Getting back into the swing of things...

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday!  We spent our first Christmas together as a family of 3, and it was every bit as amazing as I'd always imagined it would be!  Our baby girl is only 10 weeks old, so she didn't have a clue what was going on, but it was still so special to us.

Well, my maternity leave has ended and it's time for me to get back into the swing of things!  Both at school and with creating new resources for my classroom and for my TpT store!  I just posted my first post-leave product and I'm really excited about it!  I've had this idea in my head for a while, and it feels good to finally work on it and use it in my own classroom.  January Made Easy!  My plan is to create a similar pack for each month of the year.  Click on the picture to check it out!  I'll have it on sale for 20% off through the end of 2013!

Back to reality!

Well, today is the end of my long and wonderful Christmas Break! I've really enjoyed staying up late and watching episodes of Friends, and I've loved sleeping in as late as I wanted to! But, it all ends tomorrow morning when that alarm clock goes off at 5:30! The school was open today and I did break my rule about never going in on a weekend... but, our carpet was cleaned during break, so my tables and some other furniture needed to be put back. I was dreading the thought of doing it before school on Monday, so I stopped in for a short time to get everything put back in order.

As much as I feel sad about break ending, I'm excited about seeing how much my kids have grown during our 18 days apart! We have some fun things planned this week, too! We're going to work on some New Year goal setting tomorrow and make a cute 2013 hat to wear to lunch! Our theme for the next two weeks is Winter, and I can't wait to pull out all of my Winter books for our read-alouds. Living in the south, our kids don't see much snow, so it's up to our books to help us experience Winter! :)

We're going to be making snowman glyphs, completing a book study on Jan Brett's The Mitten, and writing about what we'd like to do in the snow! Next week we're focusing on Polar Animals... penguins are my favorite!

If you're looking for some fun Winter activities to get your kiddos back into the swing of things, check these out...

And my Snowman Glyph Freebie!

Have an awesome week!