Saturday, March 21, 2015

Classroom update (Holiday Edition)

Wheeee!  We've had quite a bit of adventures lately.  The holidays are over and boy was it a crazy ride through the Red Snail Classroom.  So many holidays back-to-back I couldn't quite find the time to catch everything up.  Here's a quick little update from our holidays of Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, Valentine's Day, and more.  Enjoy!  And I will have an update for classroom things in a few weeks!  Hope your holidays were amazing!

For Halloween:


For Halloween we did a few crafts and worksheets to learn about spooky Halloween facts.  We made a Halloween banner found here, and learned about the history of Halloween events.


Skylar was able to find Halloween creatures, ghosts, and folk tales from all around the world.  He used the globe to locate where the country, or city was, then relate it to the map.


He then made a Halloween fortune teller, found here.









  
We made some hanging spiders, bats, and ghosts to decorate the classroom up a bit for the Halloween holiday.



We made bug and beetle thumb prints.  These area blast to make and so simple.  Take an ink pad, press your thumb into the ink, place on a paper, and create a bug or beetle.  





We made Halloween props, found here.




We made Halloween money, found here.

In our classroom we always make sure to cleanup as we go, straighten up after we're done, and sanitize our hands and desks when needed.  We use The Honest Company Hand Santizer Gel.  It's a great way to kill germs, yet not allow any chemical toxins back in.  You can grab your own bottle at Honest.com.



We made Halloween candy paper bags, found here.

We enjoyed a great time in the classroom for Halloween crafts and learning.

For Thanksgiving:

We wrote down what we were thankful for.

We made Thankful booklets and Indian headbands.


 
We did Thanksgiving crosswords and color sheets.


 
We made Thanksgiving turkeys and other crafts.


We made a Thanksgiving banner.






We made Thanksgiving Day cupcakes with Thanksgiving Turkey and festive flags.



We made a Thanksgiving table to represent the first Thanksgiving.



We made Thanksgiving door hangers.

And place cards for the Thanksgiving table.


For Christmas:

We did some Christmas coordinates worksheets.

We also put together small Christmas goodie bags to give to family and friends with treats inside.

We read "A Christmas Carol" and illustrated some of the stories and pictures.




We made Christmas stockings.....


Reindeer treat bags.....


Gingerbread men.





We did Christmas worksheets and played games from the Holiday Survival Pack here!

Created an ugly sweater.



We even did a Winter Bucket List.  Skylar put down a lot of things he would like to accomplish this year in the classroom, which made me happy to see.

For New Years:

We learned how to say Happy New Year in other languages.


We made New Year's Poppers.


For Valentine's Day:






Get these color sheets here.



We made a Valentine's Day garland of hearts.


We made an X-O banner and some paper stars.





We played a few Valentine's Day games.

Along with Valentine's Day, we learned a lot about Black History Month as well.  Rosa Parks' story was Skylar's favorite.


For Martin Luther King Day:




Skylar placed the "I have a Dream" speech in order and then pretended as if he was in front of Washington giving the speech to millions of people.

For Mardi Gras:



We made Mardi Gras masks.


And did some Mardi Gras worksheets for fun.


President's Day:



Get this color sheet here.


We pretended to be president for the day.

Read Across America Day/Dr. Seuss' Birthday:



For St. Patrick's Day:




We did St. Patrick's Day worksheets that you can pick up here!

For Easter, we made an egg garland to go across the classroom window.

Next week is Spring Break for us in the Red Snail Classroom, so stay tuned for more classroom fun coming soon!

Five Homeschool Sites of Interest:

1.  Factory Tours in your own state.  You can find tours for hundreds of factories within your homeschool area.  Visit Factory Tours USA.

2.  Essay Mapping.  Easy ways to map out an essay and teach current story writing skills.  Visit Essay Map.

3.  Printable classroom games.  Great way to incorporate games time into class time.  Visit Printable Games.

4.  Learn Anatomy in an instant.  Anatomy learning is a fun and interesting subject.  Learn the easy way.  Visit Instant Anatomy.

5.  Add a free library in front of your homeschool location with Little Free Library.  Small box of books for the public to encourage each other to read more.  Learn how you can join this movement.  Visit Little Free Library

Visit the Rain Valley Red Snails Little Free Library at 1450 Hiatt Street, Lebanon, Oregon.