A Delicious Halloween.... from all over the world! And a giveaway!

Hi everyone!

I am beyond exhausted! And not just because yesterday was every teacher's favorite day (hehe) but also because I teach an intensive grade 6 class and I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed these days. Basically, I teach my whole year in 6 months instead of 10. When we get to March break, their school year is over, curriculum-wise. For the last 4 months, I teach English as a Second Language to my kiddos. So math, language arts, science and all other subjects have to be taught before the end of March. That means, we gotta move quickly! I love the challenges it brings me and I really like the whole program, but it is no walk in the park! The students are working really hard and doing very well. I have such a cute group.... and only 22 of them! In grade 6...that's amazing! Especially with an intensive group, a smaller group is great! Report cards are coming up, I'm guessing for many of you as well, so I am trying to crunch in as much testing as possible (without it being too overwhelming for my students) and finalizing projects before next week. Then, I've got mucho grading to do.... I can do it! This year, I had my students portfolios of their progress, so this will be very helpful for my testing. I love portfolios!

Yesterday, we had a blast for Halloween! My students had to do a research on the country of their choice. They had to make a dessert from this country, find a costume to represent their country and do a presentation including their findings from their research. Oh my gosh! I ate desserts like there is no tomorrow! My belly (and my baby) are very much full of sugar! Obviously, as the teacher, I had to taste every single dessert! Students then tasted desserts as well and we had the other classes from our school come and enjoy our little buffet. 

Here are a few pics from this delicious event:

Irish Patato Donuts

Russian cake

Austrian chocolate cake

The students were so cute in their costumes. They worked so hard! Some of them actually handmade their costumes. Very impressive! I loved doing this project! So much fun! 

On an other note, I am participating in Miss V's Busy Bees' amazing giveaway! This one is HUGE! You have a chance to win any item from my store and many... many other prizes! Head on over to her blog to enter!

Woohoo! We made it through Halloween :)

Until next time,

A Halloween FREEBIE and free clipart!

Good afternoon everyone!

I have uploaded a little Halloween freebie for you to TPT. Click on the picture below to download.

It's a set of 5 can-have-are activities with witches, pumpkins, black cats, ghosts and haunted houses. They are fun and easy to add to any Halloween unit you are working on. Such as my Let's Get Spooky one! ;)

If you do grab a copy, I would love to hear what you think :)

Now who doesn't like some FREE clipart? Better yet, free clipart you can use for your products? Can I hear a woot woot!!!?? I found this great clipart website that offers tons of cute cliparts that are all free and that are ok for commercial use. LOVE! Check it out: My Cute Graphics. You'll find awesome graphics such as

and

Aren't they just adorable? I'm just so excited to have found this website, I really wanted to share it with you guys!

That's it for me!

Until next time,

I've been Boo-ed!!!

Good afternoon friends!

Halloween is in 2 weeks and I couldn't be more excited! I feel like a child! (OK so actually I could be more excited as Xmas is my ultimate holiday but I'm still quite excited!) I can't wait to see all the little cuties ring my doorbell and ask for candies. (or just point their pumpkin basket in my direction for the little ones... so cute!) I love to see all the different costumes and seeing loads of kids in the street. And also I can't wait to hit the 50% off candy sales on November 1st... yay! So speaking of Halloween, I have been boo-ed! What a fun linky Tori has created!

If you've been booed, copy and paste the above pic and these ''rules'' into your post.

1. Give a shout out to the blogger who booed you and link back to their site!

2. Share 3-5 October activities, books, products (yours or someone else), or freebie(s) that you love!

3. Share the Boo love with 5 bloggers - make sure you check this link to make sure you don't boo someone again:

http://toristeachertips.blogspot.com/2012/10/ive-been-booed-fun-october-linky.html 

And don't forget to tell them that they have been BOOED!

4. Link up [here] so that others can find you and read about your October ideas! And while you are there... check out other great blogs!

1. I have been booed by the wonderful Katie and Lisen over at Second Grade Smartypants! If you haven't checked them out, you really should! Plus, they are having a great giveaway at the moment :)

2. Here are some of my favorites, for October!

a) Robert Munsch's Boo!

I love all of his books and this one is so much fun to read to the kiddos on Halloween!

b) Hocus Pocus

Ok so maybe not really school related... but I LOVE this Halloween movie! I watch it every year around Halloween and it always makes me laugh. It's really old but to me... it never gets old! :)

c) Let's Get Spooky!

My little Halloween unit! A few fun activities to do with your kids, with a Halloween theme. Grab your copy in my TPT store!

d) My Frankenstein Craftivity

Teri over at A Cupcake for the Teacher made this adorable craftivity. I did it with my kids and they LOVED it! I have a grade 6 group and currently we are in French so I couldn't do the writing part. However, I needed a fun Halloween activity last week because half my group was participating in a cross-country and weren't at school and the others had to stay with me and work! Oh the sadness! So I had to find something that wasn't too workish and I tried this! They were in love with their Frankenstein! So I can just imagine how younger ones will like it! :)

3.  Here are the blogs I am Boo-ing!

- 3rd Grade's A Charm

- Adventures of a 6th Grade Teacher

- Coffee, Kids and Compulsive Lists

- Dirty Hands and Lesson Plans

- Herding Kats in Kindergarten

Well there you have it!

I'm off to watch some Revenge and then work on a science project for my kiddos!

Until next time,

Halloween is coming! And a little giveaway too!

And that means I am super happy! I LOVE Halloween! October is just such an amazing month!

