Homemade Christmas Gifts for Coworkers, Students, Neighbors and Friends {2014 edition} Freebies

Hi friends! :)  I just printed and prepped the last of our 2014 Christmas gifts and finally have some time to relax and unwind. It's a Wonderful Life is on the TV and I have two sweet pups curled up next to me on the couch. It's my own little piece of heaven. 

I wanted to take some time today to share some of the gift tags from Christmas gifts that I shared on my IG account.  A lot of people asked and I'm excited to share them with you as a special holiday gift today! 

Our Christmas gifts were Pinspired this year and I have had a lot of fun putting everything together! A recap of our holiday gifts, for school and home, is below.  Even if you can't use them this year, you might find something to Pin away for next year!

My husband is a general manager for a nationwide bakery cafe chain and wanted to do something special for his assistant managers this year to let them know how much he appreciates their hard work.  

I picked up a few movie themed snacks at The Dollar Tree, some buttered popcorn from Aldi, and printed off some giftcards from Redbox to make a fun movie night box.  The tubs and tissue paper are from The Dollar Tree as well. 

He also has 25+ associates that he wanted to do something special for.  My first thought was a $5 gift card to Starbucks but my husband hates giving gift cards.  We went round and round with ideas for a few weeks and come up with this gift. 

I forgot to take a picture of these gifts before he took them to work, and my hubs was sweet enough to text me one.  I bought a variety of the candy cane treat containers above, they are also on Amazon, and my husband let his employees choose the one the wanted.  They were $2 each at Walmart and his employees loved them! I also made his staff my cake batter cookies.  I use this recipe.  The cookie bags were from Hobby Lobby.  

My teaching team also exchanges gifts with one another.  We meet up for dinner at the beginning of break and have a lot of fun exchanging the fun little gifts we found for each other.  For these gifts, I start stalking my jane.com app/emails in early November. Last year, I got everyone Burlap ornaments.  This year, everyone got chapstick keychains! I ordered one for myself too and I LOVE it! They came from this Etsy seller in case you want one for yourself!

 I put a Candy Cane Chap Stick in each. :) Isn't it the BEST flavor?  I need to stock up on it, so I have enough for the rest of the year. 

I nicknamed Christmas 2014, "A Very Dollar Tree Christmas" because I was seemingly there every day after work. I also gave the girls a pair of cozy socks from the DT as well. 

Here's what everything looked like in their gift bags.  :)

I am very blessed to have a dedicated group of educational assistants who work with my students. They provide interventions, classroom support, and they are such a help to me.  I bought several passion fruit EOS and made these adorable EOS Rudolphs. You can find the printable {here} from The Tried and True Blog.  This was such a practical and cute gift! Everyone loved them! I got the EOS from a variety of different places. The ones below are from Walmart and I liked them best because how they were packaged.  The bags were from Hobby Lobby. 

My kids made handprint snowmen ornaments for their parents again this year. I originally blogged about them {here}.  

This was my fourth year doing these ornaments.  I always say "that's too much work" or "I'm never doing them again" but I always end up doing them.  My kids always enjoy making them and they are always make a great keepsake for their parents.  

This year my teaching partner, painted the canvases with our kids one day and a few days later, I had them do the snow people paintings.  
This helped me out tremendously! Thanks, Amy!

This year we used these artist trading cards. I got mine at Hobby Lobby but they are on Amazon too! The best deal I found on the acrylic paint was at Walmart, they were 2 for $1. 

My teaching partner and I have 50+ students. That's a lot of bonus points and I just never saw any $1 books that they would love, except Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing but we read that during book clubs later in the year.  So we bought some cute holiday sandwich bags from The Dollar Tree and filled them with goodies. 

We filled the bag with cherry candy canes (WalMart), a pencil and eraser (Dollar Tree), and homework passes.  I used the homework passes from my Editable Homework Pass/Thank You note pack that you can find on TpT {here}.  It made prepping their gifts a snap and easily to implement, as my partner teacher and I got to customize our homework passes! 

