Merry Christmas!

From our family to yours.....

I hope you enjoy your break!

Christmas Gift to You!

Twice a year TpT sellers come together to create eBooks full of links to free activities you can use in your classroom! The winter version eBooks are live now - and totally worth checking out!

Each page has a holiday teaching tip & a link to a free product. Many of the products are holiday themed and would be PERFECT for the days of school left before winter break!

There are eBooks available for all subjects and grades. Check out the 6-12 Math & Science eBook here:

MATH & SCIENCE WINTER EBOOK 2014

Favorite Things Blog Hop & Giveaway!

I am very excited to participate in "Our Favorite Things Blog Hop & Giveaway"! Each of the bloggers participating has reduced the price of select items in their TpT stores, written a  blog post about a few of their favorite things, and donated a prize to the giveaway. To view other blog posts and to enter the giveaway, make sure to click on the link at the bottom of the page!

Here are a few of my favorite things: 

 I LOVE making candy and baking cookies, then delivering them to friends and family. Last year we moved during Thanksgiving week, and missed out on this tradition because: A)my daughter had pneumonia all throughout December and B) we didn't know anyone in our new city. So far this month everyone has been healthy and I can not wait to cook & deliver treats to the friends we've made over the past year. My favorite treat to make is turtle candies! They are easy to make and taste delicious!

I use regular chocolate chips for the chocolate part, but my dad always uses melting chocolate that he purchases at Costco for this. Apparently it is a lot cheaper, and works well! For nuts I like using pecans, but have a ton of walnuts I need to use up. Either type works great!

We will also be making sugar cookies. My favorite cookie recipe can be found here: Best Sugar Cookies. They are really easy (which is great for someone like me who is horrible at anything that involves using the oven) & they taste delicious!

My favorite store is Publix! If you live in an area without a Publix, I'm sorry!! :) Publix is a grocery store we have in the south. The store "motto" is "where shopping is a pleasure." Shopping truly is a pleasure at Publix. Their selection is phenomenal and customer service is truly amazing. They go above and beyond and are so friendly! In fact, when my husband and I got married rather than hiring a caterer I choose to order trays and things from Publix (because I LOVE their food that much!) My favorite area of Publix is their bakery. They sell the most delicious croissants and breads along with many other treats (like canolis yum yum!) 

For the past year I've been driving 50min every other week to visit the Publix nearest to me. Recently though, we had a store open just 20min away - which of course makes me so happy! I plan on ordering trays for holiday parties from Publix soon - which will make celebrating the holidays way less stressful! I also love that throughout the holiday season they have an option to add a donation to your grocery purchase that goes towards feeding hungry families in the area. In the past few weeks since our store opened I've visited 6 or 7 times and paid for at least 10meals for families in our area!

One of my favorite gifts to give is a bookstore gift card. When I was a child Santa brought my 4 siblings and I gift cards to Barnes and Nobles in our stockings EVERY year. A week or so after Christmas my parents would bring us all to the nearest store and we would spend hours picking out books to purchase with out $10 cards. Those trips were so fun, and the memories I have from those trips are priceless! The nearest bookstore to us now is about 45min away and it's Books a Million. My daughter will be receiving a gift card from there from Santa (my husband and I will receive one too!) and I wanted to share a gift card with one of you so you can have a fun book shopping trip too!

Make sure you enter the giveaway by clicking the link below, to win this and other prizes! The prizes are truly amazing!

In addition to the giveaway, bloggers involved have priced certain TpT store items at 50% off, I've chosen to discount some of my winter holiday themed items! The sale is only for a limited time, so make sure to act quickly! Here is a link to items I have discounted: #Favorite Things 2014

I would love to hear some of your favorite things! Do you have any fun traditions in your family, any store obsessions, and/or a favorite gift to give? Let me know in the comments! I can not wait to hear what you have to say and read the posts other bloggers have shared about their favorite things!

**Note: bloggers LOVE comments and we LOVE gaining followers. It would be lovely if contributors to the giveaway received at least a few thank-yous! :) 

Our favorite things Oprah style: the best giveaway of the season! My bloggy friends and I welcome you to the best, biggest, most cheerful event of the season:

7 winners for 7 prize packs!

Come and enter the giveaway and check out our favorite things:



a Rafflecopter giveaway

An InLinkz Link-up

Math Is Real Life: December

The first Wednesday of each month is a fun link up hosted by:

  4mulaFun, The Teacher Studio, Teaching to Inspire in 5th, 

AND MissMathDork, called 

Math is Real Life.

I love the premise of the link up – all of the posts included are great to share with students to show them that math really can be found everywhere!

This month our family has been spending a lot of time preparing for Christmas. While we do talk a lot about what Christmas is actually celebrating (the birth of Christ) we have fun spending time as a family doing crafts, singing Christmas songs, and watching holiday themed movies.

Last year while browsing Pinterest I found a picture of some popsicle stick snowflake decorations that looked awesome! I created one last year on my own and it’s been hanging in our living room ever since! My daughter spent all year asking when she could make her own so right after Thanksgiving we sat down together and made some new ones.  While creating I realized that there was a lot of geometry involved in each snowflake.. The snowflakes are made up of various lines, angles, triangles and rhombuses. 

This was the first snowflake created. The center is made of equilateral triangles. The outer limbs are perpendicular to the end of a particular triangle. The outside L shapes are right triangles!

This flake has a center made up of rhombi. Many types of angles are also present.

We did not use a protractor or any tools other than our brains, popsicle sticks & glue gun to create the snowflakes. You can tell that we didn't because some of the shapes are off! If we had been more careful and taken measurements we would have had a cleaner overall look!

The final snowflake we made was this "rainbow snowflake.". My 6yr old made this snowflake on her own. We had a wonderful discussion on the different types of triangles she needed to use. The center is made up of equilateral triangles. The outer triangles are isosceles triangles. 

These snowflakes look great hanging up around our house! It's been fun to quiz Dixie and see if she remembers what the various shapes are called! 

Make sure to check out the other posts included in the link up! I've browsed a few already and they are really neat to read!

SALE!!!!

Teachers pay Teachers only hosts site wide sales once every quarter. This quarters sale is finally here!!! I love stocking up on fun activities, clip art & fonts at fantastic prices! Sale ends tomorrow at midnight! Everything in my store is 28% off (if you use promo code TPTCYBER at check out)! 

-Kimberly Geswein {Fonts}
-Melonheadz Illustrations {Clip Art}
-Glitter Meets Glue {Clip Art}