Survival. {Also know as 7 days left until Christmas break}

I think I can.  I think I can.  I think I can.  Yikes! These last two weeks before break are so hard.  My students are good, sweet kiddos.  But, they're just 8 and 9 years old and Christmas is almost here.  What do you expect?

I have a give a little, get a little philosophy at this time of year.  Meaning, I'll slow down the pace some academically if you can mostly keep it under control.  One of the things I switch up are our stations.  We do one a day for the last 15-20 minutes of class.  Sort of a Weekly 5 thing instead of the Daily 5.

Independent Reading & Buddy Reading

I put out a big ole basket of holiday books for these.  Love their squeals of delight!

Word Work

Finding smaller words in holiday words for the first week, and building words from scrambled holiday words the second week.  You can download the activities here.  Both activities are two sided.

Writing
Normally, we use whole class journals for this, but we set them aside for these last two weeks.  The first week, we do a holiday traditions writing.  The second week, we write about a gift.  You can download the activities here.

Computer

Shannon over at Technology Rocks. Seriously. has a seriously rocking post with a million holiday games together on one Google Doc.  You can read the post here.

We also do my most favorite writing activity of the year during this time.   I read the class the book How Santa Got His Job.

Then, we brainstorm together what a Santa help wanted ad would need to include-the requirements, the duties, and the benefits.  After we brainstorm as a class, they brainstorm on their own for an elf help wanted ad.

The next day, they write their ad.  Although this is a really fun activity, it's also a great chance to talk about commas in a series and varying sentence beginnings.

On the third day, they create their final copies.  I'll post some pictures after we get them all finished!

In other news, I finished up a blog design for Jen at Teaching, Life, and Everything in Between.

And I have a few new designs available:

Annie

Sophie

Polly

Jeanette

Happy surviving!