We have been up to our heads in parent gifts!  We made 4 different crafts for our sweet parents this year.  First up, we made these adorable Christmas trees that have been all over Pinterest.  We used Christmas scrapbook paper and cut it into different size strips.  It's a great activity for incorporating largest to smallest. We made these super cute thumbprint ornaments.   Of course, I forgot to take a picture of the finished product.  But here is the original source . These were my favorite gifts we made.  We picked up these pots at Ikea on our latest trip.  They wrote with a sharpie "There's Snow Place Like Home."  We used cotton balls to dab on white acrylic paint for the snow on the bottom.  The littles then made the snowmen with 3 fingers painted in white acrylic paint.  Once they dried, They used colored sharpies to draw the rest.  Do not spray when finished if you use sharpies like we did.  The colors will smear.  You probably coul...
One of our second grade common core standards is using  information gained from the illustrations and words in a print or digital text to demonstrate understanding of its characters, setting, or plot.  I love to use the story Officer Buckle and Gloria to teach this skill.   It's also in our reading series.  We talked about how important illustrations are for helping us understand what we are reading.  They love seeing what Gloria will be up to next in the illustrations. I made this little recording sheet for students to record illustrations from any story.  You could have them write the page number of the illustration or have them sketch the illustrations from the story.  They then use the box below each to record what they learned from the illustration that they would not have otherwise learned from the text.  You can grab this freebie by clicking on the pic below. I also want to share with you a book my dear friend just had published.  You can check out...