Math, Spring & Dr. Seuss

Hey everyone, it's been a while, so I have a lot to catch up on!

I'm linking up with Doodlebugs for 5 for Friday, so I can quickly give you an update on what's been going on in my teaching life & classroom. I'll be posting more about a few of these ideas soon :)

I'm also linking up with Freebie Friday with a Spring freebie which can be found in #1 and a Dr. Seuss freebie which can be found in #2!

Bring on Spring!

I decided up here in New England that I am beyond sick of the cold weather, especially when I think back to how nice the weather was last March, so my class took a couple days during writing workshop and decided to "Think Spring!" Get the writing paper freebie here. For the drawing section I just had the kiddos cut a piece of white paper with fancy scissors then draw a "Spring picture."

Dr. Seuss...

I don't know about you but I LOVE Dr. Seuss day in my class! We spent the whole day reading and listening to Dr. Seuss books and then spent part of the afternoon deciding on our favorite book, explaining why it was our favorite book and blending it into our little craftivity. They came out great! Get the freebie here.

More Dr. Seuss...

The following day we my wonderful substitute read The Lorax and then the kiddos wrote about how we could protect the Earth like the Lorax tried to protect the Truffala trees (we had been working on a recycling sort to go with the book during the previous week's centers). I got the Lorax freebie from The Teaching Bug here and the recycling sort (and other FREE Lorax activities) from Homeschool Share here.

Math...

I was picked to go to a math workshop on Monday and although I was initially a little hesitant to go and had literally no idea what I was getting into, I had a FANTASTIC TIME! I met some great teachers and learned of some fabulous ways to teach math, especially logic and number sense.

If you've never heard of Marcy Cook, go check out her website! She was a dynamic presenter and gave all the teachers there a TON of great ideas. All of the number tile activities on her website are interactive and I can't wait to try them out with my kiddos. I will keep you posted! I bought a few items while at the conference and am debating buying 3 more of the tile packs... we shall see!

I already started giving my students a "number fact" to go along with each day. For example, "Today is the 12th day of the month, there are 12 items in a dozen. How many eggs would there be if I had 2 dozen?" Marcy Cook has books with all kinds of number facts to make math relevant to daily life but I thought this was one activity I could easily begin in my room myself. I'm going to have to start keeping track of the number facts I use to help me out next year!

In the meantime if you want to check out an example of the types of tile cards she has, here are some made by a teacher to fit Marcy's tiles.

New product...

We started our time unit this week, so here is the Solve the Room product I made to go along with time. There are 3 different activities: Time to the nearest hour/ half hour; Time to the nearest quarter hour; Time to the nearest 5 minutes. Check it out!

Little Bonus...

Meet my amazing guest teacher!

I had the BEST sub (or guest teacher as we call them in my school)... look at how neat she left my table, I didn't have to do ANY of the usual extra work & cleaning coming back after she was in my room... I told our (also amazing) secretary that I want this sub EVERY time I'm out :)

Hopefully I will post again soon with some more Cook math ideas!

Whole Brain! Whole Brain! Whole Brain!

Well another short week behind us... my district actually only had President's Day off, but we had a snow day Tuesday, following a week of Thursday/Friday snow days.... so basically I had a mini-vacation mid-February. Boy do I need to get back into a routine!

Anywho, I'm linking up with Doodlebugs for Five for Friday.

If you couldn't guess from my post title, I have some Whole Brain Teaching to share, but I'll save those for the end... (best for last!)

We celebrated Valentine's Day on Wednesday because we were snowed out on Friday. In case you missed it last week, we made bear Valentine holders for our cards & goodies. We saved Valentine's Day festivities for last mostly for my sanity as we had to "earn it!"

We have been doing "mini research" projects in writing. I do some of the "research" for my kiddos by having them put 3-4 topics on an index card with their names. I then sorted through the cards and chose a different topic for each kiddo, then located a book, article or website for each kiddo. They then use the book, article or website to answer each question on their worksheet/organizer. Once they're done with their organizer we'll work on transferring the information into a nonfiction piece. The process isn't perfect but it's better than last year. If you're interested, click below to see/download the organizer we're using, again, not perfect... definitely a work in progress!

With all these snow days I was able to finish a few TPT products! Right now I'm teaching money, so I've been trying to whip up some products to make it all a little more fun!

My Coin Matching Memory Game & Worksheets includes 3 different memory style games tried & tested on my kiddos who LOVED it!
It also includes worksheets where students connect the coin set to the animal with the correct value, also tested on my kiddos and although they thought the animals were cute, of course they weren't as enjoyable as the memory games.

