Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Donor's Choose

We have had lot's of exciting things happening in and out of the classroom! My fiance and I have been trying to narrow down our wedding date and venue. So in the past few weekends, we've managed to get our engagement pictures taken, visit an amazing venue, visit our old college town friends, visit the UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA for a football game, and welcome the mother-in-law for the first time! And to top it all off, I've finally got my wedding dress!!!! YAYY! So I have been staying busy and trying to forget about all the stress that comes with obtaining a master's degree! I am now three weeks away from the last class I will EVER attend for this degree! YAYYYY!

So in the classroom, I'm finally beginning to see the MILES of progress that we've made. This is the MOST remarkable thing about working with high-functioning autism. I mean check out this FACE! Have you ever seen such a better smile of pride?! It was the first time he had ever completed an ENTIRE worksheet INDEPENDENTLY!!

I was SO excited, that I jumped up and down, screamed, squealed, and obviously scared the entire class, but I could have cried because I was so happy! And then, I had barely even put my camera away, and IN walked our DONOR'S CHOOSE DELIVERY!!! How do you spell: "B-E-S-T-D-A-Y-E-V-E-R"?!?! Here's a little teeny-tiny peek:

 One little man in particular was excited to see all that we received... 

... There will be more pictures to come later!!! ...

So, back on track... for Halloween, we made these awesome little pumpkin ornaments from Oriental Trading! Another teacher was SO sweet, and gave me her extra's when I complimented the work of her students. Ahh the benefits of having 5 students :D So we had them draw and decorate, and then we wrote about them. Here's just a few....

We practice writing and tracing everyday, but this student has NEVER traced this much writing before - EVER! I guess it goes to show that students can make so much progress when you add new activities.

 

 Our Kindergartner Little Man here, just began copying words and sentences independently. Before, we had been writing everything in highlighter, and allowing him to trace. He wrote 3 sentences: "My pumpkin has teeth. My pumpkin has eyes. My pumpkin has a nose."  ISN'T THAT AMAZING?!

I love holidays!! For Thanksgiving, I had the fiance and future step-mother to come and visit our classroom!! So I arranged to make turkey oreo cookies that day! It was so much fun!!! 

 Upside down feathers!! Ah hahaha so cute though!

 

Last but not least... we've got to add some turkey legs!!!

 Finished products!!

 

And then as we ate our treats, we enjoyed our FAVORITE song on the ACTIV BOARD... Don't you just LOVE Chicka Chicka Boom Boom? We got to show our special visitors, and they all loved it! We had so much fun!

And then we all went home after that! It was the best day ever. Here are some other things that we did for Thanksgiving....

 I thought I had a more recent picture, but I guess I will have to add it later! So this is my outdoor display of our TOM TURKEYS!! I had sent home Turkeys to be decorated and disguised so that they will not be hunted by the farmer and eaten for Thanksgiving dinner...

   

Do you believe one student thought of the TURKEY BIEBER all by herself?! LOL I allowed for the families to help out with decorating and gathering materials, but this one thought of the idea all by herself, and her family helped to cut everything out! It was so amazing! There were a couple of turkeys who didn't follow directions, but they sent Tom back with color, so that was great! The one on the right is the GHOSTBUSTER turkey... hahaha so cute!

 We made turkey hand prints to go along with our poems. ^^ And then we made Indian Headdresses with patterns. I allowed them to choose the shapes they wanted, and what type of pattern. Only one student made an ABC pattern, but the rest did AB patterns, and that was great!! We normally practice extending patterns, but now that I know they can create patterns independently, we're gonna have even more to practice! :D

 That's all for now! Please share your Thanksgiving festivities! Leave a comment with a link to your blog!
~Sarah

Best Field Trip EVER!!!

I HAVE to share some of the awesomely ADORABLE pictures that we got from today's exciting day! We were invited to go trick-or-treating which was organized by our local news station and sponsored by local businesses around the area, and I had NEVER seen some of the smiles that we saw today. This trip was so well worth every bit of hard work we have put in during the school year...

^^ First, a picture of the awesome bulletin board my para made us last week during our half day :). She was able to pull them individually to decorate a fall shape of their choice, and she put names on the other shapes. She is SO awesome. I wouldn't trade her for ANYTHING. :D

^^ After face painting, I tried to get all their pictures outside... next to the door... I forgot one. But we were going to be late, so OH WELL.

 

^^The AMAZING Ms. K doing some face painting, next to the MOST HANDSOME-looking were wolf EVER!!! 

^^ Here we have two triceratops dinosaurs. Poor boy on the left REALLY wanted to be the INCREDIBLE Hulk, but poor Ms. K couldn't figure out how to make a Hulk hat! :/ Lucky for him, we ran into (whaddya know?) Mr. Hulk himself at the event.

