Happy Holidays with Oriental Trading

Happy Holidays!  I was very excited to receive my big cardboard box full of exciting items for my students to enjoy from Oriental Trading.  I teach Second Grade and I have to tell you that they absorb everything and they are excited about many things - especially the holidays.

[[Disclaimer: Oriental Trading sent me products in exchange for a blog post, but all opinions in this post are mine.]]

When I search Oriental Trading, I love how I can just go to the categories I need - Holidays/Christmas and who doesn't love sales? They have a great sale section as well.

The "main event" of my student gifts are these adorable penguins.  I love the plush toys from Oriental Trading because they are so cute and the kiddos cherish them at this age.  These plush toys are currently sold out, but I also would recommend these holiday bears and reindeers.  Too cute and they are on major SALE!

The slap bracelets are back! I LOVED these as a child.  They are fun to slap on your wrist, but also a fashionable bracelet.

I loved the variety of these but I am hoping that they come out with more of an assortment for boys.  There are other slap bracelet assortments that have different themes, but this particular pack will appeal mostly to the girls of my class.  It was a nice to have some bracelets with designs and some plain, sparkle ones.

The item I was impressed with the most are these 4 1/2 inch snowflake notepads.  For only $5.99, you will receive 24 of these.  Very good quality and they were larger than I expected for the price.  I have lots of artists and notetakers in second grade so they will love these!

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and Happy Hanukkah!  I can't wait to celebrate with my students all about the holidays around the world.

Enjoy my freebie from Teachers Pay Teachers full of writing prompts that you can use before and after the holiday season.

Holidays, Crafts, 12 Days of Christmas

 One of my favorite units to teach during the year is Rachelle Smith's Holidays Around the World unit.  This is one of my favorite and best purchases I have EVER made on TPT... please check out her full bundle HERE - it's the perfect pack to teach your little ones about the importance of learning about all holidays.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas ! - My babies made these adorable winter paintings (using white crayon!) with our sweet art teacher, Mrs. Ciotti.  I love the individualized creativity in each art project they do!

 I came across this amazing Elf craft from Today in Second Grade! My kids loved creating their elves and elf profiles! The templates were very easy to use and some of the names and interests of the elves were very cute - for example, one named her elf "Cookie Crumble!" You can find this product HERE from Miss Nicole!

We are right smack in the middle of Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah Designs 12 Days of Christmas giveaway.. with some of the best people I know :) There's only a few hours left, so head on over HERE to enter to win some wonderful prizes!

Stay tuned every day for 6 more days for new wonderful TPTers to be featured, and wonderful prizes to be won.  This really is the best time of the year! Xo I love you all, and thank you for all of your support. I am almost reaching the first milestone on TPT and I could not be more surprised, thrilled, excited, and blessed.  

Have a great night!

Cute displays and projects

I was so excited to get some amazing products from Creative Teaching Press for my sweet coworkers.  I feel as teachers, we know how much our coworkers really mean a lot to us - they help us copy, plan, cope, and support! I love them, and I think these are great gift ideas for coworkers to help stay organized (and they are super cute!) - PS-my sweet Lily wanted to get into the picture for this one!

 The stationery sets at CTP are adorable - they come with a folder, blank cards, list pad, and a pen :) They have many different designs - I happen to love polka dots! The whimsy and paisley styles are adorable too!

I also love their bulletin boards... one of the teachers that I gave this one to is going to laminate to use year after year! Such a cute winter display! on sale right now :) 

Since we are having a Thanksgiving breakfast next week, the kids were very excited to create Thanksgiving placemats - there were SO many to choose from online, but I figured they could let their creativity take over, and create their own! All we needed was paper, markers and crayons, a few stickers, and a laminator/laminating sheets! 

Check out those adorable turkeys and apple pie! ;) 

We also made these turkeys! I love them, you can check out the freebie HERE from The Applicious Teacher! They are actually placemats, but I just changed it up a little bit to fit my classroom and made miniature size ones! They loved it and definitely each put their creative spin on them with the sponge paint. 

During their art class, they also made these beautiful fall trees... they used tissue paper, watercolor, and cardstock!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Winter Planning Giveaway Stop B-9

Happy December 1st! I hope you are all staying warm and enjoying the holiday season!

I am so happy to be a part of I'm Lovin' Lit and her Winter Planning Giveaway.  Guess what...EVERYONE wins!  If you would like to learn more about the scavenger hunt, head on over to I'm Lovin' Lit to get all of the details to begin the fun!

For those of you that don't know, my name is Laura (Love to Teach) and I live in Upstate New York.  I currently teach Kindergarten (my first year in K!) but most of my products are upper elementary since I have spent a lot of time in those grade levels.  My TPT store is a variety of K-8 products so I hope you can find something for you!  Here is a picture of me and my baby sheltie-pom Lily!

For the scavenger hunt, please follow my blog: (which you are at right now! hehe)

Follow my TPT store:

  

And follow my facebook page:

The product I will be giving away is my Christmas Math and ELA Printables for grades 3-5 : ) The unit includes Christmas writing prompts, stationery, grammar activities, multiplication, long division, and fractions.  There is a total of 59 pages in this unit!

Here it is, my secret word : ) I hope you enjoy your hunt! Thank you so much for stopping by my blog! XOXO