The DIY/Pinspiration trend carried over into our friends' gifts as well.  

Several of our friends now have babies and so I got several copies of Sneezy the Snowman for them from Scholastic.  They were only a $1 each and it is such a cute little book!

We put the copies of Sneezy in a gift bag with the following treats. 

 I got these cute little Keurig Gingerbread Houses from Meijer for $5! You can also find them on Amazon. 

We are really lucky that some of our best friends are our neighbors, so we wanted to add a little something to their coffee and book bag. They all love my homemade pumpkin bread.  I bought these mini bread loaf tins and was able to get six mini loaves from my recipe! 

For the other neighbors on our street, we gave them a roll of cute wrapping paper and tape because we didn't know if they had any food allergies at their house.  

The gift wrap and tape were purchased at Dollar Tree. :) I PROMISE they didn't sponsor this post, I just love DT this time of the year!

We also have the sweetest mailman in the world. He's always smiling and always shows great care with the many packages we receive.  We left this bag of donuts in our mailbox with a Panera gift card for some coffee for him.  

These donuts were two for $4 at Meijer this week and I picked up a few more for our garbage men.  It might seem overboard but it's a joy to bless the people who serve our family every single day/week.  The tag I plan on using is for our garbage men are in the freebie included at the end of the post! 

If you are interested in the tags for the movie night tub, coffee, bread, wrapping paper, or donuts, they are in available {here}.  

They may look a little different but this way you can sign your name with a regular pen/maker, since the ones in the pictures are chalkboard and would require white.  If you aren't able to use the tags this year, you can alway pin any of the images for next year. :)  Before I go, I get asked often what printer I use often. I have an Epson Workforce Pro. You can find mine {here}. 

Merry Christmas! 

Point of View Freebie

Hi friends! I'm keeping tonight's post short and sweet, it's conference week and I've got a to do list a mile long to get ready! 

We have been studying point of view for the past few weeks and it's a skill that I like for my students to get a good handle on early in the year because we will now discuss point of view with almost every literature text in class.

As I was grading my students' biweekly assessment, I could tell that some of my students could benefit from some additional practice with point of view. They especially need more practice comparing/contrast first person and third person point of view.  Since one of my weekly workstations during the Daily Five is task cards/literacy centers, I decided to make point of view the focus on my task card station this week. I created a fun game for my students and wrote some passages to use in my task card/center rotation this week.

If you think your students could benefit from using this freebie, you can download it via Google Drive {here}. :) Enjoy!

My Back to School Lesson Plans

Hi friends! I have received a few messages on my Facebook page from teachers who are moving from the primary grades to intermediate and were curious about my back to school lesson plans.  

So I compiled a post for you guys of my first eight days of school.  Make sure you scroll all the way and down read the entire post for links to the products and freebies included in my back to school lesson plans! 

Our first week of school is a three day week and our second week is a five day week.  

Products featured in my plans: 

• Fabulous Back to School Fun 
• Story of My Name 
• Cooking Up a Great Year Together 
• Types of Sentences Activity Pack 
• School Year Scrapbook 

As you can see, we spend a lot of time learning and practicing procedures, building community, and getting to know each other.  I feel this is SO important, no matter what grade you teach!  You might feel the curriculum crunch, but I promise you WILL make up that time.  Especially if you are doing the Daily Five.  Model and practice those procedures again and again until your students get it right.  Time invested in that now will pay off, I promise.  The years I jumped right into curriculum have been some of my rockiest years.  I certainly teach academics those first two weeks but my main focus is on rules, routines, and community building.  

My school year scrapbook is a new product, and one that I'm SO excited about! I always did a  scrapbook with my third graders and they loved it. However, as the demands of being in a testing grade increased, I stopped doing them a few years ago.  I forgot about them until I ran into one of my former third graders, who is now going into tenth grade, and she told me that she still has her third grade scrapbook and how special it was to her.  So I spent some time this summer turning our messy and time consuming scrapbooks into something more manageable! 

