The Colors of Us and 2 freebies

It wasn't raining and my car wasn't frozen today- YIPPEE! And today one of my students came back. He left suddenly a week before Christmas. I was told after school one day that he and his family were going to Mexico to see a sick grandmother and didn't know if they'd come back or when. And this is a nice, really smart kid. I didn't want to see him go. Since he left without warning, I still had the gift he made for his parents and some of his projects. Yesterday I got a note that he was returning today! He walked in and the other kids were sooo excited. They hugged him and showed him where his desk is now and even got out his folder and pencil box for him. It was a fun way to start the day.

After school I took a picture of our art project (yes, art. Once in a while we get to it.) that we did last week. It came from a class I took, although I can no longer remember what class it was.  I hadn't done it in quite a while but knew this class was careful enough and would do a good job. I read the book The Colors of Us by Karen Katz.  We had studied about Martin Luther King, so this fit right in. My parent helper traced the kids hands, I premixed skin color paints, and we were ready. The kids painted the backgrounds the second day. Don't they look great?

A couple of freebies...
The first goes with the Leo Lionni story A Busy Year and is for Daily 5- Listen to Reading. Since this story is only a few minutes long, I made this to go with it. Just click on the picture to grab it.

There's also a Math Work Stations freebie to work on equivalent number sentences. Again, just click on the picture to grab it.

Here is an idea for Math Work Stations too. These are laminated die cuts from 0-99, each 10 in a different shape and color. My students will have 50 at a time to put in order on our magnetic white board. After a while I'll probably change it to counting by 5's or 2's.

Wishing you lots of fun blogstalking,
 Chrissy