Save Yourself Some Merry Little Minutes This Winter

Oh, the days leading up to winter break in the elementary classroom. The excitement of Christmas, the rehearsals for our holiday show, the semester assessments for progress monitoring, and writing all those report cards… it’s enough to make you want to eat the entire cookie jar. 😉  


To help you out, I’ve teamed up with some of my favorite upper elementary bloggers again to bring you this quick blog hop. Our goal is to save you some of those precious little minutes as we wrap up 2014. Less time on prep and more time with family is what it’s all about.

My tip to you is to work in BULK. This is something I apply to many aspects of my life, but seems to be something many teachers struggle with. When my husband and I first got married, it seemed like we were at the grocery store every other day because we couldn’t work ahead on our menus. I hate the grocery store and dreaded having to go so often. It was a waste of time! I felt the same way about our copy machine at school. Ain’t nobody got time for waiting in that line!


So now I work in bulk. I sketch out my lesson plans in monthly units and pull the folders/bins/centers I’ll need for those units all at the same time. Then I go to the copy machine one time. Yes, one time. I’ll run all my copies and then put the masters away. This saves so much time!


I’ll go in before or after school one day and run them all when no one else is around {like on common prep periods or lunch, you know, rush hour times}. I paper clip each stack together and toss them on a shelf behind my desk. Then I have them right at my fingertips when I’m ready to prep my daily folders each week. This not only saves me copy machine time, but has me “sub ready” without scrambling. She just grabs my daily folder and teachers her way straight through it. It also saves me when our copy machine takes one of its frequent vacations. 

Another way you can save yourself some time this winter is to grab print and go materials from TpT. We’re having a big ‘ol sale too! Be sure to use the coupon code when you check out for 28% off everything in my store.

Here are a few activities I can’t teach without this time of the year. First, we dive into my penguin unit. I’m all about teaching in thematic units and the penguin theme is always a hit with my kiddos. They’ve studied penguins before, but we go much deeper and they truly become experts about a penguin species of their choice with this pack. Of course, I carry the penguin theme over into word work, math, science, and social studies too. We’re sneaky like that. 😉 This is also a great unit for coming back to school in January.

For a little seasonal fun, I use my Winter Wonderland unit. It has tons of seasonal writing activities with math activities, map skill practice for social studies, and crafts/recipes mixed in too. It’s mostly winter themed with just a few Christmas pieces, so it’s perfect for schools that can’t do Christmas in the classroom.

There’s a set of matching cards for each multiplication fact family 1-12. Students can use the cards alone in “memory” games, or use them as game cards with the included board games. 

These coloring sheets are included in the pack, but I also pulled them out separately for those of you who just need print-and-go sheets. I use these for fast finishers.

Finally, my fall math craftivities were such a hit I had to carry the theme over into winter with Santa, Christmas Tree, and Snowmen. These all come in addition/subtraction and multiplication/division options. I like this because you can differentiate for your students while everyone works on the same thing too. Again, sneaky. I pass out multiple options so we wend up with a variety of finished crafts for a bulletin board display. I also like that this reduces the temptation to share answers so everyone has to work the problems. 

Thank you so much for all that you do for your students. We appreciate you so much! For more time-saving tips, head over to any of these great blogs.