The new version has NO cutting or gluing! All you need to do is select one of the included cover pages and select a monthly page for your students to complete and assemble them before school starts.  I plan on using the stapler setting on our copier that puts a staple at the top and bottom of the page, this makes the packet into a booklet.  One of my coworkers is planning on hole punching the pages and putting them into folders.  

I included multiple options for the beginning and end of the year and for each month. I have options for August-July.  All you need to do is select the pages that best fit your class.  

On the first school day of each new month, I will have my students fill out their scrapbook page for the previous month.  This literally takes twenty minutes tops.  They brainstorm their memorable moments, write about their favorite memory, and color the picture on the page to give it more of the scrapbook feel.  I let them choose memories from home and school, but you can do what works for you!  Here's an example of a completed page:

School Year Scrapbook is a yearlong memory book and makes an awesome keepsake for your students.  I can't wait to show you pictures of our scrapbooks throughout the year. :) 

I also get by with some help from some friends during Back to School!  Our first two weeks in reading are spent on reading strategies and I use Ashleigh's amazing Reading Strategies Unit.  Seriously, go check it out.  Everything you need to get your students really thinking about their reading is in one easy to use file.  It is pictured under reading in my visual plans. I plan on using this fun Finish the Picture freebie from the Thinker Builder as part of our morning work on the first day of school. 

I use the Daily Five to organize my literacy block and follow The Sisters guide for implementation pretty much step by step.  I highly encourage you to read the book if you are thinking of implementing the Daily Five with your students. There are lots of great blog posts about it out there about the Daily Five but the book made it all click for me.  You can find the Second Edition of The Daily Five {here}. 

You can also find a list of the books I use with Cooking Up a Great Year Together to promote a caring classroom environment {here}.  The Toothpaste Words activity is offered as a freebie on my blog {here}. 

Enjoy your day, friends! I hope you found my Back to School Lesson Plans helpful.  

Monday Made It: Coworker Gifts

Hi friends! I'm linking up today with sweet Tara for Monday Made It.  

I don't have any classroom made its to show you because I totally redid my entire classroom last year and I feel that was one huge Monday made it. I only need to change up a few things here and there because I still LOVE it.  As I type this, I realized that I never shared my classroom with you last year.  Never fear, it will happen this year!

My Monday Made It are some simple and inexpensive coworker gifts.  I always like to surprise my coworkers with a little gift at the beginning of the year.  Just something simple and practical to try to get them pumped up for the new year. 

The first option features fun goodies that I found at WalMart. The ribbon is from WalMart as well. Each of these gifts were under $4 each. To allow the layers to stay together, I used tape, which you can see in three of the pictures below.

I gave these beauties to some blogging friends when we met up for lunch and totally forgot to put a tag on them.  However, I think either of these would have been appropriate. 

My second gift idea are the actual gifts I am giving my coworkers. I bought the notepad at Target and the pens at WalMart.  The cost of this gift was under $3 each.  The pink ribbon is from WalMart as well. Again, I used tape to keep everything together.

I have uploaded each of the gift tags from this post to Google Drive.  You can download them here.  
If you don't know how to download and save from Google Drive, check out this tutorial. 
All you have to do is print, cut, and sign your name on the tag. :)

If you made something for your classroom or your home, go link up for Monday Made It! :)  

I've also made lots of delicious recipes this summer, there were just too many to include in this post.  You can check out my Fourth and Ten in the Kitchen Recipe Recap {here}. 

If plan on using my gift labels, I'd love to hear about your plans for them in the comments below! 

St. Patrick's Day Graphic Organizers: Try Them Before You Buy Them

Happy President's Day!  I am so thankful to have the day off today and am spending the day cleaning the house and watching the ice dancing long programs live, Olympic addict over here, and grading my classes' unit benchmark tests.  

