Earth Day Agamographs

Earth Day!  Last Wednesday my class had a lot of fun creating this art project by Jenny K.  I just wanted to share what my class created.

They were absolutely amazed by the double pictures that appeared.  So cool!

I highly recommend this for next year!  The directions were very easy to follow.  :) 

Class Canvas Portraits

Last summer I snatched these canvas packs at Michaels for a huge deal!  I wanted to have the kids create self portraits, and I'm so happy with how they turned out. 

Now before I dig into the 4 steps, I wanted to show you how I ended up putting them up on the wall.  I went the distance (since I was being OCD), and ended up tying yarn to a pushpin before stretching the yarn across the wall to another pushpin.  It helped a lot!  Usually I just eyeball everything, so this was a major accomplishment for me.  

Okay, onto the 4 steps.  The first day I passed out the canvases and the kids' cum pictures.  They used pencils to draw the outlines.  The next day we mixed paint to match their skin tones (starting with a brown base and adding a little white paint to the correct tone).  We used qtips to fill in only the skin, and then put it aside. 

The next day I had paint stations set up.  The kids took their canvases and went to a table to paint on their lips, another table to paint on their eye color, and the last to paint on their hair.

The final day the kids chose their favorite color, filled in the backgrounds, and added clothes.  Their cum pictures are on the bottom of their artwork.  Now they are up through Open House, but they will soon become the kids' Mother's Day presents.  :)  

I don't know if I'll always be able to complete this project, but I will definitely be looking for more canvases in the future!

Let's Be Stress Free! {Tips and Giveaway}

Stress Free... What is that again?  It's that time of year again when deadlines are quickly approaching, my class is presently testing, and Open House is one week away!  Can we take a moment and all scream!?!  So how do I keep sane, especially when I am never alone?

At home I keep things pretty organized (as much as possible) with 3 boys - ages 11, 8, and 5.  We have a shoe cubby thing that the boys know to put their stuff away.  I finally learned to do each boys' laundry separately so it was easy to toss all their belongings from hamper to machines to basket, and it took away the sorting aspect.  Each boy has their own "desk" (it's really just a folding table), but it keeps all their paperwork in one place.  Our downstairs hall closet has been taken over with toy organization, and the whole mentality of "out of sight, out of mind" keeps me sane.  My boys do a lot around the house in terms of chores - dishwasher, pets, laundry away, dusting, cleaning up, yard work.  It's nice not being the only one that is tackling the house anymore. :)    

At school it's the same kind of thing.  I need to keep things in their own place, and the kids have to take responsibility for cleaning up.  I'm wrapping up my 15th year of teaching, so by now some spring type of things are just routine.  I know what I need to buy before vacation, what I need to copy for next year, what I need to plan for... I'm organized like that.  I also know that when I get stressed I get forgetful and things get overlooked, which led me to last year creating an end of the year binder to keep all my random lists together.  I shared this freebie over on Google Docs last year, so I wanted to share it again.  These are 5 pages from my full pack, I hope it helps!   

  

   

   

Here's the whole pack if you want to take a peek.  Just click the picture.

When things get super stressful I always try to plan on splurging on a massage or doing something for myself.  I love taking a moment to leave campus for lunch or going to treat myself to a Wild Berry Refresher.  As teachers we work SOOO hard all year, and deserve a little relaxation.  

Now a bunch of my blogging buddies have gotten together to give you a pretty big giveaway.  4 prizes!  Yes, FOUR!! (pretend I'm yelling in a megaphone).  Make sure you click the arrows to see all the prizes and enter.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

There are also tons of other tips that might help you, so please check out the other blogs too!  Have a wonderful day!

Celebration Time - Amazon Gift Card Giveaway

It has been an awesome Spring Break!  I really couldn't have asked for a better one.  I have loved all the support and encouragement over on FB and here on the blog with my fun TPT news.  :)  I hope you will be able to use the freebies and that my TPT sale helped too!  To wrap up this week of celebrating, my blogging friends have helped me with an Amazon Gift Card Giveaway.  We all chipped in money to grab a $70 gift card for one lucky winner!

Yes, Amazon!  I'm sure there are tons of things you want either for your classroom, or just for YOU!  It's easy to enter, just make sure you are following all the stores and blogs in the Rafflecopter.  Rafflecopter will choose a random winner as of midnight on Monday.  We hope it's you!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thanks again for everything!  

