Deck the Halls with TpT

It is officially December! I don’t know about you, but my Christmas decorations are up and I did some holiday shopping the last couple of days BUT I saved some money to spend on the Cyber Monday (and Tuesday) TpT Sale. ! I am like Santa, I have checked my WISHlist twice to narrow down what I ~~want~~ NEED to get. I can’t wait to stuff my own digital stocking so to speak! As a reminder, my entire store will be 20% off on Monday and Tuesday. TpT is getting in the Christmas spirit too because if you use the code CYBER during check out, you get an % off!

The fabulous Christina from Bunting, Books and Bainbridge is hosting a fun linky called, “Deck the Halls with TpT”, to showcase some TpT hits and I have joined in the fun…

Here are my 3 songs for you:

Walking in a Math Wonderland

Earlier this week I shared my fun new product, Reindeer Remainder. I am so excited to use these in my centers this coming week.

This set has lots of goodies in it:

My 2nd song is, “I’m Dreaming of a Holiday Product”- My Winter Poems Pack

Poetry is a great way to reinforce grammar concepts like parts of speech, figurative language and punctuation. I always have my class make poems for the different seasons or holidays to collect to put in our end of the year scrap book.

This set includes:

-a circle map starter activity to get the students to actively participate by sharing whole group, things that remind them of Winter

-5 circle maps for all 5 senses to help generate Wintery words that go with each of the 5 senses. This can be done in partners or pass one sense out to each person in the group, like jigsaw activity, and have them share out when everyone is done and add more ideas to the tree map below…

-A tree map to help the students categorize their information from the 5 senses circle maps

I also included some parts of speech mini lessons to review adjectives, verbs, nouns and adverbs. These 4 sorting activities will help reinforce these 4 parts of speech by asking the student to sort the examples and non examples of each. These are all new parts of speech sorts, separate from the ones in my Parts of Speech Bundle AND I put a holiday twist on it by having the examples be holiday verbs, nouns, adjectives and pronouns.

Lastly, are 2 poetry templates that engage the students in utilizing their senses and connecting with Winter time. I provided 2 templates to help differentiate. The first one is more simple and the second one requires the student to apply more specific skills, but in a guided way.

From these templates the students can go write a rough draft poem on a separate piece of paper and meet with the teacher to make sure that they have used appropriate and correct words and make corrections as needed. I have my students type out their final draft and either print it out on Holiday paper or print out and then decorate. Their last task is presenting their poems orally. It is a great way to squeeze in public speaking and allow the students to show off their hard work.

As my last song, “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Reading”- Figurative Language is a Hoot.

Piggy-backing off of the Holiday Poetry Pack, I teach a lot of figurative language in December as a review of the concepts that we have already gone over and as a way to help them understand the more abstract pieces of literature.

Here is what is included in this set…

6 Figurative Language Posters with examples:

A Figurative Language Tree Map that students can use to record figurative language that they find in their stories

A Figurative Language Foldable- great for introducing the new concepts or as a study tool.

Here is an example from my foldable from last year. We glue these in our interactive notebooks to reference all year.

After we folded them and stapled them together, we reviewed the definitions of each of the terms. Then we wrote our own examples of each. In this picture, (top- simile and bottom- metaphor) I had them underline the two things that were being compared and circle the word that was used to help compare them. We also drew a picture and wrote out the real meaning. We shared our examples whole group, for table points and with our partners. The kids loved this activity, and it excites me to think that this will transfer into their writing! They LOVED learning about hyperboles.

Next in this pack is a Figurative Language Hunt. This can be done in partners or individually, my class did it in partners. The students color code 60 different figurative language examples (10 of each). I heard good collaborative talk amount my students as they discussed what they thought each example was.

I provided a key for the teacher too.

For the upper grades, not only do students need to identify which type of figurative language is used but they are required to interpret the meaning as well. This is a higher level thinking skill. I created this activity to help students not only categorize which type of figurative language is being used but to also interpret it.

Last but not least, I created a Figurative Language Review Game with 40 different question cards that test the students on their mastery of Figurative language. This activity is great for Center Work, for fast finishers or for test prep!