Better late than never!! Volcanoes, Christmas party, and freebie tags

So it's been wayyyy too long since my last post, but as you know the last week of school before Christmas it's CRAZY!!!! Not to mention lesson plans, grades, and a family trip out of town... Now we are back to a warmer weather in Texas! We get back tomorrow with a training and Tuesday I'll be seeing my monkeys again :)

Before I share with y'all my trip, I wanted to refer back to my Landforms post; I added more pictures and a couple more activities to it, click on Landforms please :)

On the last week of school before Christmas, we talked about volcanoes and did a fun/quick experiment to observe how volcanoes erupt. Here is a picture of our foldable:

For our Volcano experiment, we just added baking soda, food coloring (red and yellow to make an orange lava color), and vinegar... My students first built their volcano with play-dough; then poured vinegar into the hole (each group had a mini cup containing vinegar), added two drops of yellow and red food coloring, and at last added two tea spoons of baking soda.

For our Christmas party, we watched "The Polar Express" and I gave a couple gifts to my students. They automatically recognized the box by saying "just like in the movie!" They all loved the little box and I think it turned out super cute! :)

I purchased the mini boxes from Oriental Trading; here is the link to the product in case you would like to check it out! Click HERE



I purchased the mini bows from Wal-Mart and I made the tickets myself. To make the tickets look more sparkly I bought a spray bottle from Michaels. Here is a picture of the bottle and it is called "Color Shine" and it's basically a spray that gives a sparkly look to the paper...

 

 

 

 

I also made these mini bags that contain hot chocolate bags and mini marshmallows:

 

 

You can download for FREE both tickets and tags on my TPT store, click HERE to take you to my TPT product.

 

Remember my post on recycling construction paper? Well, we finally got a chance to use the paper! We made small Christmas cards with it and they turned out super cute! :)

 

If you would like to see my post on recycling paper, click on the following link:  Natural Resources & Recycling Activity

 

 

I just wanted to share with you before I leave what I did over my Christmas break... We spent all my the break in VA and MD. Before I got married, I used to live with my mom in MD so when I moved to Texas, she moved to Virginia. My husband's family live in Maryland as well, so we were going to these two states the whole time.
It's been long, long, too long since I have been in a descent snow day, so my sister and I have been praying for some snow... whatever the amount, a lot of it or just a little bit of it.. at least before we both leave Virginia.... So we got some! Here is a collage picture of how my mom's neighborhood looked after it stopped snowing:

We were so happy!! At least we got to enjoy the VERY cold weather for a day :)

Well, this is it for me! It is resting time for this sleepy bear! ;) I hope you had an awesome break and I wish you a fabulous first week of school!
Thanks for stopping by my blog, stay tuned!! :)