10 Amazing Links to Christmas Crafts

Happy December! I, personally, cannot believe it is December let alone almost 2015! To start off the holiday season, check out the Top 10 Links below that include crafts, gifts, and food ideas to do with your kids and/or students! I made this list thinking about a variety of skill levels, amount of resources to create them, and of course...time. Depending on which of these you struggle with, hopefully you can find one...or two that will work well for you and your children/students!

Top 10 Festive Activities to do with Kids:

1. Popsicle Stick Ornaments
2. 36 Adorable Ornament Ideas
3. 30 Kid-Friendly Handmade Ornaments
4. 25 Kid-Friendly Crafts
5. Child Friendly Christmas Tree Ideas
6. DIY Holiday Wrapping Paper
7. Applesauce Ornaments
8. Easy Snowmen Crafts
9. Yummy Holiday Treats
10. All Skill Levels for Festive Treats for Kids  

The Gift of Giving
In my classroom, every year we make an ornament for students to share with someone at home.  They wrap it in a small bag, and take it home the day before Winter Break.  Students are really excited about this!  I also think it is important to teach them the gift of giving.  Since I cannot control what they do with their ornaments when they get home, or enjoy the look on their parents' faces when they give it to them...I do this at school as well.  We make about 20+ extra ornaments to pass out to administration, support staff, and other special helpers that help us in our classroom.  Students work together to complete the extra ones.  The last day before Winter Break, we walk around the school with the wrapped ornaments to give to these special people in our life.  Students are SO excited to see the faces of the teachers open their packages.  Students do a really great job walking around the building finding our gift receivers.  All-in-all, my goal is for students to feel the gift of giving, rather than receiving. My hope is they will continue to love the feeling of giving so they grow up to be well-rounded, caring members of their community.


Ornaments My Students Have Completed
As friends and family members are putting up their Christmas decorations, a great friend of mine sent me this picture below:

You just have to smile when looking at art of an 8-year old. Made with lots of LOVE!

It makes me happy, as I'm sure it would as well for my students last year, to know teachers are proudly displaying my students' work of art on their trees still! So we obviously made Christmas Trees out of Popsicle sticks this past year.  It was a total of 1 center a day for 3-days...so not much academic time was missed out to make these trees.  Day 1: Painting the sticks; Day 2: Gluing the sticks together & decorating; Day 3: Items are dry, so we write on the back & add a ribbon to hang! I leave a day in between the gift giving just in case someone is absent or something goes wrong.  By Day 5, students are giving out their gifts. 

A mentor of mine taught me how to make cinnamon ornaments with my students.  We have done this activity in the past, which makes my room smell wonderful.  It does take a little more effort as baking is involved.  One year, students made these circle-shaped foam ornaments one year.  They were able to draw, decorate, and glue tons of fun things on them and they only took a couple days as there was minimum amounts of drying.  So if you're running low on time, run to the craft store and pick up multiple shaped foam pieces and make some cheap and engaging ornaments.

Good luck finishing those presents and have fun sharing the holiday spirit with your students, fellow colleagues, and your own family!

Happy Holidays

and as always...

My Gift to YOU!

Happy Holidays from 3L + 1T!  My gift to you all for being great followers, a Teachers Pay Teachers sale! On December 1st and 2nd, enjoy 20% off of ALL (yes, that is correct) ALL of my products in my store. With the gift TPT is giving you, you can save up to 28% on products.  What a great way to start the New Year!

Click the banner above to go directly to my store!

Check out my other blog posts for great ideas and direct links to products.

Literacy During the Holidays

Thanksgiving Ideas

Parent Teacher Conferences

Writing Ideas

Back to School Night

First Day of School

Centers/Stations

Student Data Tracking: Math Facts

Birthdays

Organization

Common Core Checklists

Summer Success

Genre Study

Classroom Rewards
Writing as Homework
Student Data Tracking: Reading Levels
Review Cards: ELA
Spring Activities
Multiplication Bulletin Board

Making Your Math Block Full of Holiday Cheer

I love teaching around the holidays, as it adds something new and exciting in terms of themes. It is a fun way to keep them engaged, as we know they are all thinking about holiday treats, presents, and snow days! So why not include those items they want to discuss with you into something educational? This post is all about including holiday cheer into your math block, but if you're looking for literacy based activities, visit my holiday literacy post.

Perimeter and Area

In my math block, we were studying perimeter and area (now that we are finally learning our multiplication facts!) in December.  I decided that I didn't have time to do something too extreme, like wrap multiple shaped packages to them to find the actual perimeter and area. I love activities, but I did not have time for that!

