[jammies day] OR [the start of Winter Break at my house]

Went to bed last night early.

Early as in I probably beat my first graders to bed early.

Fighting a sinus infection.

Feel like I've been punched in the face.  Repeatedly.

Slept mostly well.

And then. . .

the FIRST day I could actually sleep in. . .

my daughter's Zhu-Zhu pets decided to stage a revolt.

All 10 of them.

At 5:23 am.

Seriously.

That's 3 minutes past my normal wake up time.

Uuuugggghhh.

Seriously.

Not to be deferred from my sleeping in day,

I closed the door tightly and went back to sleep.  :)

Until 8:52 am.

That's just crazy! 

A wonderfully delightful kind of crazy.

The sort of crazy that I could easily become accustomed to.

But it gets even better. . .

I then simply stayed in bed and played on my phone - facebook, e-mail, kindle.

Until the rugrats decided they were STARVING! so I had to get up and make breakfast.

Sausage, eggs, pancakes, orange juice.

The very best part?!

I'm still in my jammies!

Breakfast is over.

The kidlets are watching tv.

I'm sitting at the table (in the warm spot over the heat vent), drinking my morning Diet Coke and playing on the computer.

Yep, this is the sort of crazy that I could easily become accustomed to.

Welcome to MY winter break!

[elf] hundreds chart coloring

Yep, another one!

This time the clue cards use ten rods and single cubes.

It's much more visual.

My kiddos did LOTS better on this one!

If you're interested, the colored elf and clue cards are HERE.

The 0-99 chart is HERE.

It's almost winter break. . .

[Don't Eat] game boards

Prepared not Scared has downloads available of Reindeer, cookies, and elves.

So cute.

Perfect for a quick game during the day (since we know that keeping the attention of our little monkeys this week is going to require a LOT of extra tricks!!).

Make sure you leave her a comment if you download these games.

Good luck this week...

[NEWS FLASH!] replacing Rudolph

This was an awesome project!  Perfect for a Friday afternoon.
Would be perfect for an afternoon before winter break!

Honestly so much fun!

Easy to do.

And cute!  Everyone that walked by the hall display commented on how awesome it was!

I smile every time I look at the finished result!

The kids LOVED making themselves into Rudolph.
(Not sure where I first saw this idea, but it's definitely NOT my original idea!).

The NEWS FLASH page was something I came up with to make this a project with a purpose.  ;)

I laughed pretty hard at the things they would do as Rudolph.
(Some of my favorites: eat dry oatmeal, shine my nose, ask Santa for a present, fly really fast).

If you're interested, the NEWS FLASH page is HERE.

Merry Christmas!

[Counting and Number Patterns] Rudolph on the 0-99 chart

This is still a very novel idea for my kiddos, so I'm going to get as much mileage as possible out of it before they revolt.  ;)

The coloring of the Christmas Tree yesterday was indeed a very good practice/introduction to number patterns.  A few of my smarties even started to pick up on the 10 more/10 less pattern on the chart!  YAY!!!

(Of course, being able to figure out the answer and explain it mathematically earned a lollipop, so that might have helped too, lol).

However, it took us a L.O.N.G time to finish that Christmas Tree!  A very.long.time.

Today's activity only has 30 clues.

14 less than yesterday.

And we're making Rudolph!

My monkeys have a slight fascination with that red-nosed reindeer.

Should be an adventure.

You can find the colored Rudolph and number clues HERE.

And the 0-99 chart HERE.

Enjoy.

[Mixed Up Elves] subtraction review

It's almost time for our end of topic assessment.

We need a little more review.

A fun little December review.  :)

Simple subtraction equations and number bonds.

Images linked to the pdf download if this is something you'd like to use in your classroom.

Comments are awesome!

If you download this, please leave a little love.

Thanks and Happy Thursday!

[Here we go again!]

Thanksgiving break was wonderful.

Grammy came to play.

We spent just a little too much money.

Ate a little too much delicious food.

Slept a little too much.

Decorated the tree.

Put up the nativities.

Made (and ate!) homemade chocolates.

Took lots of pictures.

And enjoyed the time together.

I might have said bad words when my alarm went off this morning.

I'm excited to get back to school to see my littles and hear about their Thanksgiving Break adventures, but dang, that 5:10 wake up thing just about did me in!

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving!

Here's a fun little Rudolph label it with an added page of VERBS: What can Rudolph do?

We'll be working on NOUNS and VERBS this week in addition to finishing up our autobiographies and perhaps working a little bit on handwriting.  Wow do we ever need some help in that department!

Happy Monday!  :)