Christmas Door Decoration

                          We decorated our classroom door and got 2nd place in our 

'winter wonderland' door contest!  

                  The key is to guide the children but give them the space they need to create ! 

Children were so happy to create, draw, paint,  make snowflakes;  and then a bit lucky to win.   It was great fun....first, we used green and blue inks mixed with gesso and sponge-painted the background... next, we looked at some real-life cardinals in nature.  Easy to find on the internet. Each student received a block of mixed-media paper to draw and color their birds.  Just colored with red crayons and a bit of black for beaks and eyes.  We talked about covering every white spot everywhere.  Dark, dark, red, red!  Then they made a branch for their cardinal to sit upon...  we placed the cardinals on our background of blue-green white sponge painting.  

And lastly, we made our snowflakes, so many.  This was snow-much fun!

It was easy to cut out individual blocks of cardinals, snowflakes and branches so each child could bring home their artwork to hang in a window at home.

Merry Christmas from Lucky Room 13!

How to Draw a Cardinal

Easy step-by-step directions to draw a cardinal... 

yet they all come out unique to the artist which makes your door perfect!

 Our cardinals were drawn on white paper, colored in and then cut out.  Background is the door backdrop which was painted before making the cardinals. Measure a sheet of white paper from that big roll for bulletin boards.   This backdrop was painted and made a couple days before.  

You can find these step-by-step directions on ArtProjectsforKids.org

and so many more drawings to do, too!  

Children's Stories for the Holiday Season

 

Bear Stays Up for Christmas, by Karma Wilson and Jane Chapman. Book Companion to write about your reading. In this story, the forest animals tell Bear he must stay up for Christmas. Bear is sleepy but he says he will try. Read this book to discover how Bear finds the best gift for Christmas.

This book teaches the life lesson of being kind to your friends and the gift of giving.

This book is entertaining and these reader response pages can help young readers write about books and stories. There are pages for beginning writers as well as more challenging pages for those writers who need the challenge.  Find a book companion for this book HERE

Reader Response pages for the wonderful book, Trouble with Trolls, by Jan Brett. This book is truly a wonderful book to read aloud. Teach story elements and character traits, new vocabulary and word study. 33 pages to use with this picture book. These pages can easily be assigned for distance learning and school at home.

Reader Response Pages Include:

• Comprehension Questions
• Vocabulary Word Cards
• Writing about Trolls
• Finding evidence in the story about character actions and traits
• Drawing the story characters, Treva, Tuffi and the Trolls
• Make a sequencing booklet to order story events
• retell the story
• Study root words and endings, ABC order
• Illustrate the wonderful characters in the book
• make beautiful borders 'just like Jan Brett'
• complete a T-map about Trolls - "can, have, are"
• 30 word cards for your pocket chart
• Tips for teaching, introduce the book and ideas for this book

Find the book companion for Trouble with Trolls HERE

The Legend of the Poinsettia retold by Tomie dePaola is a fabulous book to read aloud when teaching the genre of legends and the value of giving. Enhance the reading experience and provide writing prompts and pages to write about reading. These pages can easily be assigned for distance learning and school at home. Teaching literacy and life lessons with children's literature.

Focus skills included are:

• writing prompts

• comprehension questions

• theme [giving]

• character illustration

• beginning, middle, end

• before and after

• favorite part

• what is the lesson of the story?

• word study pages

• compare and contrast

• retelling the story

• word study and vocabulary

Do you want the book companion for this book?  Click HERE

Christmas Resources for the Elementary Classroom

20 riddles for the month of December for your students to read, think, write and solve. These riddles are a great writing activity for morning seat work. Students settle right in with reading and writing. It is motivating because the children love to guess what today's riddle answer might be. You can easily assign these riddles for distance learning and school-at-home work.

Each riddle is a December - Christmas theme idea and contains many high frequency words. Your students read the riddle, think, and write a sentence that answers the question. Next, they illustrate the sentence that they wrote. This is a motivating writing-reading-thinking literacy activity that you may use for morning seat work, homework, for fast finishers or anytime. This resource includes teacher directions, bin labels and an answer key.

Also there are covers if you wish to make an 'December Riddle' booklet.  It is appropriate for grades 1 -2 and homeschoolers.  Find your Morning Riddles for Christmas HERE

Solve and Color Christmas pages for Holiday fun.... Learning Multiplication. These pages are NO PREP and give multiplication practice while coloring in fun Christmas pages. Students solve the multiplication fact and color the products using the code on top of the page. This math assignment can easily be assigned for distance learning and school-at-home.

You can find these pages HERE

Read on to find more teaching resources for the 

Holiday season. 

Create some merry and bright Christmas math stations

Bear Says Thanks - Teaching Resources for November

Respond to this book, Bear Says Thanks by Karma Wilson & Jane Chapman. In this story, forest friends help bear solve a problem. This book entertains the reader and the listeners and 

teaches good manners and the importance to say 'thank you'.

Read this book aloud and choose these reader response pages to enhance the reading experience.

Grab Your Book Companion Here

This can be a delightful read aloud just before your Thanksgiving break.  You can find this read aloud at my youtube channel HERE 

Listen to this entertaining story and then have your students 

write about the book using the pages from the book companion.  

Click and go today !