Fall Art and a Math Freebie

Hello Friends!

I need to start off this post by first saying that I love art.  I love teaching art, I love making art, I love looking at art.  I love everything about art!  So I am always excited to find new and exciting projects for my kids to do!  I also love fall.  I love the colours, the leaves falling, pumpkins, fall decor and pumpkin spice everything.  With my class in the fall I usually make sunflowers for our fall art project with oil pastels, but this year I decided to change it up!  Instead of making sunflowers out of oil pastels I switched the medium to chalk pastels and added a glue line!  On the first day we drew our sunflowers on black construction paper with pencil (we practiced first in our sketch books).  After sketching we took basic white glue and made a glue line over all of the pencil marks to outline our sunflower.  The next day when we got together we colored our sunflowers with chalk pastel.  Did we get a little messy with chalk pastels - absolutely! But what fun is art if you can't get a little messy sometimes!!! I think the kids did an amazing job!  They look absolutely beautiful on our bulletin board!

 

I whipped up a quick math freebie for you today.  You can download it at our Teachers Pay Teachers store.  It is called Line Me Up and just as the name sounds it is a one page sheet for students to cut out and order numbers from 0 to 100.  I hope some of you can find it useful!


Happy Tuesday!

Lauren

Can You SPOT The DOT? ...or believe it's already July 17th?

Well, I can't believe it's already mid July!!! I haven't posted on our blog in quite some time. The last few weeks of school were CrAzY busy and then to make life just a tad CraZiEr we decided to host our youngest daughter's family birthday the morning after school ended! (Seemed like a good idea at the time as we were accommodating family that was in town and family going out of town) Note to self: won't do this again next year! Needless to say, running around getting goody bag stuff, party supplies, presents, ordering balloons, making cupcakes all whilst whisking our girls off to soccer four nights a week, followed by evenings of finalizing, signing and stuffing report card envelopes, was a little chaotic! Anyway, summer holidays are here now and I am loving spending the days with my favourite two kids! I decided to post an activity that I have done in the past in my classroom and plan to use for a Back-to-School activity in September. It's a book art activity to do in response to Peter H. Reynolds' book, the dot.

My students LOVED this activity and were super creative with their pictures. Can you SPOT the DOT in the pictures below?



Have a great week! I am looking forward to more sunshine filled days this week! Enjoy the freebie!

~Jeanine

150 Charts Freebie and 3 DAYS LEFT!!!

3 days left! 3 days left! 3 days left!!!! I am sooo happy to report that I have 3 days left of school until summer holidays officially start.  Even though this year has not yet come to an end, I am starting to think about next year and how to refresh my room and help my kiddos the best that I can.  In math this year, some of my students were having difficulties counting past 109.  They would reach 109 and then jump right to 200.  After taking a fantastic math course through my division this year, it was suggested that instead of using 100 charts I use 150 charts to show that the pattern on the hundreds chart continues over and over again.  Well in the spirit of refreshing up my room I have created a bunch of 150 charts using 14 different fonts.  I also have included two types of 150 charts.  One is just your regular chart, the other has all even numbers on the chart highlighted in red.  I really hope you find these valuable for your classroom and helps some of your students see the patterns in the hundreds chart.

Click here to download my 150 Charts package from TPT for FREE!! :)

Happy Tuesday!

Lauren

Freebie - How-To Survive ________ Grade - End of School Year Writing Template

Hey Everyone!!!

I had myself convinced that I had four weeks left of school this weekend....but when I checked my calendar this afternoon I was sadly mistaken. Five weeks it is! With the "four week" excitement that I woke up with I decided to create a How-To Survive ___________ Grade writing template for my students to use.  I have customized this template for grades one to four so hopefully many of you can find a use for it!  There are two different templates included: one template offers space for just writing, the other template offers space for writing and a small picture.  This product is great for end of school year bulletin boards, or can be shared with students entering the grade your students are leaving. 


You can download the product for free from our Teachers Pay Teachers store.  I really hope you and your kids have fun with this activity!


