First Snow Day of the Year

Happy Friday friends!

Today was our first snow day of the year! I am so thankful, especially since I caught a bug and have 100+ fever. (Yuck!) I'm thoroughly enjoying the time to be cozy and comfy while being productive.

To celebrate the snow day, I'm being (somewhat) productive and linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for my very first Five for Friday!

I have been loving all the New Year's products out there, and it was hard to find the right resolution writing to do with my kiddos. I loved how focused they were on their resolutions, too. We talked about goal-setting and why it's important to set an attainable resolution (Although visiting Mars is a wonderful idea, is it really attainable this year?) They came up with some fabulous resolutions. Aren't these little party noise makers adorable? I got the idea from Linda Kamp - she has a wonderful New Year's pack on TpT!

I love how the resolutions roll up - it makes a perfect way for students to
write more personal resolutions without fear!

The Boxcar Children might be my favorite series ever! I'm still working on
completing my collection. Yes, you may call me a book worm!

Lots of books for science - we will be finishing our environmental unit in the next few weeks and starting our space unit. These nonfiction books were perfect for my book focus wall!

Half Price Books was having a SALE over the break, and I just couldn't pass up books! My kiddos are doing a 30 book challenge due in March, and I just love getting "new" books for them to read! I also found two boxes of books (each book under a dollar!!) from my local library book sale. Let me tell you, out of the one box that I brought to school yesterday, I only have about three books that are left. There is nothing more rewarding as a teacher than seeing students' faces light up about literacy. Both the students and I have the same reaction to new books: 

My favorite Christmas gift from my parents - indoor snowball fight material! Does this make me a kid at heart? I'm so excited to use these in my classroom. It's a container full of big pom-pom snowballs. What's more fun than having a snowball fight to review for a test? My mom found this glorious bucket at Hallmark.

In order to meet my own personal New Year's resolution, I started making a set of Figurative Language Posters as a FREEBIE for new followers of my blog! One of my goals this year is to be more tech savvy with the blog world, so I've been having fun making some projects that I will be using in my class over the next few weeks. Head on over to my new TpT store to check them out! 

Since we are still learning about our environmental unit, this is a supplemental activity that we did to go along with our biome boxes. In five groups, each group became an expert on their biome after doing research from various books, sites, and videos. In particular, each group watched the video from this fabulous site PBS Kids EEkoWorld, which discussed the climate, ecosystem, and environmental issues associated with each biome. After taking notes on the video, each group made a postcard to detail their biome. They designed the front cover, and then wrote about their "visit" to the biome on the back. Then, individually, students wrote a persuasive essay about the different ways that people can take action to save their biome. These are also available for FREE (for a limited time) in my TpT store - so head on to grab your copy!

Our major project in our last section was to make our biome-in-a-box. I remember making these in undergrad, and I had so much fun with it - and my kids loved this project this year, too!

Now, I'm off to enjoy the rest of this snow day with some R&R to knock out this little fever of mine! Have a wonderful weekend!