Holiday Giveaway Day 5

Well, we've reached the end of our Holiday Giveaway Days, boo-hoo, sniff-sniff. It's been fun though, right? I was talking to a friend at school about having to do the last post and she said, "You give away so many freebies anyway, you didn't have to do a special thing." That's so nice, right? I do likes me some freebies and I'm happy to share them, so no worries, there are more to share after these days are over. I just felt like I wanted to do something a little *extra* special for you all this week.

So today I am blogging from my classroom. It's about 4:30 EST and I'm here waiting for an open house of sorts for a new program that I'm helping to pilot (more on that in the future).  I did not plan ahead and bring a decent lunch so I have just raided the estimation station jar. I didn't recognize the contents, but they looked a little like dog treats. I was pretty desperate, so after a good sniff, I realized they were Cookie Crisp  cereal. Awwww yeah, I haven't had those in years! One handful led to two handfuls which led to me adding a box of Cookie Crisp to my grocery list and hiding the empty jar under my desk.

On to today's special freebie. It's a fun compound activity that would be great for small groups or centers this week. There are two parts, one consists of cards to cut which the kids will try to put together to form 10 winter compound words. Then there is an extension sheet that asks them to alphabetize and arrange the words in different ways. There's also a word search thrown in for good measure. Click on the pic to download from Google Docs:

On a related note, I have another Pinterest inspired idea to share. I saw this totally awesome use for extra unifix cubes over at The First Grade Sweet Life a while back:

Cool, right? I was even more thrilled because our new math series came with a bajillion and a half new pop-cubes even though we already had a bajillion from our original series (budget crisis? what budget crisis?) I was so excited thinking about all the ways I was going to use this great idea until I unpacked all the cubes to find that they have BIG HOLES on every. single. side! Dang it! I stewed over this for a bit and even bought a real pack 100 unfix cubes like the ones above for FIFTEEN dollars. That was especially insane considering that I could probably build a life-size house (or at least a Barbie Dream House) from the stash at school. I tried a few things and then it hit me - tape! I put a clear piece of tape over the hole and then wrote on the tape! voila! Totally works. In the pic below you can see that some of the older cubes have holes big enough to write inside of, but the ones I have the most of in different colors are the other type. Take a look-see:

I'm not sure they'd survive constant use, but they've held up pretty good so far. Well, my friends. I have to run. My open house thingy starts in 15 minutes and I'm pretty sure I'm going to need some help from Miss Maybeline to look halfway presentable to parents.

P.S. This is the FIRST time I'm going to hit "publish" without previewing and proofreading, so please excuse any mistakes. Although in the time it took me to write this I probably could have proofread, huh?

Oy, Hey before you go, be sure you go back to Day One and enter the big contest which ends tonight!