Happy Sunday!  Have a great week everybody!

Lauren

2D Shapes, Spring Art and a Freebie

Hey All,

Just wanted to keep you up to date with what was happening in my room last week.  We just finished up our 2D Shapes and 3D Objects unit.  If you are interested in what we did for our 2D Shapes unit, you can find the unit I used by clicking the picture below. 

In Writer's Workshop we have been busy with our story writing for the past few weeks.  Tomorrow we will be doing a spring rebus story.   I am sure the kids will have so much fun with it!  This past Friday afternoon the kids and I made spring plasticine art.  We created beautiful spring flower portraits.  It was a very step by step process.  We started with a 5x6 piece of cardboard.  The first instruction was to warm up the plasticine in their fingers and then spread it onto the cardboard.  After we finished the sky and soil we got to creating our flower.  I told the kids that the stem was like a little worm and the leaves were like eyes/teardrops.  For the flowers it was a very similar explanation as to the leaves.  The students had a choice as to what type of petal they were going to make and the colors they were going to use.  For this project I gave very small pieces of plasticine to the student to ensure that there was no waste and that their portraits did not start to overflow with plasticine.  I think the flowers turned out beautifully and it was a great way to end the day before a long weekend! 

I have to say I am very jealous of those of you who are off of school already or are off in the next week or two.  Jeanine and I still have five weeks left.  With that being said though I am most definitely positive that they are going to fly by with the many field trips and special activities planned.

Please enjoy a freebie from my 2D Shapes unit!

Have a great week!! :)

Lauren

Perfect Square Art and Map of My Heart

Well hello! This week in my class we have been busy wrapping up our shapes unit and starting a unit on mapping. For the end of our shapes unit I read the book Perfect Square by Michael Hall. It’s a super cute book about how a perfect square turns into something else by tearing, cutting, etc. I gave each of my students a square piece of solid coloured paper and they were challenged to use the entire square to create their masterpieces. My class loved it and some students were VERY creative. Below I have attached a couple of student samples of a cityscape and sinking Titanic.

To launch my mapping unit I read the book My Map Book by Sara Fanelli. It’s a great book with a colourful collection of labelled maps. There are a variety of maps included such as: Map of My Dog, Map of my Bedroom and Map of my Heart. After reading the story, my students all made maps of their hearts. My students loved this activity too. I have to admit, it made my day that I made the map! I have attached some student samples for you to see. I have also included a template of the page we used in class. Feel free to download and use in your classroom!

Have a great week!

~Jeanine

Odd/Even Number Freebies

Hey Everyone!

Just a quick post tonight.  I have created three different odd/even number worksheets that I am posting for free on our blog this evening.  They are one pagers that allow students to cut and paste numbers/number words under the appropriate columns at the top of the page.  I use these types of sheets in my classroom as an independent end of unit assessment.  There is a worksheet for numbers up to 20, numbers up to 100 and number words up to 100.

Enjoy the freebies!

Lauren

Snapshot Writing Freebies!!

Hi Everyone,

I hope you all have had a great week.  Thank goodness for the four day work week!  My kids seem to be getting chattier and more energetic as the days pass by.  And I am getting more and more exhausted (to say the least).  Could be the great weather we are having, or maybe the excitement for the Easter long weekend??? 

We officially have our first two freebies up on our blog that we hope you will be able to use in your classroom.  The first freebie is a writing reflection template called My Easter Snapshot.  This Easter snapshot is ideal for students to write a reflection about their Easter memories and special Easter moments. Perfect for the first day back after the Easter holiday!

The second freebie is another writing reflection sheet.  For those of you lucky enough to still be on spring break, or who may have spring break coming up, you may find our Spring Break Snapshot freebie useful.  My Spring Break Snapshot is a writing template perfect for students to take time to reflect, write and draw about their favourite spring break memories.



Enjoy J and Happy Easter!

~Lauren

 

p.s. – I am working on a problem solving unit that I am hoping to have done and up this weekend.  It has been a labour of love with this baby, but I think that many of you will find it useful for your classrooms.