!!!!

Clipart by KPM doodles, background by Print Candee, frame by Kathleen Amari-Crookston.

Just for giggles....  My favorite comment lately from one of my little darlings, "Mrs. Wonderlich, I keep telling Dalyn the answers, but he is arguing with me about whether they are right or not!"   Oh geesh!!!!!  Apparently to my little darlings the biggest problem is not that they are cheating and giving answers, but that the friend won't believe the answers are right!  It's going to be a long year! :)

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Giveaway winner, Conference Freebies, and We Have Been Boo'd!

First of all we have a winner of our 350 follower giveaway!  The winner is Ellen Yucht!  Congrats Ellen!!!  We will be contacting you today so that you can start receiving AND picking all of your prizes!!

We also were Boo'd by Sara at Miss V's Busy Bees!  This is a different boo then the one that we received early, but just as much fun!  One of the fun aspects of this Boo is that you get to pick a product from the person who Boo'd you!  Sara has so many great things in her store, but we had to pick her Making Words All Year Long unit!  This will be great for our Word Work Center!!!  We somehow made the picture blurry...but you can still click on it to head over to Sara's store and check it out if you would like!!!

Here's how to play.  Choose a fellow blogger that has MORE followers, another that has about the SAME number of followers, and last, someone that has LESS followers.

Highlight their blogs with links to encourage others to check them out.  Don't forget to let your fellow bloggers know that you shared about them. 

Lastly, leave them some love by offering them a goody from your store as their "treat."

Here are my three.  Just click on their button to check out their blogs.

We are sharing the love with the following 3 bloggers!

Jodi at Southern Sweetie in Second.  For some reason we have thought this is a fun blog name since we first found her!!  It is catchy!!  She also has some really cute noun poster freebies up for grabs right now, so pop on over and check her out!

April from Wolfelicious.  This is another great blog that you will want to visit!

Halle and Jenna from Across the Hall in 2nd Grade.  They are second grade coworkers with a blog together...how could Katie and I NOT love that!!!! :)

We have also won 2 AMAZING giveaways lately! Woo hoo!!!!!!!  If you haven't had a chance to check out these wonderful bloggers then...you should!!!!

 Aaaaaannnnnnddddd...last, but not least, conference freebies!
I'm not sure where my picture of this went...but you can click here to grab our 2nd grade book list if you want to share it at conferences.  It has a list of favorite picture books, easy chapter books, chapter books, and authors that are usually a hit with second graders.  Our parents usually love getting this and take it to the library with them!

We give grades for reading, math, and spelling in our district so we do a grade card at a glance to give parents a quick visual of these three grades and percentages.  (This is usually the only thing they are really interested in on the report card!!!)  If you could use this just click on the picture and you can grab it!

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