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It has been exactly two months since my last post! Between all of the holiday excitement at work, getting ready at home for the holidays, AND trying to get my grad school app ready to go, I have just been too busy to sit down and relax. I apologize in advance for the length of this post. I really want to share some of the things we did during the holidays, though!
I was really excited to read The Great Turkey Race by Steve Metzger for Thanksgiving. The book is out of print, so when I started looking to buy a copy the only copies on Amazon were $2500 and $500, and on eBay they were around $260! Luckily, I found two sets of four with the CDs for $23 each on eBay and bought them immediately (one set for me & the other for the other SLP at my school)! It looks like the price went down, so definitely don't wait until next Thanksgiving to purchase a copy.
It is now one of my favorite books! Three turkeys compete to become the special Thanksgiving turkey, until they find out what happens to turkey on Thanksgiving. Once they find out, they team up and flee the farm. In addition to great vocabulary words for fall, it was fun to see what the kids thought was going to happen to the turkeys. The book ends with them fleeing the farm, and we never find out where they go. My pre-k and kindergarteners loved illustrating where they thought the turkeys went.
After Thanksgiving break, my students and I got a surprise visitor that we decided to name Buddy. Buddy stuck around until he had to go back to the North Pole on our last day of school. The kids (and I) were sad to see him go!
During the first week in December we read The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. I absolutely loved this book! There were so many activities to do with it, and it was the perfect book to introduce winter to my pre-k kiddos. For my pre-k groups, I had them sort clothes into "Winter Clothes" and "Summer Clothes." This was a great activity since we very rarely get to put on boots or heavy coats.
Then, during the last week of school we read another winter classic, The Mitten by Jan Brett. All of my kiddos made their own mitten to store their animals in (to tell the story in sequence at home!) and learned about some unfamiliar animals that they loved.
I made homework packets for all of my speech students to take home over the winter break. Two weeks is a long time to not practice, so I gave them an incentive (a trip to the treasure chest!) to bring their packets back. I'm excited to see how many practiced during their break.
Over the break I got a new phone, so all of the pictures of my students work are on the old phone. I'll try to add the pictures as soon as I can :)
If you're not lucky enough to get two more snow days, have fun going back to work tomorrow! I'm excited to see my kiddos and hear their holiday stories!
