Kickin' Off The Kindness Challenge with Snowbuddies!

Next week we are starting the Kindness Challenge that runs January 26th through the 30th! If you are interested in joining us in the challenge visit The Great Kindness Challenge page! If your school is already signed up I would love to hear what kinds of things you are doing in your classroom next week, so comment below!   

via Pinterest

Today we spent some time getting to know our classmates a bit better.  Around this time of year I always like to mix it up and challenge them to make a new friend in the class. 

So today I paired them up with a student that I don't see them spend much time with and encouraged them to talk about their interests.   It is so neat circling the classroom hearing conversations about their favorite movies, colors, hobbies and so much more.  I know we do all this in the beginning of the school year but doing it mid-year makes a big difference too. We used these snowman Venn Diagrams that you can find for FREE in my store! 

The best part of my day was hearing them come up to me and say "We ran out of room in the middle of our Venn Diagram! I never knew we had so much in common!"  It was also exciting to see them come up with differences that make them each special and unique in their own way.  

Via Pinterest

If you visit my store and download the Snowman Venn Diagram I also have other pages in the freebie so you can do text-to-text comparisons with snowman read alouds.  I have included the book titles in the freebie PDF file.  

Enjoy! 

3, 2, 1...First Freebie Ready

Right before we went on Winter Break I created a cumulative review for my students and they had a blast so I wanted to share!

So let me set the scene...T'was the night before the last day of school before a 16 day break, we would be starting the day off with a holiday sing-a-long and they would be leaving two hours early to start their winter vacation!  I sat cosy on my couch in front of our Christmas tree and thought to myself 'how am I going to keep my students engaged right after running around the gym dancing to holiday tunes?'  Then it came to me...we would scoot around the room and review all sorts of exciting topics to celebrate our learning from 2014!  So I created the Snowman Scoot.  

Let me tell you, I was nervous about how engaged they would be because of all the excitement in the air but after the assembly they got right to work.  Five minutes later another teacher stopped by the room. She saw 24 pairs of eyes staring at their task cards while answering on clipboards. She couldn't believe how calm they were after such an exciting morning! SCORE! It made me one happy teacher to see them so focused.  

Snowman Scoot has a little bit of everything.  Review of compound words, contractions, homophones, punctuation and even fractions, addition, subtraction and place value.

So whether it is a snowy month of January for you, or you are looking for a nice review to start the new year off right... I hope you enjoy this little freebie!

Thank you for stopping by! Let me know if you have any questions!