Biography Projects {New Freebie}

A couple of weeks ago I took my laptop to my oldest son's Boy Scout Meeting.  As a new to the group mom, I have quickly learned that his meetings can go on and on, that the parents are pretty quiet, and I really needed to get things done!  Open House is quickly approaching and this year I want to focus on food crafts... for example, the kids created their Best Part of the Year Ice Cream Sundaes, are busy making their Book Buffet Book Report (home project), and next week are starting to read a biography of their choice (in class).  I have more projects in the works too!

With their biographies I really wanted to have a fun cupcake wrap up, so I whipped up this mini flip book.  Students will take notes as they read - I have a whole set of Who Was Biographies from Donors Choose - and then will fill in the frosting portion of their cupcakes (asking for specifics such as Important Facts, Timeline, Illustration, and Why Famous).  The frosting is then colored, cut out, and stapled on top of each other to make a flip up book.

Now I had some help filling in my samples from my 5 year old.  He loves to color with red... (so it's a little hard to read).  :)

I LOVE how they came out.  This is a new freebie over on TPT.  I uploaded it yesterday.  

Speaking of Biographies and Famous Historical Figures, I created another Talk Time Research booklet too.  I'm loving all the feedback and the response to my milestone flash freebie Talk Time with Famous Authors, and wanted to get these graphic organizers ready for my class as they are reading.

26 Historical American Figures to research!  LOVE it!  This new pack is presently 50% off and joins the rest of my store which is still on sale through Friday.

I hope you have a fantastic day!  

Celebration Sale - EVERYTHING 20% Off

Yesterday was quite the day.  It was so much fun to watch the numbers literally fly on the blog, TPT product stats, and FB when TPT showed off my milestone flash freebie.  Did you grab it yesterday?  I also had another blog freebie that I was giving away over here too!

With all the celebrating happening, I wanted to mark my ENTIRE store (that means BUNDLES too) on a 20% discount from Wednesday to Friday of this week.  Bundles are now discounted up to 40% off, and that GIGANTIC Whole Year Math bundle with 22 products is now 70% off.  I also have 125 products under $5 - have fun!

I've also added a bunch of freebies over the past couple of weeks.  For instance...

The Best Part of My Year

Symmetry Challenge

Triangle Flower Art

My Medical Writing Book

My March Favorite Things (Spring Themed)

I want to thank you for everything over the past 2 years on TPT - Thank YOU!  Now Stay Tuned, because something BIG is coming this weekend as well!!!  

Thank You Freebie and News!!!

I am so thankful for you.  A couple of weeks ago this happened...

I MADE my Milestone!!!

I know!  It's a big deal!  I still have to pinch myself that it actually happened!

Well sometime this week TPT is giving us a shoutout over on FB and I have put this up as a freebie for the week.  Only a week and the clock starts the countdown when they share.  It's my author research papers that any grade can use... I wanted to choose something that would help the majority of people that tune in over here.  

Now, some of you have been with me since the beginning of this blog.  It's almost been 3 years... I can't believe that either!  This blog came way before TPT and FB...  I started this blog during a really challenging year to remember the good moments in the classroom.  Now it's become a way for me to remember what I do from year to year, and it really helps with my planning purposes.  

So I wanted to say an extra thank you for sticking around.  Here's a fun little game to review reading strategies.  It's not over on TPT, just here on Google Docs.  I hope it helps you.

Basically there are 2 game boards - color and bw, and students have to answer the strategy cards correctly to move forward.  First person to reach the middle wins.  My class has used this to review our weekly reading stories in OCR, and for our Read Aloud books - choosing stories that everyone is familiar with is pretty key to understanding if they are really getting it.  

I really appreciate all your support, and I hope these freebies will help you.  It's spring break this week, and I'm starting to feel human again - stress is starting to slip away.  :)  I'm linking this up with Tara and her Monday Made It (on Tuesday).  Hopefully soon I'll be crafty outside of the computer.  :)



Hope you have a fantastic day!

Jelly Bean Towers

Jelly Bean Towers?  What a cool idea!  I saw Ari's towers the other week, and I decided it was the perfect way to wrap up the last day before Spring Break.  We work with our 1st grade Reading Buddies on a weekly basis, and they love doing engineering projects together.  

Here is some of what our kids created:

The kids had the challenge of using 10 jelly beans and 10 toothpicks to create the tallest tower.  

When done, the kids practiced measuring to the nearest inch and centimeter.  

I was so proud of them!  Our tallest tower turned out to be 14 inches.  Wow!