The 4th Annual Great Canadian Valentine Swap

Pardon the mess of my blog. It's a work in progress.

It's that time again! It's time for the 4th Annual Great Canadian Valentine Swap. The 2018 edition! Last year we had over 255 classes from across Canada participate. I'm hoping that this year will be even bigger and better!

 Julie from Plaisirs du primaire and I  have joined forces again this year to bring you a FRENCH version of the same great swap! All the same rules apply. More info will be posted soon about the French swap.

What is a Valentine Swap? 

It is a way for K-6 classes to connect with other classes from across Canada and to learn about their communities. Each class will be responsible for making and decorating 20 valentines. Please, no store bought cards. Classes are encouraged to write a letter describing their community and school. You can photocopy the letter to save time, especially for younger grades.

If you are looking for Valentine art ideas ideas make sure you check out my Pinterest Board.

These are the cards that my grade one class made two years ago.

 A coworker made these adorable bees with her grade ones.

By Friday, February 2nd, you will need to mail one of your 20 Valentines to 20 different classes from around Canada. Then, keep your eyes on the mail! I can't wait to see how excited my kiddos are to get their Valentines from around Canada this year! 

PLEASE NOTE: You are sending 1 Valentine to each class. You will receive 20 different Valentines in return.

We mapped where our Valentines came from last year. (Yes I know my map is super old and no longer correct.) We also looked up the different communities on Google Earth. 

Here are some other displays.

Sign Up Information

Sign ups will be open until January 11th or until the maximum number of participants has been reached. 

Inscrivez-vous ici pour recevoir des valentins en français. COMING SOON!

By Signing up, you are committing to:

• making 20 valentines with your class
• mailing all of the valentines by Friday, February 2nd, 2017
• paying for the postage

More details will be sent out the week of January 12, but you can start making your Valentines right away if you want. If you have any questions please comment below or email me before signing up. 

The 3rd Annual Great Canadian Valentine Swap!

It's that time again! It's time for the 3rd Annual Great Canadian Valentine Swap. The 2017 edition! Last year we had over 180 classes from across Canada participate. I'm hoping that this year will be even bigger and better!

 Julie from Plaisirs du primaire and I  have joined forces again this year to bring you a FRENCH version of the same great swap! All the same rules apply. More info will be posted soon about the French swap.

What is a Valentine Swap? 

It is a way for K-6 classes to connect with other classes from across Canada and to learn about their communities. Each class will be responsible for making and decorating 20 valentines. Please, no store bought cards. Classes are encouraged to write a letter describing their community and school. You can photocopy the letter to save on time, especially for younger grades.

If you are looking for Valentine art ideas ideas make sure you check out my Pinterest Board.

These are the cards that my grade one class made two years ago.

 A coworker made these adorable bees with her grade ones.

By Friday, February 3rd, you will need to mail all 20 of your Valentines to the 20 different classes from around Canada. Then, keep your eyes on the mail! I can't wait to see how excited my kiddos are to get 20 Valentines from around Canada this year! 

We mapped where our Valentines came from last year. (Yes I know my map is super old and no longer correct.) We also looked up the different communities on Google Earth. 

Here are some other displays.

Sign Up Information

Sign ups will be open until January 11th or until the maximum number of participants has been reached. 

Inscrivez-vous ici pour recevoir des valentins en français. COMING SOON!

By Signing up, you are committing to:

• making 20 valentines with your class
• mailing all of the valentines by Friday, February 3rd, 2017
• paying for the postage

More details will be sent out the week of January 12, but you can start making your Valentines right away if you want. If you have any questions please comment below or email me before signing up. 

Winter Blog Hop and Giveaway!!!

I am so thrilled to linking up with Mrs D's Corner to bring you this great Winter Fun Blog Hop and Giveaway. Some of my favourite bloggers have put together an amazing Winter e-book just for you and we are giving away an amazing prize!!!!

