Today, I am also sharing a fun freebie on the Owl-ways Be Inspired Blog today. Today I am starting to plan all of my Christmas/holiday themed activities and lessons that I want to include in my lesson plans for the next 3 weeks of school. As I unpacked the Christmas decorations at our house, I set aside the classroom kindness tree, which I bring to school every year. Our classroom kindness tree is what I use to kickoff the random acts of kindness that I encourage my students to perform through various activities and lessons in the weeks leading up to the holiday.
The idea is simple- every time that I see a student perform a random act of kindness in the classroom, for someone else, I recognize that student and place an ornament on the tree.
The students also recognize each other as they see their friends perform random acts of kindness in our classroom, at lunch or recess, or anytime during the school day! I have my students write about these special moments and then share the random act of kindness as a class at the end of the day.
I then have that student who performed the act to write down what they did on the colorful “Kindness Counts” poster (click on the picture above for this freebie, which includes the poster.)
In other news, a sweet customer requested a landform unit for her second grade students, while incorporating ELA standards.
Needless to say, I *LOVED* creating this unit because I was using real photographs for the first time with a file! 
Lovin’ Landforms file includes:
1. Polaroid bulletin board: A bulletin board idea with polaroids of the featured landforms (Pages 4-18)
2. Water/land formations categorization: Black and white clip art images for students to color and categorize water and land formations (pages 19-27)
3. Anchor charts: Beautiful, real photographs of all the featured landforms, with the definition of each landform, for you to refer to throughout the unit (pages 28 – 51)
4. Junior explorer certification passport: As your students learn about each of the different landforms, they use their passport to document their learning, eventually earning official explorer status. (Pages 52-77)
5. Lovin’ landforms acrostic poems packet: Students read various non-fiction texts about the landforms, identify the most important ideas, and write an acrostic poem by supporting their answer with ideas from the text. (Pages 78-107)
6. Facts and opinions with landforms: Students identify important facts about specific landforms, referring to the text to support their ideas, and write their opinion. (Pages 108-110)
7. Opinion writing: Students express their opinion about their favorite landform and support their opinion with reasons. (Pages 111-117)
8. Culminating painting project: Students celebrate the end of the landform unit by paining a landform and identifying specific adjectives that describe the landform. (Pages 118-135) Click here to view file on TpT.
Enjoy your Sunday, my friends!!! 
