WE MADE IT!

It's the most wonderful time of the year!  Christmas break!  I sure do LOVE teaching around Christmastime, but I sure do LOVE when we get a nice long break too!  Here are a few highlights from our last week of school!

Christmas around the world:  Welcome to France!! My teammates and I each took one country to teach to our classes in a rotation, and I was in charge of France!  Here are a few pictures from the day-

Noel Banners with construction paper, glue, and glitter



File folder passports



Yules Logs-Swiss Rolls:)

French "Yule Logs"

Yummy!

Reindeer Hands and Feet- This must be the oldest craft in the book, but my kids loved it!  And they definitely personalized all of the reindeer! So stinkin' cute!

And-as promised, pictures of our cinnamon ornaments!  Mix Cinnamon, applesauce, glue, and a little water for some amazing smelling ornaments!

Merry Christmas Everyone!!

Halloween Time!

Halloween is absolutely my FAVORITE holiday to teach.  And I am totally sure that when Christmas rolls around, I will be saying the same thing:)  I wanted to share a few fun moments we had during the holiday lessons!

Thanks to Rachelle from What the Teacher Wants, I got to use this ABSOLUTELY adorable witches brew lesson.  LOVE LOVE LOVE!!  It was so much fun, and even though it was a lesson for younger kids, my 3rd graders loved it!  To check out her unit, click HERE!  Pics Below:

The day after our crazy fun Witches Brew, we had the 3rd annual PUMPKIN MATH DAY!!  The kids were absolutely hyper!!  But, I figure, if you can't beat the Halloween madness, why not JOIN IN!  I have a PDF file of the unit.  If you would like me to email you the unit, just leave me your email in a comment, and I will send it to you!  Here are a few pictures of our Pumpkin Math Unit:

Now that we have all survived Halloween, let's get going in NOVEMBER!  On to the next fun holiday!  Happy Friday!

Moon Journals

This week, we are going to start studying the moon!  I have found so many cute resources while perusing blogs, including this FREE OREO moon lesson, that I totally plan on using.  I found it at Homegrown Learners.  I love using food to teach!!  Yum!!

After two years of suffering through moon journals, I have decided it is time for a change!  I was not providing my kids with enough structure and information to do the moon journal, and actually learn from it.  It turned into a waste of time, because I didn't help them organize their drawings.  Blechh.  I am sad for the two groups of students that have already left me with a less than perfect moon journal experience, but I am hoping this year to step up the game a little!  I made this moon journal template that you can download for FREE! 


My Moon Journal

M&M Math

On Friday, we had a yummy math lesson, plus some addition, comparing numbers, and graphing!  The kids loved it, and it was a great change of pace from our usual math lesson.  I definitely love using lessons that require them to think about more than one math topic!  Here are a few pics of us in action!

Here is the worksheet to go along with the activity:)  It is super basic, and not as cutesy as I would like, but it did the job!  The M&Ms were enough of a distraction to keep the kids interested!

M&M Math

Last few weeks....What do I do.....PLUS A FREE DOWNLOAD!!

With EOG's being next week, I feel like I have crammed in everything that I am supposed to teach already, but there are still four weeks left of school!  Clearly, I am going to have to get creative with what I am using for instruction, since my regular classroom materials are all used up:(  Another wonderful benefit of standardized testing.....

Anyway, I have decided to start creating my own learning units.  I got really ambitious this weekend and created a social studies unit about Cesar Chavez.  Check it out at Teachers Pay Teachers!  It is a FREE unit, so please download and check it out!  All I ask is that if you do download, leave me a comment letting me know!!

In other end of year news, we have been pushing through to get ready for testing.  My co-worker found several EOG prep passages that were "instructions/directions passages", so we decided to make and do all of the activities!  This was definitely a hit with the kids!  See pictures below....

Making Smoothies



Good Earth Necklaces



Cinco de Mayo!!

I love Cinco de Mayo!!  It is a super fun holiday, and always makes my hispanic population feel really special!  This year, I tried several different crafts and activities for teaching Cinco de Mayo that the students really loved!

We started off by learning about the holiday itself, and finding out more about why we celebrate Cinco de Mayo.  The kids learned about symbols that remind us of the holiday, and colored pictures of the symbols.  We put the symbols on a circle map!

After we finished our circle map, we made sombreros!  My co-worker had the cute idea of gluing paper cups onto paper plates and decorating them with cotton balls to make sombreros.  The kids loved this, and tried to balance them on their head all day!!



One of my little sweeties with her sombrero on!



 After we made sombreros, we watched a short video clip to learn more about cinco de mayo.  We also had a small fiesta with chips and salsa! The best part about the whole fiesta was that I was able to purchase everything that I needed at the Dollar Store (except for the chips and salsa).  I really wanted to find a pinata to use, but unfortunately I couldn't find one:(  But not to worry!!  A couple of my Hispanic kids were proud to say that their parents make pinatas, and would love to bring one in!!  I just loved the way that those students took so much ownership of their heritage today!!

St. Patricks Day

To start our estimation unit with lucky charms, we made predictions about how many of each marshmallow we would find in the box of cereal.

After making predictions for how many of each marshmallow, the students split and sorted the marshmallows.  They used tallys to keep up with how many of each shape they had.  After we finished, they came up with a class total by adding among their table, then reporting to me.  This was so great for working on their communication skills!!

After all of our counting and tallying, we worked as a class to make a bar graph representative of how many of each marshmallow that we had.  This led into a discussion about probability, and lesson about "most likely", "least likely", and "equally likely".