I wanted to take a pause to share a freebie with you from one of my favorite packs, My Spring Graphic Organizers! It's amazing what a seasonal graphic or two can do to increase student motivation. :)

I have been very intentional with my instruction of reading strategies this year.  My graduate class this past summer focused greatly on applying reading strategies across a variety of subjects and disciplines.  

The thought process behind my professor's thinking was that if a child is strategic with their reading, they can tackle most of the standards they are expected to master with the new Common Core State Standards.  That doesn't mean I don't teach those skills/standards, I just reading strategies as a road map to get us there. Therefore, my seasonal graphic organizers focus mainly on reading strategies, not skills/standards from the Common Core.   

These seasonal graphic organizers are also great to use with Close Reading materials, especially for your students'/class' first read of a text, where they focus mainly on what the text was about such as: main idea, identify characters, problem, setting, and problem and solution. 

Since I love these so much, and so do my big kids, I wanted to share a few freebies from this pack with you to use with your students. Click {here} or on any of the pictures to download these four graphic organizers.  

Easter did come really early last year, so my first set of Graphic Organizers focused on St. Patrick's Day/Easter and the second was more generic with flowers, rain, Earth Day, and insects.  You can read more about those {here}.

Things will finally start to warm up a little bit in Ohio this week and I'm oh so excited.  I'm tired of scrapping my driveway all the time. :) To celebrate being off and warmer temperatures on the way, I'm putting my St. Patrick's Day goodies on sale today. 

Click on the image above or {here} to check out the goodies that are on sale today. :) 

Snow Day Find Somebody Who Freebie

Please don't hate me, but I haven't gone back to school yet. :)  We had a longer break to begin with, but extremely cold temps have caused school to be cancelled the last two days. 

It was great to relax today and really tackle all my teacher to dos that I didn't quite get to over break.  I even got to make a delicious healthy and dinner tonight. We had Low-Carb Spaghetti Squash and Meatballs from Iowa Girl Eats and it was amazing. :)I even got to work on a freebie for y'all.


I love to do Find Somebody Who activities in my classroom, especially when we go back to school from a long break.  They are perfect for getting my kiddos moving and interacting. :) Last year we did my Winter Break Find Somebody Who, which you can find in here. 

Since a lot of you went back last week and have had school cancelled this week due to snow and/or frigidly cold weather, I revised the winter break version to make a snow day one. :)

Just click the image or {here} to download! :) 

Have a great Wednesday.

Testing Treat Freebies and a Flash Sale

On Tuesday, my little sweeties start our state testing. On Tuesday, they will take the reading test and on Thursday, they will take the math test.   

Typically, I always put something out of my kiddos desk the morning of testing.  I try to make this not sugary candy related.  Our student council gives each kiddo that is testing some candy with a little motivational note but I pass those out the day before we take the tests, I tell them that they are smart candies and they have to eat the them the night before the test. :) 

Usually, the first day of testing they get a brand new pencil. 

    
Then on Wednesday, I put a few peppermints on their desks. My English teacher in high school always gave us peppermints before big tests to help calm our nerves.  So I do the same with my sweet friends. :)

 

I have uploaded both of these little notes to Google Drive for you.  Just click {here} to download the file.  If you download, I'd love it if you leave a comment, follow my blog, OR like my Facebook page. :) 

I copied our fourth grade ABC countdown on Friday night before I left school to pass out tomorrow.  Our countdown starts on Tuesday and our last twenty-six days will be busy! Our last few weeks are filled with field trips, a visit to the school my babes will be attending next year, award ceremonies, a poetry tea, a DARE community service project, book clubs, our fourth grade party, AND field day.  

I'm thinking about starting our memory books tomorrow just to fit them in! :) I know many of you are in the same boat, so my end of the year items pictured below are 15% off until tomorrow at midnight.  Click {here} to check out all my end of the year goodies on TpT! :)

 

We are doing lots of cooperative learning/team review tomorrow in ELA to review and have some fun before the test, so I guess I better go get that finished! Have a great night! :)