Sugar Cone Christmas Trees

Today we had so much fun decorating sugar cones to look like Christmas trees.  You just color white can frosting green and frost a sugar cone.   The students also created a snow village on the plate.  We used powdered sugar for snow.

These are just a couple examples of the finished products.  I wish I had thought about more specific items to use for the village, like grammy bears, better items for snowmen, sled items,etc.
This is so much easier than the gingerbread houses.  I will think it through next year.
Do any of you have some good ideas for snow villages?

Encouraging Children!

“Instruction does much, but encouragement everything."
This is a quote by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. 

I am a First Grade Teacher and I have some students that are having a difficult time learning. This quote by this great German writer reminds me how important it is to find encouraging words for our students every day. It would be interesting to see if those difficult students would do betterif we as teachers, made an effort to find something encouraging to say to those students. I am going to try to make that my goal as we approach a new year.

How many of you will make that goal with me? I would love to see the results for those sweet children.
What encouraging remarks do you make to your students daily?

I just posted this on FB and I had one teacher say she gave high fives.

Do any of you wonderful teachers, parents, or adults that work with children have anything you say or do to encourage your children?

Samples of our Christmas Word Order

The first part of our activity is to cut out the words and put them in the correct word order to make a sentence.

Then you glue the words in order and copy your sentence and illustrate it.

This was the front of the paper and I love how she decorated the tree shapes at the top!

This is a few samples of what my students did on the back of their papers

for the bonus:  Write a fact about Hanukkah.

Saint Lucia

Today is Saint Lucia and my students worked together to make Saint Lucia crowns and Star Boy hats and wands.  I was so proud of how well they worked together and helped each other with their projects.  We always try to do "T, Team working Together" This is from our Quality Student Song and my students have really embraced what the letters in Quality mean from the song.

This is a few more pictures of how well the boys worked together.

Our team work paid off.  We all had crowns or star hats.  Way to go team!
                                                                                  

SNOW DAY:)

Well it is a snowy day here in Virginia and we are enjoying our day off!  What did our dog Molly find?   Her own snow ball to play with.  What fun things do you do on a Snow Day?

November Writings

My students chose 5 of their calendar words for November and wrote a story.  These are just a couple of them.  I am so excited to see them learning so many words and using them in their writing!

Making a Menorah

This is a great way to make a menorah.  My students love glitter!