Happy New Year! (& a Community Helper freebie)

Happy New Year 2013! I'm linking up with Farley (and Freebilicious with a community helpers freebie). Last night, we decided to stay in for a quiet new year's eve. Our neighborhood was having a fireworks commotion all through the night. Poor Max- one of our little dogs who gets very frantic with fireworks, thunderstorms, loud noises, etc. Such a sensitive little guy!

I am loving my new digital camera. I am learning more about it... but I am such a beginner. I am looking forward to taking a class to learn how to use my camera.

For Christmas, we got a new Wii. I am having fun playing active games on it. My good friend is coming over so we can start our year off exercising and having fun!

Yesterday, I talked to my sister and nephew on Skype. They are having lots of snow where they are at. Seeing their backyard, made me want to build a snowman with them. I miss those wintery white snow days, especially the ones perfect for a ski day!

I am currently working on a lunar new year unit. It is taking some time, as I often get sidetracked! I need to focus and get it done by this weekend. I go back to work next week... so my focus will be back on the classroom.

Hope. Reflecting back on the beginning of 2012... I remember having a positive attitude about the new year, and having a discussion with my teammates. So many sad things starting off and continued on through the year. Most of these sad feelings are due to the loss of loved ones. Other feelings are due to challenges we face as teachers. My word for 2013 is hope. Hope for a better year for all of us, as we find peace and solace as we move forward. Hope to keep a postive attitude despite the hurdles.

Now on to the freebie...

After Thanksgiving, I taught my students about community helpers. Life gets so busy around the holidays! Now, I can share a little of what we did during our 2 weeks of community helpers.

I used Curious George books as my character to focus on for some Common Core standards. I even drew my own Curious George characteristics web. We enjoyed creating our own Curious George using April Larremore's craftivity.



Click on the above picture to go to April Larremore's TPT store for the Curious George Firefighter craftivity.

One project that took at least 5 days was my community helpers book. After learning about a particular community helper, my students would draw themselves as the community helper and draw some things the community helper would need. Then each child would label at least 5 things on the page. I have hat tracers for each community helper used in my book: firefighter, nurse/doctor/medic, police officer, mail carrier, and chef/baker. Click on any of the pictures below to download the templates.

 

 

I will be going back to school to a teacher work day and 3 day week with my students. Love that we have a teacher work day before we delve into the 2nd half of our school year! I know that we will work on new year's resolutions and snowman stories. The second week back is a full week of holiday rotations. All of the kindergartners at my school will be rotating to different classrooms to learn about different holidays: Hannukah, Ramadan/Eid, Diwali, Lunar New Year, Christmas in Mexico, and Kwanzaa. Afterwards, we will start our Patriotism unit. I'm a little sad that we moved our Antarctica unit to later in the school year. Well, looking on the positive, I will get to see what everyone else is doing before we get to it!