A number of people have been asking for this so I thought I would share with you how I teach my favourite winter art activity to  my firsties. Every year, we do a bunch of snowmen art activities. Since I am not the most amazing art teacher in the world, Pinterest has become my best friend. When I came across this great pin I knew I had to do this activity with my kiddos, but no matter how hard I looked I couldn't find instructions.

 So, I thought I would share with you how I did this activity with my class. Just remember I haven't taken an art class since Grade 8. :) Which was a really long, long time ago. 

What you will need:

• oil pastels
• black construction paper cut in half
• paper towel for smudging

 The first time I attempted this lesson I told the students to draw a big snowman. As you can guess I got teeny tiny little snowmen or giant snowmen that just wouldn't work. So we tried again and went through step by step.

Step 1:  Make a fist near the bottom of the the page and draw a large circle around your fist.

Step 2:  Make a fist again, this time make your circle closer to your hand.

Step 3: Draw another circle for the head.

Step 4:  Trace over your circles with dark blue pastel.

Step 5: Make a circle with light blue on the inside of the circle, beside the dark blue. I know in the sample picture they just did the blue on, one side of the picture, but my students went all the way around the circles so we just went with it.

Step 6: Scribble in the white snow of the snowman. My kiddos were so excited to be allowed to scribble!

Step 7: Smudge the blues into the white. Try to encourage your students to smudge more on one side than the other.

Step 8: Add a hat in dark blue. Use a white pastel to create some shading. You can also add some snow to the hat. See the next picture. 

Step 9: Add add the details; eyes, nose, mouth and buttons.

Step 10: Add stick arms using two colours. Be careful that your students don't go all the way around the the dark brown.

Step 11: Scribble with white at the bottom. You can add a little brown and smudged to make the snow on the ground. Add some snowflakes and you are DONE!!!!

I also experimented with using black instead of the dark blue and adding scarves to the snowmen. 

If you haven't picked up our special Winter Ebook, you can grab it by clicking on the picture below.

Make sure you enter my secret word in the Rafflecopter for your chance to win the $100 TPT Giveaway!

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Dont forget to hop to the next blog to find all the secret word for even more chances to win!

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you have a wonderful winter!

2nd Annual Great Canadian Valentine Swap 2016: Sign Ups are Open

UPDATE: Sign up for the Great Canadian Valentine Swap English version is now closed. 189 classes have signed up. Information will be emailed to participants the week of January 11, 2016. 

 

It's that time again! It's time for the 2nd Annual Great Canadian Valentine Swap. The 2016 edition! Last year we had over 60 classes from across Canada participate. I'm hoping that this year will be even bigger and better!

Do I have some exciting news! Julie from Plaisirs du primaire have joined forces to bring you a FRENCH version of the same great swap! All the same rules apply.

What is a Valentine Swap? 

It is a way for K-6 classes to connect with other classes from across Canada and to learn about their communities. Each class will be responsible for making and decorating 20 valentines. Please, no store bought cards. Classes are encouraged to write a letter describing their community and school. You can photocopy the letter to save on time, especially for younger grades.

If you are looking for Valentine art ideas ideas make sure you check out my Pinterest Board.

These are the cards that my grade one class made last year.

 A coworker made these adorable bees with her grade ones.

By Wednesday, February 3rd, you will need to mail all 20 of your Valentines to the 20 different classes from around Canada. Then, keep your eyes on the mail! I can't wait to see how excited my kiddos are to get 20 Valentines from around Canada this year! 

We mapped where our Valentines came from last year.(Yes I know my map is super old and no longer correct.) We also looked up the different communities on Google Earth. 

Here are some other displays.

Sign Up Information

Sign ups will be open until January 11th or until the maximum number of participants has been reached. 

Inscrivez-vous ici pour recevoir des valentins en français.

