I Love My Classroom

April 2, 2016

Remembering our Easter Party

Well Spring Break is almost over... so I've been remember what we

did that Thursday before Easter.

It was a magical day in the classroom.

It was also exhausting, but oh so fun!

My shopping list for the day included:

*40 Easter Eggs

*3 bags of Jelly Beans

*Toothpicks and Paper Plates

*Peeps

*Paper Bags (Lunch size)

*Skittles

One of our first activities was making our Easter baskets. Yes, they are 4th graders but they still love art projects. It's a matter of taking a bag, cutting 2 slits for the handles, and stuffing the rest of the bag inside. I filled them with little treats later on in the day...

Let me show you a picture from years ago:

We also had an Easter Egg Hunt outside.

To make it educational, I tucked ten Reading Strategies inside the eggs using my Reading Exit Slips. I shrunk them down to 4 sheets per page (16 little task cards), and then we folded them to easily fit inside the eggs.

The kids had a scavenger hunt outside and had to find the 10 different strategies and then relate them to our classroom read aloud. :) I'm so sneaky...

Candy, candy, candy... So much candy!

$Skittles Math Printables for the Upper Grades$

In Math, we used Skittles to review operations and fractions using Teaching with a Mountain View's Skittle Math.

We met with our 1st grade Reading Buddies and made Stem Towers using Jelly Beans and toothpicks. Their creations were pretty impressive.

Then we used Peeps to go through a little science experiment observing what happens in 4 types of liquids. Here's the PDF with what my students filled out for both of these activities:

All in all it was a fun day!

March 15, 2016

I'm SO Lucky! {Making Shamrocks}

I know I've shared this before, but in case you need an easy art project this week that makes kids think of how blessed they are... well this might be for you!

Basically it's cutting out 4 hearts of the same size. My class takes a 9 x 12 piece of green construction paper, fold it in half, then fourths, then eighths. Trace a half a heart, then cut out. Then glue the edges around to make a 4 leaf clover. It's lucky you know.

Making the shape itself isn't the ah-ha moment for the project, it's having the kids think of 4 things they are thankful for... 4 reasons they know they are LUCKY or BLESSED.

These are from this year. It's so nice to see them not being concerned about STUFF, and have them focus on the important things in life.

Highly suggest using pen or sharpies to clearly see what the kids wrote.

I hope this helps someone.

March 13, 2016

March 14th is Pi Day! Time to Celebrate Math!

Happy Pi Day! I like to celebrate math every year on this day. :)

Here are some fun math activities we have done recently. I linked up some old blog posts since I had already written about how I set these up in my classroom.