Walking in So Cal Winter Wonderland

I am so excited to get together with some wonderful bloggers that live in my neck of the woods, Southern California, for this Winter blog hop. Thanks to Kristen from Easy Teaching Tools for taking the time to organize and put this whole thing together!  

Before the holidays, we spent some time decorating my daughters "mini" tree and it was even warm enough to keep the door open!!  We "tried" to get a good pic for our Christmas card but did not have the best of luck!! 

For the holidays, we ventured to my childhood hometown, Chicago.  It was COLD!!! We were a little bummed that my daughter did not get to witness a snowstorm BUT on our last day there, she did see a few flakes falling down.  She was SO excited that she wanted to build a snowman with the 5 flakes falling down, but never actually got to make a "real" OLAF!!!

One special thing we did this year before flying to Chicago was host a special holiday party for my daughter.  The party actually fell right on her 3.5 birthday, but let's just say this was a one time thing.  We will NOT be having 3.5 birthdays every year, can you imagine?  At the party we actually had a special visitor, Elsa, come to sing "Let it Go" to my daughter and a few of her friends.  Take a look!

It was a magical night for her, and I was shocked at how REAL 

this Elsa seemed! Her singing voice was AMAZING!!! 

Now that my break is about half way over, I am thinking about planning for that first day back with my 5th graders.  We will definitely be using my New Year's Poem that I wrote a few years ago.  I like this poem because it is dedicated to teaching the students about what a resolution is in a unique and different way, through poetry!  It is meant to fit inside their interactive notebooks and goes along with another activity that allows them to brainstorm their goals, write HOW they will achieve their goals, AND make some predictions for the new year.

After racking their brains with that activity, I usually have the kids fill out the following flip book.  They really do LOVE to write each goal inside the numbers.  Here is an example of the one I will show them as a teacher model for 2015!

Inside, they will identify their goals/resolutions and EXPLAIN how they will achieve their goals.  This is a great way to incorporate writing into the first day back AND to get the students thinking again about providing details and evidence in their writing!

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Also, make sure to hop to one of my FAV blogs, Fancy Free in Fourth to take a look at how she spent her holidays and for a great FREEBIE...

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