Happy New Year!
Hope you have a wonderful 2014!
We honor Christmas because our personal savior, Jesus Christ was born for the world's perfect sacrifice.   We love Christmas, the greatest day of love.    We all love the Christmas carols, the glitter, the trees, the lights, the sparkle, the sappy Christmas TV shows, the gifting, the parties, the hot chocolate, the time off from work and our time with family.  Oh, and the cookies!   How could we forget the cookies????

Amy's love language is gifts, so she loves to buy gifts for everyone.   It was fun for her to do a little RACKing.   Random Acts of Christmas Kindness included:  leaving a gift for a waitress, covering lunch duty for a friend, tipping extra at the Sonic, and donating books to kids in protective services.

Laura and her family love, love, love DisneyWorld.   So, they are celebrating Christmas with Mickey and Minnie Mouse this year.   Amy and Lisa are jealous they will be experiencing Be Our Guest at Belle's Castle in Princessland.    I mean, how fun does that sound?????   Belle is Laura's favorite, so we really are happy she gets to be at Disney with her fun family.   We hope to see lots of photos!

Lisa is our decorator.   She has the touch to make everything so beautiful, so oh-la-la!   So, she decorated many Christmas trees this season!    She kept us entertained with adventures of Barry and Larry, her naughty Elves on a Shelf.   And, Lisa is a great shopper, too.   She picks out the best gifts for her friends and family.

We thank you for reading the blog and sharing your ideas and thoughts on your own blogs.  
Merry Christmas!
We wish you a 2014 filled with blessings,
Amy, Laura and Lisa




One year ago, today, a unimaginable tragedy occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary... "As educators, we remember and honor our fallen colleagues and their students from Sandy Hook School. We honor them each day in our classrooms in which we continue their dream of teaching our children. We honor their memory with our service. Join with teachers everywhere in committing random acts of kindness to show our love for Sandy Hook."

The people of Newton are asking everyone to honor these children and teachers with Random Acts of Kindness today, December 14th. While you are out and about getting ready to spend the holidays with your loved ones, take a minute to do an act of kindness for someone else.


Thank you,  Krista at Creative Chalkboard for the lovely clip art.
Hi! We are excited to be the 10th day of Christmas in the blog hop hosted by Teachin' Little Texans! There's a fabulous giveaway, plus lots of freebies! Here's what you can win:













Enter here, and good luck!
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thanks for staying with me, and as a reward, enjoy this free-for-now Christmas Spatial Concepts - An Interactive Activity!
Day 11 will be brought to you by Flying High in First Grade. Thanks for stopping by!

This weekend was cold for us at 28 degrees, but my oven  was working to warm the kitchen! If you need some Christmas cookie recipes, these two got a stamp of approval from all of my family members.

First up is Chocolate Candy Cane Cookies by Pioneer Woman. I have never made a bad recipe from her! The cookies are not very sweet, but the addition of almond bark and peppermint make for a perfect combo with the chocolate!
I also decided to make some Vanilla Bean Cookies with Chocolate from Shugary Sweets but adapt it to Christmas. Unfortunately, I didn't find any Christmas sprinkles and had to go with what I had. But I bet the cookies still get eaten!
Merry Christmas!
From Amy:
#1  Gingerbread Baby
I have not read Jan Brett's beautiful Gingerbread Baby with the sweeties in a few years.    I guess because there are SO many wonderful Christmas/holiday stories, and so little time.     The second graders are loving Gingerbread Baby especially because we already read The Gingerbread Man by Carol Mason and Gingerbread Girl by Lisa Campbell Ernst.

#2   FB Frenzy Time hosted by Heather at Creation Castle
We are in the 2nd grade ELA group of the December Frenzy.    Check our freebie with 4 fun activities:   Antler's Antonyms, Antler ABC Order Activity, Santa ABC Order Activity and a Santa Word Search.   Just like (click on the thumbs up) our FB page to access the FB Frenzy tab (look for the penguin).   If you already like our page, just click on the FB Frenzy tab to get our freebie.   Then follow the 2nd grade map to get all other freebies available.

