Sunday Funday...not really

The last Sunday of the summer!  I worked on some math games today that focus on computation.  At the beginning of the year I am always shocked to find how poor my students are at basic adding and subtracting, let alone multiplication facts!  I found some ideas for a few games and tweaked them so they would be appropriate for 4th graders.  I wanted the materials to be simple, so I stuck with dice.  

Here is a little sneak peak of one of my games...

Visit my TpT store to download all 5 games! Just laminate these games, find some wipe-off markers and some dice, and you are ready to have your students practice math concepts in a fun way! These five games concentrate on computation and problem solving skills.

Game 1 - Pirate treasure - adding, subtracting, problem solving
Game 2 - Race to 500 - multiplication facts, additing
Game 3 - Product Showdown - multiplication facts
Game 4 - Climb to 100 - adding, subtracting, multiplying, division, problem solving skills
Game 5 - Build the Biggest - place value, problem solving

Ready for the New School Year!

My classroom is finished and I am ready to enjoy the final weekend of the summer.  This summer went by fast and was really busy...I taught two weeks of summer school, did a three-week internship for my master's program, took a grad class on creativity, and finished my masters project (100+ page paper) in order to GRADUATE!  It is official - I have a Masters degree in gifted education!  Although I am a regular education teacher, the strategies I learned in my master's program are great for all kids - differentiation, talent development, social-emotional awareness, etc.  During the school year I will be posting about projects and activities that I am doing with my kiddos as well as resources that I find along the way.


Here is a virtual tour of my classroom:
Happy School Year!

Feeling Refreshed...

Back from vacation...ready to get some work done in the next week...but can't help but feeling that I want to go back to the Northwoods!!!

Sneak Peak

Okay so I'm about 90% done with my classroom.  My dad or husband has to come and install the quilt hanger and I have to hang by back to school quilt, I have one bulletin board to finish decorating, and I have a few other little odds and ends that need to be cleaned up (mainly my desk).  But for the most part 4 days (about 30 hours) later my classroom is starting to look ready!  I really love this classroom - there is a ton of wall space and I utilized every inch! 

 

My desk

 Side wall & rolling bulletin board (that hides all my bins)

 

View from my desk

Little magnets with my students' names on them - they move them to the "bathroom", "nurse", or "office" pocket. (Pinterest idea!)

Another view from my desk

 

Rock & Roll Behavior Chart (Pinterest idea!)

Classroom Volume Chart  (Pinterest idea!)

Job Chart - little pockets with name of job & description. (Pinterest idea!)

Classroom library - books have labels with author name, series, or topic.

 View from library to my desk.  I put together new mailboxes (left).
You can also see a little bit of our hermit crab tank.

 Back to school desk

 4th Grade Survival Kit on each kid's desk

  Tracking learning board - each laminated paw has a paperclip on the top.  Kids can slip in an exit slip on their number or stick a post-it. 

A few more hours of organizing and decorating and I'll be all ready for my new kiddos.  

I'm going to take some more pics (including a virtual tour panoramic picture) when my classroom is complete.  Taking the day off tomorrow to relax and refresh! 

First day setting up my classroom...

This is what I saw when I walked in this morning...

 

All of my stuff piled high...I moved classrooms so everything had to be packed and boxed up in May.  I spent the day moving the large items where I wanted them, so I would have some room to work.  I set up my classroom library and I love the way it turned out!  Pics to come...more hard work tomorrow! 

Quilting with Kids

During the summer I do a lot of sewing.  It's a great way to relax and I like to make several quilts so that I can do the hand-sewing of the binding when it is cold outside (or when the hubby spends 10 hours watching football on a Sunday).  Each school year, I make a quilt with my class with the help of my mother-in-law.  She is the one who taught me how to sew and she loves coming to school and working on this project each year.  I thought I'd share some of the quilts I have made with my kids. 

 The first year, the quilt was an end of the year project and each student drew a picture of their favorite memory of 4th grade.  I hang this quilt for back to school so my new class can have a little preview of some fun things we do in 4th grade.

