A NEW YEAR!

                                                      
Happy New Year! I start each new year wondering what's in store for the year ahead. Many times there are predictable things, but often I'm completely surprised! For today, I'm counting the many blessings God has provided, starting with my family and friends!

SNOW DAY! Merry Christmas!

Our winter break is starting a day early! We have freezing rain shutting down most of the schools in Kent County (Michigan).  We were able to do much of our celebration yesterday, as this storm was forecast-ed all week.  We made sure desks and lockers were cleaned out and Christmas projects were sent home. 
Now, it's time to start wrapping! I'm still in my jammies, sipping coffee, watching the news.  Thankful for this "bonus" day!

Indoor Recess

The kids handled it well, but indoor recess, with 8 days to go until Christmas break, is NOT a teacher's most loved part of the day (at least not THIS teacher's)!  It really keyed the kids up for the rest of the afternoon.  Add to that, the 6 inches of snow that fell between 11 and 3, and we had restless students! Tomorrow should be so much better....it's the Christmas concert day!!!

They did have fun with the reindeer crafts and activities, as well as the reindeer writing we did during Daily 5. Hopefully we can get some quality work out of them in the coming days!

This Week....where did it go?

I'm home on a Saturday morning, sipping coffee and listening to Christmas music by our beautiful tree! I'm feeling so blessed!

We are making some good progress in our classroom and just in time to include some fun holiday activities!  During our Literacy Block, we use Daily 5 (our version of it) and just completed a nonfiction unit on Natural Resources. We use BUILD during math time and just completed our addition unit and started subtraction.

We "lost" two students and gained one! We have 53 in our combined classroom.  As winter break gets closer, the excitement in the classroom builds!  We have a holiday concert this coming week and we've been starting every day practicing our music. We have a box of Christmas books we will be using for Daily 5 and a fun Math game, incorporating 2 step story problems.  Stay tuned....I hope to post some pictures!

Hang in there....winter break is coming!