#3  Guilty pleasure.    Nonstop holiday movies on the Hallmark Channel.   Keep the movies coming, Hallmark.


From Laura:
#1 - Gotta love Texas weather! From a high of 82 to below freezing in just a few days!
#2 - I've been craving peppermint lately. I blame these babies:
#3 - And I'm thinking these Candy Cane Cookies from Pioneer Woman might be a good weekend project!

First off, a very Happy Birthday to my mom!

With only three weeks of therapy this month, I immediately started out with Christmas! Most students learned about Christmas vocabulary through David Shannon's The Amazing Christmas Extravaganza
and then searched for cards with Christmas: Write and Say the Room! Here are two students engaging both sides of their brains while searching high and low for /s/ and /l/ cards. They start out with the obvious:
 Start looking behind things:
 And eventually even look very low!
My younger students and Life Skills read Clifford's First Christmas.
We made some flat gingerbread houses from an oldie but goodie book, Book Cooks:

And worked on requesting with paint dotters to decorate this tree:
And worked on yes/no and same different with the Colors of Christmas book. Next week, Santa is Coming to Texas!

Look who's showing up in Lisa's room! Larry and Barry can't be anything but trouble!
I am serving a Life Skills class this year for the first time in many years. That means my materials were either donated to other SLPs or are oudated. One item I did keep was a booklet I made called The Colors of Thanksgiving. I liked it so well, I made a Colors of Christmas and will probably make these booklets into the winter and spring as well.

My previous Life Skills class was working on identifying colors, so that was the purpose of the book. Most of the students in this class can identify colors, but they need work on answering yes/no and same/different. Here's the book:


Hard to see the this page, huh? It's hard to capture color-on-color well. I will tell you there's a mistake. I wrote "ornament" but put on a die cut of Santa, so I will fix that. The Santa and bow are Velcroe'd on. At the beginning of this activity, I give each student a shape, and they have to put the shape on the Velcro dot when it's their color. Usually, they don't respond that they have the bow, so that leads to "who" questions - "Who has the bow?" or "Who has red?" And if the student with the yellow star volunteers, I let them put it on and ask questions like, "Is this red?" or "Is this the same or different?"

Here's the rest of the book:






Okay, teddy bear might be stretching it for a Christmas word, but I needed something brown!

To make the book, cut red, green, yellow, white, and brown construction paper into two strips for each color, 6 inches tall by 10 inches wide.

Use the same colors to cut out two die-cut shapes for each color. I'm lucky that my school has a pretty good collection of die cuts.

Print out the text.

Glue the title onto the first red strip and turn over. Glue text on. Then glue a red strip to the green strip so they are back-to-back. Keep repeating the gluing so that the pages open up with the same color facing. 

Laminate strips and shapes and cut out.

Velcro shapes to the color strip. Punch holes in the side and attach 2 small binder rings.

Merry Christmas!


We are joining with a fellow Texas teacher, Dixie of Teachin' Little Texans, for a 12 Days of Christmas Blog Hop and Giveaway! Go to her blog and enter for some great prizes, and keep checking back for our day!

It has been a full week of Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Small-Business Saturday! Tomorrow is Cyber Monday, and All Y'all Need is participating! All of our products are 20% off, and if you use the code CYBER at checkout, you'll get an additional discount! Jenna over at Speech Room News started a linky, so here we go:
First, here are a few Christmas recommendations from us. We love Christmas!
Compounds and Cupcakes, $5                                  
Naughty or Nice: You Decide, $3.50                         
Christmas ABC Order {Freebie}                                

I have a few things I'll be buying. First up is Christmas Cheer Articulation for the L, R, S and TH Sounds by Twin Sisters Speech and Language. It will be perfect for those crazy days when the schedule is changed and when I'm seeing kids when I can. Fun, basic, and it's all in B&W for easy printing!
I have a Life Skills class for the first time in a long time this year, so I'm buying Jenna Rayburn's Life Skills: Functional Christmas & Hanukkah Stories & Activities. I love the idea that it already has communication boards!
I also love the Quick Drills from Mia McDaniel, so Merry Christmas is also in my cart!
Happy shopping!


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