 ^Soooo tickled by his favorite hero! :)

 ^^Our boys love any kind of reptile. Dinosaurs, lizards, alligators, you name it... So OF COURSE we had to get a picture with the crocodile. Nobody really cared for Cap'n Hook, but he never left Mr. Alligator's side.. so we took a picture with both! LOL

 ^^Most amazing part EVER!! They had STUDENTS setting up round tables with cake, rice krispies, and juice!! Our class LOVES snack! Better yet, you would not BELIEVE the service! They had young kids, (I mean 11 years old) coming around with trays, asking politely if they could "...take any trash out of your way for you ma'am?" Like WHAT!? I don't know who trained them, but they were TOTALLY amazing. They even came around offering teachers cans of Sprite and bottles of water. I loved them. I wish I could take them home! :D

^Not sure I've ever seen them so happy in my LIFE!

 

^We even went to the playground afterwards! The weather was perfect, and it was super fun to play on a different playground. 

So that's it... My chicken soup for the day. I love fun days. Funny how polar opposite some of our days can go. Sometimes they are too good to be true, and other days, well, we just have to keep on ...keepin' on, as I like to say :) Either way, I LOVE my class, and I wouldn't trade them for anything in the world! Days like this remind me that this is definitely the best year of my life!

FIRST FREEBIES EVER!

I LOVE three day weekends!! They're my favorite. So we had a furlough day on Friday, and they decided we can go to a professional learning to keep our money for that day - but I had already planned on having my nice day off! :) And Thursday was cool because we had a half day, and I spent the afternoon rearranging furniture and getting more organized. I can't WAIT to come back with pictures on Monday. Anyways, I've been working on some things to share all year, so here it is... MY VERY FIRST FREEBIES EVER!!! I'm so excited! I just hope you like them as much as I do!

 

Remember my fabulous clip chart? Well, I've finally just edited it to have pretty borders! 

Click [here] to download the file, including the THINK-O-METER sign. 

 

Well I got SO many compliments on my Reinforcements poster, I decided to finally post them for you here to print out for your own use. I mainly just listed the main reinforcement categories that would be available in my classroom, and I found clipart in Word, and google images. This is what I came up with. Let me know if you would like the word document to edit it yourself, and I would be happy to send it to you!

So, you're probably wondering how I use it. The truth is, I don't actually use it right now. But here was the idea.... I have these "I CAN DO IT!" token reinforcement boards, and the students are supposed to choose which item they want, get it from the pocket poster, and they can add that picture to their board. 

 

The token system came with little velcro stars, which was perfect, but they can be a little pricey. So I made some to share with you :) Click on the picture below to download your own reinforcement board and pictures.

 This year, I decided to create a strict morning routine checklist to help students get settled more quickly. I never actually used it, but here's a copy if you're interested. Let me know if you would like the editable version!

So I worked really hard to produce an effective calendar system this year. Well, this is how I set it up at the beginning of the year, but I actually have done some rearranging since then, so I need to update the picture... However, I'm going to tell you a little bit about our routine, and then you can get the last freebie at the end :D....

So the VERY first thing we do during Calendar time is... count the number of days we've been in school....

So we add the number card to the pocket chart (above), and then we add another craft stick to our ones cup (below). You can see we have a cup for hundreds, tens, and ones. Then we write how many tens and ones on our Place Value chart! (Notice- the students do all of it! I just ask the questions!)

So then we add another day to the month, and talk about the complete date:

 

 ...Then the kids take the purple days of the week cards and place them in the correct "today" "yesterday" and "tomorrow" pockets..

.... and we get rollin' with the rest of the routine. It goes by very quickly, because we add "one" for each "day" on each of the colored sheets...we correct the code date,  add another tally, add another coin, and then we check over all our work!

When all is done, we transfer everything to our calendar journals...

  

This is what it used to look like ^^^

 However, this is what it looks like now... it's alot less messier. And, it has TRACING pages! It's great for differentiation, because some pages are blank, but some have numbers to trace, so I am able to use BOTH sets in my classroom :). I got this template from Jennifer Tilton from www.kindertrips.blogspot.com. You NEED to check out her blog, and if you're interested in this awesome calendar packet, you can find it in her TPT store, here.

So, now for the FUN STUFF!! If you were at all interested in the signs that I had, I updated them to be a little more organized, and you can download them for yourself [here]

Well, I REALLY hope you enjoyed learning about some of our routines, and I hope you will able to use some of my freebies! Please leave me a comment with your email if you would like the editable version of any of these documents!

Happy Saturday!

<3 Sarah