President's Day!

There's so many fun things you can do to learn about the Presidents and celebrate President's Day, but we just did a couple of simple things this year. I think in a few years the kids will be more ready to tackle the information, but for now we just stuck to knowing that George Washington & Abraham Lincoln were presidents and they each did special things to help our country. We did this color by number of George Washington and then did a paper plate craft to make his face! Things always look cuter on Pinterest...but oh well, they had fun :-)

 

For older kids, I  have this cute Abraham Lincoln Mystery Picture Graphing Activity!

 

 

Since we lived in a country that had a king (Jordan) for several years, it was a great springboard for discussion about the differences between a king and a president. They were asking some great questions! I love curious little minds :-)

Valentine's Fun!

We had fun this year during Valentine's week! We did a lot of art, which the kids love, but we don't usually get to it everyday! Here's some of the things we enjoyed:

 

Heart Symmetry Painting: Put paint on one side of the heart,

then fold in half to create a symmetrical picture!

 

 

Pop Art Heart by Art With Jenny K

 

Dot Marker Heart Art: Tape a paper heart with the center cut out on white paper. Use dot markers all over the page, then gently take off the taped heart!

 

 

Conversation Hearts Sorting & Graphing by Pocketful of Centers

 

 

Valentine's Mystery Pictures using Hundreds Charts & 120 Charts!

 

 

I hope your week was great!



Olympic Painting

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To celebrate the first day of the Winter Olympics we did a little Olympic style painting!

 

I put some red, yellow, blue, green, and black paint on a tray.

 



Then we used small cups dipped in the paint to make circles on white paper to look like the Olympic rings! You could also use toilet paper or paper towel rolls, but my kids always squish those up so fast, so the cups worked better to keep a perfect circle shape. 

 

The kids loved it, and it was a great way to introduce the winter games!

February Giveaway!

It's time for this month's giveaway! I'll be giving away not one, but TWO $25 gift certificates! One for Target and one for Teachers Pay Teachers.

 

There are several ways to enter!

-Like my page on Facebook

-"Share" my post about the giveaway on Facebook

-Leave a blog post comment here

-Follow Mrs. Thompson's Treasures on TpT

-Follow on Instagram

-Repost my picture about the giveaway on Instagram

and tag #mrsthompsonstreasuresgiveaway

 

I'll announce the winners on Monday! Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

February Currently

It's that time again for Currently with Farley from Oh' Boy 4th Grade!

Right now I'm currently:

 

 

Yes - my husband and I decided it was time to detox a little from sugar! So we are doing one month with no "extra sugar" like desserts, candy, soda, etc. For me that also means no diet soda which I am completely addicted to! We're on day 5, and both surviving :-)

 

Did you figure out the fib? Well, if you know anything about me or read my profile you know that I lived overseas for 5 years and have traveled many places around the world....so I have definitely been on a few airplanes! I truly have never gotten a speeding ticket, or even pulled over for speeding! I just like going the speed limit! And, yes I went bungee jumping when I was 14. I was vacationing with my friend and her family in South Padre, and we did it. I told my parents afterwards. Better to ask forgiveness than permission. :-)

 

 

Word Sorts

I decided to start doing some spelling lessons with my kindergartener this week. I wasn't doing it before because he is such a good reader that I assumed he would be able to spell very well too. But then I got some great advice from another homeschool mom who said her child was the same, but as he got older he was an awful speller because they never worked on it. So I decided to start doing some!

I did a little research and decided that I wanted to use the word sort method, where basically each week he has a group of words that can be sorted into similar spelling patterns. We did very simple words this week (-ap, -am, and -at word families) to get our feet wet. I think it went really well! I'm still looking for other fun activities we can do with the words (suggestions welcome) but here's what we did this week:

Monday - Give him the paper with the words on it. He cut them out and sorted them into groups. I didn't tell him how to sort, I just let him figure it out. Then he read all the words. We put the words in a baggie to keep.

Tuesday - He sorted the words again. Then he traced and wrote each word.

Wednesday - He traced each word 3 times with different colors (we call it Rainbow Words) then cut them out and glued them in groups on a tri-folded piece of construction paper.

Thursday - Test! I read the words aloud as he wrote them down.

 

Week 1: Success!

Valentine's Day Forever Freebies

This weekend I'm involved in a Facebook Free-for-all, where you can get some great free resources for a limited time! (See previous post)

But I also wanted to get together a collection of Valentine's Day forever freebies that will be available all the time! Link up your favorite V-Day forever freebies below and be sure to browse around at all the other great resources!!

Here are two of mine:

Free Valentine's Day Heart Owl Hundreds Chart Mystery Picture

 

 

My Valentine Count & Color Book

 

 

January Facebook Free-for-all!

This weekend (Jan 25-27) I'm joining up with some amazing teachers to offer you some great free resources (many will be Valentine's Day themed)! Mostly elementary, but a few for middle and high school as well! We're doing a Facebook Free-for-all, so you can find all the links to the free products from our Facebook pages! The list of everyone participating is here. When you go to someone's page, look for the small tab that looks like the picture below.

Get ready for some great stuff!

Hope to see you there! <3<3<3<3<3<3

Synonym Memory Match

Sometimes I don't exactly get all the lesson plans detailed out like I should.  :-/

I used to be a very organized and plan ahead kind of person, and I still love to have things organized, but lately I find myself kind of making up lessons as we go along! Today we were learning about synonyms, so I did some introduction and practice on the white board (along with discussing the difference between a synonym and cinnamon!) Then I had the idea to play a game to practice! So we got out a piece of construction paper and I cut it into squares, then wrote some synonyms on them. We turned them upside down and played memory match! He kept wanting to find opposites....but eventually he got it. Games are so much more fun than worksheets!

Martin Luther King Jr. Day Activities

I'm excited to teach about MLK Jr. this year to my kids! We're going to do lots of activities on Monday to learn about him. There's no sense in "taking a day off" for the holiday because my husband will still be working and I'll be at home all day with the kids anyway!

I created a mystery picture graph of MLK Jr. - find it here!

 

This activity is a little hard for my little ones, so I went searching for other fun activities we could do! We're going to read, Happy Birthday Martin Luther King by Jean Marzollo.

 

 

Then do these fun activities I found - a poster activity all about MLK Jr. It's a free download from Curriculum Castle!

 

 

 

And then we'll make something like this craft I found on Pinterest! 

I'd love to hear of fun things you do in your classroom to teach about/celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.!