Preview

Here's a sneak peek at what I'm currently working on to share with you all.

I'm taking a night off of blogging (this quick post doesn't count, right?) and working on school stuff so that I can go to bed early. I'm hosting a 4am Royal Wedding Party that will include me in my jammies, chocolate milk, donuts, and comfy blankets all on my couch (yes, I'm the only one attending). I can't wait!

End of the Year Writing Project

We have 5 more weeks of school! Can you believe it? I know I say this each year, but this year really has flown by. Now that Easter is over, I'm pulling out my ideas to keep the kiddos engaged during the last month (always the hardest!)

One of my favorite end of the year activities is making a memory book. I order each student a Bare Book and then print of labels with different topics such as "At recess I," "Some new friends I made were," "My favorite classroom experience," and other topics like that to place inside each page. I also include a picture from their first day of school, their school picture, and a picture of them from our musical. It's a really great assignment and I hope it can be something they keep for a long time.

**For a link to the labels with all the topics I use for this project

please click HERE! Enjoy!

Button

I'm pretty pleased to say that I made my own blog button. I've been trying to figure it out for some time now, but I get a little confused with some tutorials...until I found this one! It was super easy to follow. Now to see if anyone will put my button on their blog...pretty please! I'll love your forever! It's alright if you don't, but I do want to say thanks to everyone who reads this blog. I feel like my fellow bloggers have really inspired me to be a better teacher this year.

P.S. Happy Easter / Passover / Weekend to all!

Spring Egg Hunt

This great idea was told to me by one of my team members and I had to share it with you. It's a scavenger hunt where you hide different treats and trinkets around the room and then give the students a list of items to find. I thought it was great because it allows them to hunt for eggs, but it's not a crazy race where (as Junie B. Jones would say) they tackle and scuffle.

As for the items on the list...it's basically whatever you want to get at the store (I'm going to Walmart tonight). Some examples from the list were, find one primary colored egg, a crazy straw, a pencil...etc.

Sounds easy and fun, right? I'm sure my students will love it.

What do you do for Easter/Spring egg hunts?

Surprise gift

Before I get into the post I'd like to say that I hope I'm not confusing people when I change my layout every few weeks. I just haven't found "the one" yet :o)

Back to the topic:

I have the privilege of teaching several students who happen to be my next door neighbors. I can literally see three of their homes from my front door. It's a lot of fun to see them outside of school every day and to teach children that I've known since they were babies. Today I got home and found this on my front step:

What in the world? After taking a closer look...

Yeah, I still wasn't quite sure what it was, but I loved that my students thought of me!

P.S. I saw my little kiddos playing outside and found out that this is a doll they made for my little boy. So sweet! ~ Don't worry though, I definitely am not planning on letting my toddler near this thing!

Science Day!

Last week we had a school wide science day through Utah State's Junior Engineering program. The intent of the program is for a school to rent or buy the materials for the lessons. This is something that my school district has purchased, but I know that with all your creative teacher minds, you could easily find your own materials and adapt any lesson.

Click here to find all their fun lessons.

I taught the Germatics lesson (it was a lesson about germs that we got to act out with puppets).

These are the BAC puppets (Bacteria's nickname, of course). They were pretty scary looking! Before the students came in I sprinkled some Glo Germ into each puppet and after reading a books about germs (we read Germs, Germs, Germs!) I had several students come and put the puppets on their hands as we acted out a story found in the lesson.

When we were done reading the play the students pulled their hands out of the puppets and I told them that they now had fake germs on their hands. Then I held the black light over their hands and the "germs" glowed white. Just so no one was left out, I then had each student go around and give hive fives or shake hands with the other kids so that they could all see their hands glow.

Some of my students' favorite lessons were Bubbleology, Toys in Space, and Dino Babies.

I hope you can find a lesson that inspires your inner mad scientist!

I won!

Yipee for me! I won $100 from the NSF Scrub Club Clean Hands Game. A huge thanks to Rachelle at What the Teacher Wants for telling us about the contest. It's kind of perfect timing since today was an all day science day and I taught a fun lesson (6 times today!) about germs and the importance of washing your hands, fruits, and veggies (more about that later).

Here's the picture I submitted, from my hand washing lesson. Now I just need to figure out what school supplies I'll buy with that $100...

Rhyme Time

Guess where I've been the past few days? In sunny California at a fun, family wedding. Are you jealous!? Well you should be because it's California, but don't envy me too much, because it was a 16 hour drive with my toddler (I'm amazed we're all home alive!).

Anywhoo....Here's a quick activity I made for my students. We're working on the different ending sounds that the letter y can make.

Click HERE for the download.

I'm so tired that I can hardly see straight! G'night!

P.S. The title from my last post was from the book Sarah, Plain and Tall. Fantastic read-aloud.

Sumer Is Icumen In

Fifty points to anyone who can tell me what book my title's from. I'll give you a clue: One of the main character sings that song a few times, and I just finished this read aloud with my class and they loved it.

Summer break is getting close. Can you believe it's April already? We only have two months left. Yikes! So much to do...

The real reason of this post is to say that I got a job teaching summer school! Maybe most people wouldn't be too excited about this, but I've done summer school for the past three years and it's a lot of fun (did I mention the money is excellent?). I'll be teaching a first grade review so now I'm on the hunt for some great review materials. If you know of any sites that I should check out, please let me know!

Hope no one was an April FOOL today!