Inspired by Teri over at A Cupcake for the Teacher, I've created my very own Halloween countdown! Ok so maybe it's not as cute as hers but I love it! It's such a fun idea! It was quite long to make but worth it! Here is how it turned out:

I've decided that I will draw a student's name each day to be the one to remove the magnet. And the lucky student will also get a special treat! I bought a big bag of delicious Maynard's candies! (which I will for sure probably be stealing from ;)

I also need to get my classroom ready for Halloween. I've got some shopping to do! Do you decorate for Halloween? I don't tend to decorate my house that much... only a few pumpkins here and there. But my classroom however! That's another story! And kids are so so so excited when Halloween comes around I just find it makes them happy to have a Halloween classrom :)

And speaking of Halloween, I have just finished my latest TPT product: Let's Get Spooky!

Let's Get Spooky! is a set of fun Halloween activities to do with your students, during the months of October. The activities can be used in centers or as whole group activities.

Includes:

-Spooky Words (making new words with the letters from Halloween)

-Spooky Scrambling (scrambled words)

-Spooky Sentences (scrambled sentences)

-Spooky Rhymes

-Spooky Nouns and Adjectives (students must place words in full moons, either the nouns moon or the adjectives moon)

-Spooky Alphabet (students must cut Halloween picture cards and place them in alphabetical order)

-3 writing activities: My Favorite Halloween Treat, A Very Spooky Store and My Halloween Costume

-Spooky Word Search

Grab yourself a copy HERE. If you do so, let me know what you think! :)

Want to win a copy? Leave a comment telling me you follow my blog.

 I will choose 2 lucky winners tomorrow during the day!
Congrats to Sara and Lisa R.! I will be emailing you shortly :)

I love fall, a fun project and a little chalkboard tip!

Good morning everyone!

I am so happy that fall is finally here! I am in love with this season. And so is my boyfriend! So we go a little crazy when fall gets here :) A good crazy! I absolutely adore everything this season offers us every year. I am talking fall food (anything with apples, pumpkin, spices, everything in the slow cooker...mmmm), fall weather (the joy of having to put on my leather jacket that I love so much or being able to put a cute sweater over my t-shirts, not having to sweat through school days where students can barely sit straight because it's so hot and uncomfortable), fall celebrations (Halloween and Thanksgiving! fun!), fall smells (thank you Bath and Body Works for always being able to make my home a little more fallish.... last year with the delicious smell of Pumpkin Patch and this year with Sweet Cinnamon Pumpkin.... oh my gosh! I've got the soap, the candle and the plug-in! smells so comforting!) and let's not forget, the fact that all the good TV shows are coming back!!! Welcome back to Revenge, The Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother :) YAY!

And also, this year, fall comes with another great surprise for me: The beginning of my second trimester! My nausea and fatigue are still here but I'm doing much better! I see light at the end of the tunnel :)

I wanted to talk to you about a fun project I am doing with my kids for Halloween. I've done it two years ago and for some reason I do not remember, I did not do it last year, and I missed it! My sweet little 6th graders had to choose a country they wanted to research. ( And no, in grade 6some of them do not know many countries and they think Europe is one.... ;)Not that I was any better at 12 years old! So I had to provide many options for them to choose from!) Now, they have to research the country and they will present us their findings on Halloween. Here is the fun part: They must dress up with traditionnal clothes from their country and bring a traditionnal dessert too, for the whole class to taste! Students are extremely excited about the project and have already started working on their costumes and testing out recipes at home. I can not wait to see what they come up with. Two years ago, the presentations were amazing! We had so much fun! And wow did I eat! Donuts, cakes, cookies, pies.... and because I'm the teacher, they always wanted me to get a bigger piece so let me tell you I was pretty full by the end of the day! I'll be sure to share with you how it all turns out! :)

Also, I wanted to share a great chalkboard tip with you. Washing my board has always been quite the task. I wash it daily, as I always want it super clean. but it takes FOREVER and sometimes I have to go over it a few times to remove all the chalk residues and the end result is not always as perfect as I would want it. But now, I've found an amazing solution! Lemon oil!! Have any of you every tried it? Any lemon oil should do the trick, just make sure it's not soap. I have the Pledge kind. Put a few drops on a washcloth that you will keep in a little ziploc bag. If your board is really dirty, you might need to do a quick wash with a sponge before. But if not, the lemon oil should be enough. So you simply go over your chalkboard surface with the lemon oil and voila!! It makes your board super shiny and it looks soooo clean! And you don't have to rinse the washcloth! You just put it back in the bag! I wanted to take a picture to show you a before and after shot but of course I forgot! Lemon oil can be found at the dollar store or Wal-Mart or probably Target (but not that I would know as I do not have the luxury of having one here yet :p) If you try it, let me know how you like it! Be sure to put only a few drops though because if you put too much the board will stay oily and you won't be able to write on it for a few days... Happened to my colleague!

I'm currently working on my 200 follower giveaway! Yay! A few bloggers have agreed to join in and give away some great items! Let me know if you would like to participate as well! The more the merrier! :) Just email me at misselementary@gmail.com

And for those of you interested... tomorrow is my first ultrasound!!! I don't even know if I'll be able to sleep as I am so excited! It feels like Christmas! On Thursday, I had my first doctor's appointment and we heard our little baby's heart :) If I was super excited about that, I can't imagine how I'm going to react tomorrow when I actually see the little bundle of joy! :)

Have a good day everyone and for those of you in love with fall... I think a little stop at Bath and Body Works will make you smile :)

Until next time,