The next year the kids wrote diamond poems on kites.  I hang this quilt during the spring.

The following year they designed pumpkin faces...

Last year they drew hand turkeys around wrote things they were thankful for.

I also made this quilt a few years back when our entire district read "Three Cups of Tea".  Each student in my school signed their name on the block.  Students also made the dolls in the middle which I attached to the quilt. 


This school year I'm so excited because we are making a holiday quilt.  I LOVE Christmas and the holiday season.  One of the fun things we do in 4th grade is learn about how people celebrate the holidays around the world.  Each student is going to decorate an ornament to symbolize their heritage and how they celebrate the holidays. 

Messages to Students to Build a Classroom Community

In addition to name tags on desks this year, I wanted to put something on the students' desks that would help build a classroom community.  I found a few ideas on Pinterest... (of course)

Natalie, author of the Teachery Tidbits blog, offers a Welcome Freebie that is super cute!  Visit her amazing blog to download the sign and for TONS of other ideas!

I also found a cute note on Teachwithme.com that is free to download!

I wanted to also incorporate my name on the desk tag just to make students more comfortable saying and writing my name the first few days of school.  This is what I came up with:

 

This is the FIRST morning this summer that I haven't had to get up to an alarm clock!  Working on some classroom things today and relaxing! :)

 

Whole Class Journals - Pinterest Idea!

Today I made some "Whole Class Journals" based on an idea I saw on Pinterest. I thought these would be a great addition to my writing centers. I purchased the notebooks for 17 cents each at Meijer! Then I came up with six journal prompts that students could answer (some multiple times) during the school year.

1 - Book Review
2 - Movie Review
3 - Fun Vacation Spot
4 - If I Had One Wish...
5 - My Pet
6 - My Hobbies

I am going to put these in a bucket along with some stickers. When a student finishes a journal entry, they can choose a sticker to stick on the front of the journal. The students will be able to see which journals are popular and which need to be written in! The students can also read and comment on each other's prompts. I write the first prompt in the journal to model what a good paragraph looks like. I thought that maybe I could raffle these off at the end of the school year or keep them for future classes to read.

Anyway, just a fun, cheap, and easy way to incorporate some more writing into center time!

Tagxedo!

I'm pretty much obsessed with technology and always have been.  I remember being the first family on the block to own a home computer and learned DOS, html programming, etc.  Today technology is a huge part of my life and my classroom.

Today I want to post about Tagxedo - one of the most flexible and eclectic tools you can use in your classroom.  For those of you who have not used Tagxedo before, it is a digital word cloud generator where you can totally customize the look of your word cloud.  When you are finished, the word cloud can be printed out or saved to your computer as a picture file.



Tagxedo is much more then a word cloud generator.  You can use it to analyze speeches, create character profiles, brainstorm, create word walls, and so much more!  Here are some Tagxedo word clouds that I or my students have created.

 

This Tagxedo was used and created as a list of brainstormed words for a writing unit on scary stories.  It helped my ELL and struggling readers become confident choosing words they could spell and benefited by gifted students who could use their large vocabularies to help us brainstorm.

  You can use Tagxedo for biographies so many different ways!  

1 - have students make one before you learn about a person as a pre-assessment.

2 - have students create one after the lesson as an assessment.

3 - brainstorm what they know as a KWL

4 - create a word cloud as part of a project

5 - create word clouds and guess what person in history they are describing

6 - differentiate for your gifted kids by having them rank the events in the person's life (notice "Civil War" is the largest 

7 - the list goes on and on!

Copy and paste the text of a speech or story and create a word cloud.  You are easily able to discuss the theme of a story, something that is usually so hard for my 4th graders.  With a word cloud, they can easily pick out the theme because it is visual.

Need more uses for Tagxedo?

Pets in the Classroom

I wanted to post today about a wonderful opportunity from an organization called "Pets in the Classroom".  This organization works with large pet store chains such as "Pet Smart" and "Petco" to provide grants for teachers to purchase or sustain pets in their classroom.

