Chinese New Year

This is one of my favorite units to teach for Social Studies! The students don't get a chance to learn about this very often so they are always so engaged!

I always check out some books from the library and do daily read alouds or we will watch a clip from either Discovery Education or Brain Pop Jr. Both of these sights my district has subscriptions too and they are a great way to incorporate technology into the classroom!

One of my students' favorite activities are poems! So I of course had to do a poem for Chinese New Year! We read the poem and look for words we know, words we don't know, and words that rhyme. Then the students get a chance to draw a picture of what the poem makes them think of. Great visualizing activity!

A great way to get some comparing and contrasting practice is to read a book and then talk about how the Chinese New Year and our new year are the same and different. This activity can be done as a whole group or individually depending on your students ability.

I also love to teach about the "Year of the _______" The kids find it so interesting that their calendar year is different than ours!

We of course have to cover where China is on the map and where it is in relation to the USA. They can't believe how far away it is from us.

All of these fun activities you can find in my "Chinese New Year" mini unit. I promise your students will love the fun activities and will be talking about them for weeks!

January Currently

I was enjoying my break so much that I FORGOT about my currently post! GASP! How could it be?! But it's ok, I remembered now :)

Listening: Today in Texas the high is 46. BRR! So I am spending the day taking down Christmas (sad!) and sitting by the fire doing some blogging!

Loving: My husband went back to work today. I am SO glad that I have until next Tuesday :)

Thinking: Can you believe it's 2014? Half the school year is almost over! And I hope the 2nd half goes as quickly because that will put us closer to meeting our bundle of joy!

Wanting: If you didn't already know, we are expecting our first baby in July. Read more about it on my personal blog. And I can't WAIT to find out what we are having! I love throwing parties and a gender reveal party is definitely on the books!

Needing: This girl is needing some stretchy pants. Not only was it just Christmas and Thanksgiving where I pretty much gain 5 pounds every year, I have a baby growing inside of me that is starting to push out my waist line. I can't wait for it to look like a baby bump and not that I just ate my weight in turkey and crumb pie.

Memory: This year's memory is fun for us because we got to publicly announce our sweet bundle of joy :) Our road to parenthood has been a hard one, and finally getting to share was such a joyous time, not only for us, but for everyone who had been praying along aside us for this baby.

I hope you have a few more days to enjoy your break!