I created an interactive worksheet where students can work with presents of all shapes and sizes to find the perimeter and area.  Now, we haven't worked too much with measurement this year, so I didn't have them use their own measurement tools, but you could do this (outside of my TPT product).

Find my "Wrappin' Up Perimeter and Area product...HERE!

Roll a Holiday Tree 

I also think it is fun for my students to have some holiday fun during centers/stations. Although the rest of my centers may include current skills, I like to include one engaging one where they can work in partners/small groups with dice to complete a task.  I also don't add a lot of coloring, drawing, unless it has a complete educational purpose...but this time, I don't mind!

Roll a Holiday Tree is where students take turns rolling the dice.  When it lands on a certain number they draw the item associated with the number.  For example, if 4 says to draw the ornaments, that's what they have to draw first. The pictures end up coming out great as they have to really think about the placement if they are not able to draw the tree first.  The product works on teamwork, following directions, number skills, and fine motor skills.

Go to my Teachers Pay Teachers store for other holiday activities or view the product here!

*Holiday Literacy Activities

If you are also wanting some literacy activities to complete around the holidays, I have a post on this as well.

Happy Holidays from 3L + 1T!!

 

 

Adding Literacy During the Holidays

Book Clubs

Winter Break is right around the corner which means students will start getting a little antsy as they are getting ready to be on an extended beak and well for the most of us around the States they are stuck inside because of cold and snowy weather outside. I really try to make the 3 weeks in December really engaging, although I want them to still have lots of academics before break as well.  Chances are many students won't read a single word over their 2-week break. Scary, Scary, Scary!

I LOVE book clubs, or many call them, literature circles. I enjoy these because they are highly engaging, group oriented, bring a lot of discussion amount equivalent readers, and all have the reading/writing connection.  I have created 4 different holiday book clubs for my third grade classroom. The book selection was based on the needs of my classroom, so these may not translate  to every third grade class around the world.

1. Judy B. Jones and the Yucky Blucky Fruitcake (GR: Level M)
2. Judy Moody & Stink, The Holly Joliday (GR: ~Level M)
3. Miss Holly is Too Jolly (GR: Level O)
4. Who is Stealing the 12 Days of Christmas? (GR: Level Q)

Each book contains a breakdown of what chapter(s) to read during a 7-day period, except for Who is Stealing the 12 Days of Christmas? as this was my highest reading group and I was able to work with them a little differently since the book was at a higher level.  The group was independent enough to work on their own and together to complete the task.

Each group met with the teacher 2-3 times during their 7-day book club project.  I know 7 days does not match up with a normal school week, so it was technically a two week project (10 days).  Seven days they were reading, 1-2 days to catch up if we were behind, and/or 1-2 days to complete the final project.

The final projects were group oriented and we spent 1.5 Literacy Blocks completed them.  Because I wanted everyone to learn about the books other groups read, we created large movie posters (No pictures...bummer, I know!) to try to entice classmates to read this book over break.  Each student had a job (writer, artist, leader, supply manager, time manager, question master, presenter).  I hope to have a blog post soon on how these group activities work in my classroom.

After they completed their movie poster, they presented to the class what the book was about (without giving too much away).  It was a great informal assessment as you could truly tell which group members understood the book well and could answer the questions their classmates asked with confidence.  I added this as a grade as well.

A little more about the books/questions:

 Judy B. Jones group is asked to complete summaries of each chapter they complete using Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then and then completed a final summary in paragraph form of the book. Judy Moody's group is asked to complete a variety of questions about the text. They are comparing/contrasting, describing, identifying, and summarizing.

 Miss. Holly is Too Jolly asks group members to complete a variety of questions including grammar based, comparing, identifying, giving details, and summarizing.  Who is Stealing the 12 Days of Christmas? is all summaries of the chapter(s) read in paragraph form.

*Each group has the "Rate this Book" at the end of

Adjective Passage

If you are not looking to create a huge project around the holidays, as there is too many assessments, projects, papers, etc. due I also love included reading into grammar skills. No matter the grammar subject, my students are always reading and identifying it in text.  I think students retain the information more when they practice in text rather than the skill in isolation.

I have created a passage that has LOADS of adjectives in it.  Students are asked to read the passage and find the adjectives within it.  Where does the holiday part come in you may ask? Well, the passage is about a snow day! Many of us can already relate to a snowy filled day already this year!

Students will circle all the adjective they find in the text, but then they are also asked to draw a line to the noun it is describing, as that is just as important as the adjective itself.

Get this product...here!