We have hermit crabs as pets in my classroom, and I was awarded a grant this year that purchased a new tank, food, and two new crabs.  I plan on applying for the grant again to help offset the cost of having pets.  Honestly, the cost of maintaining crabs really isn't that great, but as with any pet, there is initial set up costs.  The grant year re-opens August 1st so make sure you apply early!

The hermit crabs really do add a lot to my classroom - they teach responsibility, coping with death, and the joys of interacting with animals. 

The "Pets in the Classroom" website provides reasons why having a classroom pet is an enriching experience:

•Even kids with no exposure to animals or nature in their home environment can see, feel, touch and make connections to the wide world of animals.
•Observing and caring for an animal instills a sense of responsibility and respect for life.
•A pet brings increased sensitivity and awareness of the feelings and needs of others—both animals and humans.
•Kids learn that all living things need more than just food and water for survival.
•Students will see directly how their behavior and actions affect others.
•Studies show that the presence of animals tends to lessen tension in the classroom.

 

 Darth Crab

The hermit crabs, Darth Crab & Boba Crab (are you really shocked they have names from Star Wars?) come home with me for the summer, and I think my cat enjoys the company.  They don't have the range of their huge cage at school, but spend the summer digging in the sand and climbing up the sides of their cage.  I'm sure they are getting excited to get back into the classroom! :)  

 

Summer To-Do List

Summer days are fleeting and I have barely scratched the surface on my "To Do" list for back to school. This summer I had to take my last two classes for my Masters in Gifted Education program, so my time has been spent writing papers, reflections, reflections of reflections....you get the idea...total creativity killer.  All this "busy work" has really left me little time to do much else, but that all ends FRIDAY! 

So here are some fun things on my "To Do" list...

The "Clutter Free Classroom Blog" has pictures of these adorable seats made out of milk crates.  I want to make a few of these for my classroom library.

The author of the Kinder-Craze blog posted a picture of her Steralite drawer makeover a few months ago...this would really make these look cute in my room!

I also have been wanting to organize my decorative letters using this amazing idea! 


These are only a few things on my to do list - I also have to review a new math textbook, update my website, make back to school tags & etc., create a new student data review sheet....catch up on sleep, try out some new wine, finish a few more quilts, and go fishing...the list goes on and on!

Penny School Supplies!

I love summer break, but there is something about amazing discounts on school supplies that get me excited about being in my classroom! Today was the first day of crazy sales this summer, and I really cashed in at Staples and Office Max! 

I do have to say that shopping at Staples was not a very pleasant experience.  First they had the wrong ad out and you have to go on a scavenger hunt of the entire store to find what you need.  You may or may not know that in the past, teachers wouldn't have to abide by the limit and could by 25 items at a penny.  They changed the rules this year, but the manager at the store I went to did not know at first and told us that the old rules still applied.  They don't.  He was nice enough to give me the glue and crayons had in my basket for a penny.  Then they had a problem at the register and I had to stand and wait for about 10 minutes.  :/

Office Max was much better - they were organized, everything was in one spot, and I actually bought more than what was on my list because I wasn't irritated.  I bought these adorable clipboards with polka dots - I just love them! 

Anyway, next Saturday I'll be scanning the weekly ads for next week's deals! :) 

 

Quilt Therapy

In addition to teaching summer school, taking two grad classes to finish my master's, completing a 3-week internship for my masters, finishing my portfolio to graduate, revamping areas of the 4th grade website, previewing a new math curriculum for next year, and planning out my new classroom, I need an outlet!!!!

That outlet is sewing...

I sew a lot in the summer because it clears my mind and I think because I have a little bit more freedom with staying up late and sleeping in, my creativity takes over.  I like to make several quilts in the summer and then leave binding (which is hand sewn) for the fall and winter...gives me something to do when Sunday = all day football.

Here is my creation I finished today - I just LOVE the colors and I think the quilt just screams summer.  I don't have a back for it yet - sometimes I like to make the front of the quilt and then see what inspires me once it is finished.  

On another note, It has finally cooled off in Chicago...after several days of 100+ degree heat we finally have the smell of rain in the air and a cool evening breeze...maybe inspiration to continue sewing today!