Christmas Crafts

We are officially on winter break and it feels SO NICE to relax and sleep in! I wanted to share some of the fun activities we worked into the last week of school. We had a lot of testing the last two weeks of school, so after reviewing, and testing, we let the kids relax and have fun! Here are some of the crafts I did in my class:

One day we made these snowman I found on TPT (for free!) and put on Frosty the Snowman (which I found on YouTube). Granted, it's intended for K-2, but it kept them busy, was simple enough to do without a lot of instructions, and was something fun while watching a movie. Here's how some turned out!

Too cute, right?

Love the creative eyes

This student added eyes

The next day, we did another craft. This time we made Reindeer Food in little white paper bags. I found this freebie label on TPT as well and printed enough copies for every student to have one. They glued them onto the bags and then decorated the bags with colored pencils. Then I worked with one table at a time to scoop sunflower seeds, oatmeal, and glitter into their bags. My only regret is not having more "ingredients" in the reindeer food and not taking advantage of the learning opportunity to use fractions with measuring cups. Oh well! Still turned out cute. I told the kids to sprinkle it on their lawn on Christmas Eve so the reindeer can have a snack while Santa delivers presents!

Finally, the little treat I made for the kids this year was something I found on Pinterest. It was simple and cheap, which, as a first year teacher, is a must! Just bought a GIANT bag of Jolly Ranchers, little baggies, ribbons, and printed out the tags. I put about 5 jolly ranchers in each bag, tied them up with ribbon, added the tag and voila! Done.

So pretty! And so simple!

So those are a handful of crafts I used this season. I love that teaching gives me the chance to really enjoy holidays all day everyday! You better believe the Christmas Pandora station was playing everyday the three weeks between Thanksgiving break and winter break! Overall, I'm just so relieved to be halfway through my first year. Time for a break and some sunshine =]

How I did Elf on the Shelf

* UPDATE: I put the last 5 pictures of Elfie at the end of this post. *

Every once in awhile I get a little pang of sadness when I see all the fun and cute ideas there are for lower elementary. K-2 is all about read-alouds and writing on fun cut-outs, and singing songs with matching dances, and hugs and cuteness. I admit. I get jealous.

BUT THEN

I remember that K-2 is NOT all smiles and rainbows after spending about 5 minutes in one of my friend's kindergarten classes and I am suddenly grateful for children that give me attitude and mean-mug me, but will also not run around my room screaming (most of the time).

One of the things I really wanted to steal from K-2, though, was Elf on the Shelf. But would my "too cool for school" fourth graders be above this???

Well here's how I used him in my classroom:

1) I kept the activities basic:
The only thing I gave the students was this elf journal I found on TPT. I stapled some together and they got to draw a picture and write a couple sentences each morning about what Elfie did. We haven't done too much with the elf with all the other activities you see all over Pinterest because I don't want to overdo it. We play it cool in fourth grade.

Day 1: gets delivered along with one elf journal per student!

2) I had him delivered by someone else:
It's gotten to the point that if a teacher says something, it's lame, but if THE PRINCIPAL OR DEAN says something, oh baby. So I had my dean deliver our elf and journals (after keeping them in the freezer all morning) so that I could be skeptical along with the kids. I read the letter I found here and gave the kids journals (oohs and ahhhhs at how cold they were) and we all agreed that we would just see what happens with this so-called "magical" elf.

This was never seen by the kids bc the janitor cleaned it up.
Haha fourth grade teachers decided we couldn't eat all that candy again
to get wrappers so this one would have to wait to be revisited!

3) I'm amazed with the students:
Every morning when they come in, I tell them "I came in this morning and look where I found Elfie!" They quiz me about where he was when I left, did I lock the door, who has access to the room, etc. Haha but I always laugh with them and say things like "I can't believe that little guy got into my tickets!" and deny deny deny that I did anything!

Finally, here are some more pics of Elfie and how he's been doing in our classroom. The kids are so funny with their suspicions. They will look through the class window every time they walk by trying to catch him, while others thinks it's me and others have blamed our poor maintenance man. Others have told Mr. E (the 4th grade science teacher) that my room is haunted. Eeek!