My story problem cards include 8 money story problems including addition, subtraction, 1 & 2 step problems. I haven't used these with my kiddos yet as we aren't to this point in the unit, but my students have enjoyed story problem cards as a math center for other math topics!

Finally, here is the money bundle! It includes ALL the money products I've promoted lately and if purchasing the bundle will save you nearly $5, and who doesn't  love a deal ;) It includes 3 solve the room activities, 3 I Have Who Has games, 3 Memory Games, 3 sets of matching worksheets & Story Problems!

I am so happy to have my toughest grad classes so far almost done. My research paper which I wrote about Whole Brain Teaching is done and submitted and I'm SO excited to present to my classmates about the magic of WBT this coming week. We were limited to 4 power point slides during our presentation... I decided to teach my classmates about all but one of the "Big Seven" of WBT.

And BEST FOR LAST... I was just approved by my district to go to the annual 3-day Whole Brain Teaching Conference in June with my bestie from the school I worked at last year... We are BEYOND excited! The conference is a few hours outside of New Orleans, so we are going to visit there too! Then when we get back we are presenting PD to our schools. I can't even express how thankful I am for this opportunity! Be on the lookout in June for all the fun stuff I learn while I'm at the conference :)

Well that is all for today, don't forget about the TPT 3 million strong sale on February 27th & 28th! My store will be on sale the 26th too (Happy Birthday to me!).

Busy (But Short) Week!

Well we got to celebrate 100th day (finally!) this week, but with 2 snow days, I guess Valentine's Day has to wait until Tuesday...

I'm linking up again with Doodlebugs Teaching for Five for Friday...

We had 100th Day this week! It kept getting pushed back because of snow, so we ended up with Tuesday 100th Day and Friday Valentine's Day... oh and Thursday yet another snow day, so clearly it wasn't a crazy week at all... oh wait...

Click the picture to see yesterday's post about all our 100th Day fun!

You just gotta love when the white and red Scholastic box arrives! This time I had a bunch of points and was able to order a normally $25 pack of National Geographics for Kids Animal Books. The kiddos went NUTS over these!

We made these bear bags for Valentine's Day... too cute! Too bad we won't get to use them until we go back to school on Tuesday after President's Day. I'm definitely officially sick of the snow!

I thought this was such a cute idea for a Valentine's Day teacher present... taking note for when I'm a Mom and my kiddos are school age!
Sorry for the poor quality it says "I'm soaping you'll be my Valentine"

Lastly, here are a few new products on my TPT page, check them out!

Don't forget to follow my new Facebook page for flash freebies and other fun stuff!

100th Day!

We had a super fun 100th day in our classroom! Our celebration kept getting pushed back for snow, but we finally we able to celebrate on Tuesday! I didn't do an entire day of 100th day fun like I did last year, mostly because with the snow coming today I needed to finish up a few things in reading that I didn't want to leave hanging. But we still had time for quite a bit of fun...

We started the day by decorating 100 Day crowns to wear throughout the day!

I got this crown freebie here.

For some reason this group of kiddos LOVE hats... this is the 4th or 5th hat we've made this year.

 We spent our writing time writing about what we would do if we had $100. It is too cute the perception kiddos have of $100. I had kiddos saying they'd buy a car or a quad, an iPad, even a mansion... too funny! My kiddos then worked on writing 100 words, which was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I got both of these freebies (and others) here.

During snack time (which I think was the favorite activity of the day) we made a 100th day trail mix. I found the mat to organize the trail mix here.

We spent the afternoon doing 100th day math. We found out how many times we could do different activities in 100 seconds. Sorry for the poor picture quality. This was also a freebie, find it here.

We clapped our hands, said the ABC's, hopped up and down, wrote our names, sat down and stood up, counted to ten and blinked our eyes, all while counting which was a little tricky. Here's my kiddos standing up and sitting down. They were exhausted after 100 seconds, too cute!

We also played "roll to 100" where my kiddos took turns with a partner rolling a dice and adding their rolls together until they got to 100. For some reason I don't have any pictures though and I can't find the exact version we used, but TPT has a bunch of free versions of this game if you search "roll to 100."

Check in tomorrow for 5 for Friday. Hopefully we have school tomorrow so we can exchange Valentines!

FLASH FREEBIE

Flash Freebie for Facebook followers...

Go to my facebook page & "like" my page,

then message me to get your free copy of my newest TPT product... I Have Who Has Money Game!