By Signing up, you are committing to:

• making 20 valentines with your class
• mailing all of the valentines by Wednesday, February 3rd, 2016
• paying for the postage

More details will be sent out the week of January 11, but you can start making your Valentines right away if you want. If you have any questions please comment below or email me before signing up. 

All I Want For Black Friday

It's hard to believe that it has been a year already. The ladies and gent of the Primary Pack are back for our 2nd Annual "All I Want For Black Friday" Linky. Now being from Canada, we already had Thanksgiving back in October and we have nothing as amazing as our neighbours to the south's sales. But, we over the last few years we have started to have more. Who doesn't love a sale right??? 

There is no word yet if there will be a Black Friday sale but regardless, The Primary Pack is sharing a few of our most wish-listed items in our personal wishlist, our carts and our own stores. We are also hosting a HUGE Black Friday giveaway, check it out below, you don't want to miss it!

My birthday is on Wednesday, so these might make some great gifts. We'll see if my husband actually reads my blog or not! :)

• Fit Bit: So I'm dying to jump on the Fit Bit wagon. I feel like the only person who doesn't have one. I love the colour of this teal Fit Bit. It's so different then the normal black. True it probably won't match everything. Hmmm...maybe I need one in each colour?
• Kobo or Chapters Gift Card: So I am a total bookworm. In fact, I have become such a bookworm that I have spent way more time reading than TPTing or blogging. Which is sad, but it's so hard to put down my ereader. Have you heard of BookBub? If you love to read, you need to check it out. Lets just say the free and discounted books are not helping my bookwormishness (is that a word?)
• Swim Cap for Long Hair...that actually keeps my hair dry!!!!: I have been trying to find a swim cap for long thick hair for over a month. Anyone have any suggestions? This one by THT is suppose to be good

Here are a few of the items that I want to pick up for my classroom!

• Holiday Writing Paper by Kennedy's Korner: My group of firsties love to write this year. I think they will love this set. I can't wait to get my hands on this!
• Warm Up to Writing by Jennifer Reynolds: This set looks adorable!  It is full of winter themed creative writing activities. The best is it will get me through December and January since the activities aren't just Christmas themed!
• All About Winter by Proud to be Primary: I absolutely adore Proud to be Primary's units. This unit is over 200 pages of amazing!
• The Thankful Turkey by Laugh Eat Learn: I love this little turkey activity. Although we have already celebrated Thanksgiving, I need to make sure to pick this activity up for next year! It's sooo cute!

Here are a few products to check out from my store, Emmy Mac's Class. These are some of my most wishlisted items.

• A Year of Open Ended Problems for First Grade: A full year of open ended problems. Each month includes 20+ differentiated problems, that include different topics (numbersense, money, area and perimeter, fractions, graphing, etc.)
• Writing Bundle: This bundle includes 5 of my popular writing units. Topics include Recounts, Letter Writing, Writing Narratives, Writing Retells and Writing Centres.
• November Open Ended Problems: It's not too late to use the November open ended problems or you could check out December's Open Ended Problems.
• "Suit Up" Santa: Your students will love practicing their sight words while helping Santa get "Suited Up" for the big night. Who will be the first to get Santa ready.
• Trim the Tree: This is another great sight word game. Students decorate the Christmas tree while practicing their sight words. Over 150 words are included  in this set.

Drumroll please.... Check out this HUGE giveaway package you can win by entering below! There is a resource from almost everyone in The Primary Pack, perfect for all primary grades!! Good luck, friends and happy shopping!


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Now It's Your Turn To Join The Fun! 

Just a few rules to follow and you're on your way:

1. Download the images above!
2. Add your personal holiday wishlist to the image titled "My Personal Black Friday Wishlist"
3. Add your favorite sellers products from your TPT wishlist to the "My Classroom Black Friday Wishlist"
4. Add your own products to the "For Your Black Friday Wishlist"
5. Link up below to share your Black Friday Wishlists!
6. Don't forget to enter our fabulous giveaway above AND visit others linked up below.

An InLinkz Link-up