Day 2: doing our morning work

Day 3: taking tickets the kids get for good behavior

Day 4: swinging/hanging out in one of our pom-poms 

Day 5: reading fairy tales in the reading corner

Day 6: working on a puzzle (one choice for indoor recess)

Day 7: doing homework (one student handed it to him when posed doing the puzzle
and said "who knows? maybe he will do it!" so Elfie also wrote a "PS: thanks <student name>!!" haha)

Day 8: holding hands with my scarecrow. BFFs!

There are 8 days from the last two weeks because he didn't come to us until Tuesday after Thanksgiving (Monday's are overwhelming and he got left in the freezer-oops), and we had a snow/ice day that Friday. But there are five more days before break so that gives us 13 days with Elfie!!

*Last week with Elfie:

Found Elfie on www.northpole.com when we came in! haha

Took a personal day to take my certification exam.
Elfie watched the kids for me

The day I was out, Elfie fell and some kids played with him.
A student called to tell me "It was a bad day for Elfie" so he was sick the next day.

Once Elfie felt better, he brought candy canes for everyone!
"A treat for you from the big guy. Almost Christmas! <3 Elfie"

Goodbye Elfie! Stole the poem from Jake that graduated with me
"Dear 4th grade, Today is the day I must say goodbye, I know it's sad but please don't cry,
for I will be back this time next year, to fill more lives with joy and cheer! Love always, Elfie"

The kids were surprisingly upset Elfie wouldn't be back in January. I love this age because they still allow themselves to believe in magic! So sweet!

High Five for Friday

High five for Friday you guys! We made it through FCAT week, which is glorious! I wanted to try an idea I saw on this blog here. Here are 5 of my favorite pictures from this week. It pretty much captures what went down:

1) Sabre woke me up every morning last weekend because I was home alone and he was being a good guard dog. What a sweet boy =]

2) I started quilting my mom's Mother's Day quilt. No spoiler here- she picked out the fabric and has been watching me waiting for it to be finished! 

3) My mom ordered Toms that were too small so I get them! Granted, I had to buy her new ones online, but still, aren't they cute?!

4) I found out I'm going to teach the last FIVE weeks of my internship instead of the last FOUR. Cue frantic lesson planning!!! Ahhhhhh!!!

5) I made Slutty Brownies for the bachelorette party I'm headed to this weekend. That would be a layer of cookie dough, a layer of oreos, and then a layer of brownie. OH MY GOSH. Can you handle it?

So I'm taking my slutty brownies and my giant bottle of wine and headed to Tampa for mani/pedis, laying out by the pool, girl talk, and the Taylor Swift concert! Perfect cap to FCAT week =]

Multiplication Workshop Lesson

Hi everyone! I wanted to share my lastest supervisor observation because the kids LOVED it and I was super excited about that =] If I haven't told you before, we have 3 or 4 supervisor observations and 3 mentor observations per semester. It's a lot, but it definitely is making me step up my game!

So I was doing a lesson on multiplication and really wanted to do more of a workshop/inquiry-based type of lesson. I found this blog post about using anchor charts and was *iNsPiReD* to try something we did in a math class I took on-campus at UF.

I started the lesson by giving the students a multiplication word problem and telling them to solve it in their math journal two different ways. Then we talked about some of their strategies, developing their vocabulary. They had the traditional algorithm, partial products, and repeated addition. We also added arrays and the inverse operation. Then I put them in mixed-ability groups of 3 and gave each group a sheet of chart paper, markers, and a word problem. They wrote as many ways to solve it as they could think of and explained their thinking.

We taped them to the walls around the room and each group had a set of post-its. They rotated around and decided as a group one compliment per chart and any questions they had for other charts. Eventually they got back to theirs and got to read what everyone said! Then we went around as a class and everyone got a chance to answer questions on their charts. Here are some of their questions/comments. I was SO impressed!

 The kids were engaged the whole time and really developed their vocabulary! I think it stretched their brains to think of multiplication deeper instead of just an algorithm. One more observation down, four to go!

Love is in the Air

Happy Valentine's Day, friends! I love love love celebrating holidays with my babies. They are always so excited about every little thing that we "adults" often overlook. It's so fun to dress up and do holiday themed activities and then [drumroll] EXCHANGE VALENTINES AND EAT CANDY!!! If I had a nickel for every time today someone said "When are we gonna do valentines??" I would be able to afford a treadmill to burn off all the chocolate they gave me. See?

My collection of chocolate- so spoiled!

Tulips! They just took over our desk! 

Each of the students brought in decorated shoeboxes and had a BLAST walking around the room and passing out their valentines. Then they spent another half hour reading every last note (and sampling the treats). One of the boys made homemade cards with personal messages to every child. It was so stinkin' sweet I about died.

So what did the kids get from me? Funny you should ask! I found a fantastic blog post through Pinterest about candy-free valentines and gave them glow-stick bracelets! It led me to this blog, which had printables already set up for you. All I had to do was buy glow-stick bracelets (15 for $1 at Target!) and cardstock to print out my valentines. Then I cut them up and signed each one. Boom! Quick and cheap, but my kiddos loved them!! 

Love how easy this is 

I "accidently" snapped like 6 glow-sticks while attaching the bracelet connectors.
Party time in the living room!

Done!

Confession: This was just me practicing how to use my timer on my new camera.
Good news: it works!

So that was my Valentine's Day! After seminar with my supervisor and fellow interns, I'm changing into sweatpants and ordering chinese with my momma while we watch girly tv. This is how Valentine's Day SHOULD be, ladies and gentlemen.

Teacher Humor

Wow, it's February! Which means we're bustin out the heart patterned tablecloths and getting ready for Valentines Day and FCAT Writes. They're both outlined on my calendar with a big heart. Just kidding. Kinda. Anyways, instead of going to a super bowl party (not gonna apologize for being lame), I'll be staying in and quilting tonight and wanted to share a little teacher humor with you, seeing as how we're all so test crazy right now!

As I hope most of you realize, teaching is hard. It's exhausting and teachers don't get enough credit for everything they put up with. Which is why it's important to have a good sense of humor! This post is dedicated to a handful of websites that make me laugh really hard when I have bad days. Hope they make you laugh too! =]

Fake it till ya make it baby

Remember that "Hey Girl" tumblr for Ryan Gosling-loving-feminists? Well this is for Ryan Gosling-loving-teachers. It's basically what every teacher wants to hear with a picture of a cute guy. I mean if that's not motivation, I don't know what is.

So great. The Gos just gets me, ya know?

I found this through one of the girls in my cohort (shout-out to cohort 76!) and it's a webseries about teachers. It's hilarious. I watched all 14 episodes in one sitting and they. totally. nailed. it. Here's my favorite:


"Just because you leave a shoe at his apartment doesn't mean you can show up whenever you want"

I've talked about it before, but New Girl is my JAM. I wish Jess (Zooey Deschanel) was still a school teacher, but there's still plenty of quality teacher jokes and the whole show just kills me. Between that and The Mindy Project, I feel like my life is adequately represented in sitcom form.

Don't forget Pinterest for teacher humor galore.

Silence means someone's feeling guilty...

Remember to laugh today!

Attention Getters

Happy Sunday! The sun is shining, the air is cool, and the Gators are undefeated. A happy, happy Sunday, for sure! Fall is definitely here and we are getting in the mood for Halloween. We are also trying more and more Kagan and WBT strategies, which led to some new attention grabbers!

The first one I tried with the kids was actually from Whole Brain Teaching, which has been described as Kagan on steroids! Haha they've got some really fantastic ideas. My favorite is the "Class-Yes" attention getter. Basically, you say "class" and they say "yes", but you can mix it up however you want and they have to say it the way you said it! Here's how Chris Biffle suggests you introduce it:

This literally took about 45 seconds. Start small, people.

The fun part is changing it up so the kids don't get bored with "Class-Yes" or "Class Class-Yes Yes". I like to do "Oh claaaaaass- Oh yeeeeeeees" or "Hey class- hey yes" Here are some ways to mix it up!

Kids LOVE mirroring you with really silly tones and gestures and speeds!

You can watch more of his video about this here.

And since it's Halloween season, I also introduced one of the attention grabbers I saw in a list on Pinterest! I say "Hocus Pocus" and the kids repeat "Time to focus!" and then get to work on what they should already be doing. I used the "Class-Yes" to get them to freeze and look at me, but the "Hocus Pocus" to get them to refocus on work and stop talking. Check out the list of attention getters below:

Taken from this blog.

Hope you are having a fantastic Sunday! Now go outside and enjoy the weather before the week starts =]