Pinterest Tested - Water Colours!

A sweet colleague of mine was recently visiting my classroom and noticed my students throwing out our dried out markers.  She told me to stop immediately.  She said that she read on Pinterest that you could make water colours very easily out of dried out markers and water.  Well since I am so frugal and love Pinterest I thought I NEED to try this.  I immediately hit up the sight and found the link.  I was a bit skeptical at first but my goodness gracious we made water colours!!!  And we are now addicted to making marker water colours!!

Here is the original link I found: http://amanda0480.blogspot.ca/2011/05/recycling-old-and-crusty.html

All I did was use one marker and I stuck it in a small amount of water in a baby food jar.  I left it for about 4 days and when the kids and I tried it out they worked like a charm!  The colours aren't as deep as food colouring or actual water colours but for the frugal teacher this is a pin win!  I am heading to Michaels this weekend to get some good quality water colour paper and will post pictures of our marker water colours this week!

Lauren :)

Day of Pink!

Hi Everyone!!!

It feels so good to be back!  Seriously, long time no blog :(.  On another note, tomorrow our school is celebrating the Red Cross Day of Pink.  If you have never heard of this day please read the excerpt following this blog post.  In response to the Day of Pink I wanted to create a bulletin board that celebrated what makes us special.  I used the book The Best Part of Me by Wendy Ewald as a springboard for a writing activity.  Students were asked to choose their favourite part about themselves - it could be absolutely whatever they wanted.  They then had to write about it.  Check out their sweet work below.

 

It`s a quick post tonight!  I am off to paint my nails pink to go all out for Day of Pink tomorrow.  I can't wait to see the whole school in their Day of Pink 2013 shirts!  It is going to be a fantastic day full of meaningful activities.

 

   

 

 

 

I will be back soon, I promise!  I am going to document my poetry writing adventures with my students on here very soon.

Lauren :)

Red Cross Day of Pink

April 10, 2013

 

Wear the Shirt. Be the Difference.

The Canadian Red Cross Day of Pink is an initiative that provides students, staff and the larger community with the opportunity to discuss the impact of bullying and to learn how they can use their power to help create a safe and respectful school environment. On April 10, 2013, students, staff and community members wear pink shirts in solidarity to show that they are taking a stand against bullying.

How did it get started?
It started in 2007 when two high school students in Nova Scotia took a stand against bullying in their school. The students asked all of their peers to wear pink to school after they heard a male classmate had been bullied for wearing a pink shirt. To continue the momentum, the Canadian Red Cross Day of Pink campaign brings together schools and communities to wear the shirt and stand together against bullying.

Christmas Concert Hoopla, Elf on the Shelf and Winter Math!

Hello Everyone!!!

I don't know about you all but it is so crazy around our school.  We are in full Christmas force.  Our Christmas concert is next week and we have been busy preparing decorations for the concert as well as practicing our songs that we are singing.  I have to say though I just love this time of the year.  The building feels like a different place - LOVING the Christmas spirit.

My class created shaving cream/glue snowman for our concert.  We are performing Melton the Warm-Hearted Snowman and the little snowmen they created couldn't be cuter.  I found this fantastic idea at this blog!

Guess who arrived from the north pole this week?  Buddy our Elf on the Shelf!! The kids are super excited to see where he is going to be hiding each day.  They are convinced that he sometimes moves his eyes and legs.  This is the first year I have ever done Elf on the Shelf with my kids and so far it has been so much fun!  To see the joy on their faces when we opened our present from the north pole was priceless.  As is the enthusiasm each morning to see who can find Buddy first!

I also have created a Winter Math product that I think you will really love.  It includes a lot of useful printables for this time of the year with a wintery theme:

1) Greater Than/Less Than - 2 pages
2) Odd and Even Numbers - 2 pages
3) Snowman Measurement - 2 pages (one in inches, one in centimetres)
4) Count and Graph - 1 page
5) Ordering Numbers - 2 pages
6) Skip-counting - 2 pages
7) Winter Patterns - 2 pages (one page is the answer key)
8) Winter Addition - 3 pages (3 different strategies)
9) Winter Subtraction - 2 pages (2 different strategies)
10) Equality and Inequality - 1 page
11) Winter Symmetry - 1 page
12) Ten Frames - 6 pages (3 different themes, one colored page, one black and white page)
13) My Winter Problem Solving Booklet - (13 winter word problems included. All problems vary between change, compare, equalize and combine word problems).

 

You can check it out at our Teachers Pay Teachers or Teachers Notebook shop!

Lauren :)

Remembrance Day Sweetness

I know that this post is a little late, but it is just too sweet not to share.  For Remembrance Day my classroom really focused on peace and what peace means to each of us.  Using Todd Parr's The Peace Book and pages from our Remembrance Day product these are some of the sweet creations that my little ones came up with:

(Love the peace blanket!)

(Peace is having a nap, keeping the roads clean, being kind, saying sorry)

 

Also, just a reminder that all of our products in our TPT shop are on sale for Cyber Monday and bonus Tuesday.  Use the promo code CMT12 at checkout to get an extra 8% off our discounted products!  As well, our Teacher`s Notebook products are 25% off until tomorrow.  You also get an extra 10% off at TN at checkout!

Happy shopping friends!

Lauren :)

Thanksgiving 5 Senses Writing Freebie

Well hello! Long time, no post! I can’t believe it’s already the 3^rd week in October and this is the first time I have posted this fall. Back to school season has been in full swing for quite a while and it seems as though nothing is slowing down. I have a grade 2/3 class again this year and have been busy, busy, busy the past 2 months. We have been busy working on Handwriting Without Tears and personal narrative writing lately. I absolutely love the new Handwriting Without Tears iPad App and use it for instruction with our projector.  Check it out here! http://wetdrytry.com/ I only wish it included the lowercase letters in addition to the uppercase letters and numbers. My students love when I let the background music from the App play while they work on their printing. I have posted a  Thanksgiving 5 Senses Writing Freebie!

Sorry, it’s too late for our Canadian followers but will be nice and early for our American followers. Enjoy!  

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

Welcome to my Classroom!

Well I think it goes to say that with the lack of posts on this little blog, the start of the school year has been crazy.  Crazy in many ways - both personally and professionally.  But I'm still standing and am excited to hopefully be posting on this blog more often that I have been in the past little bit. 

My class of 1s and 2s this year are absolutely wonderful.  They are just so, so cute.  I couldn't stop saying that on the first day - and it still rings true.  They are a loving bunch full of hugs and such positive words.  They are definitely big bucket fillers and know how to absolutely make my day!

I am still getting used to the new grade one curriculum and trying to wrap my head around how I am going to integrate both curriculums as much as possible.  In the past two and half weeks we have gone full swing into the Daily 5.  Although I have to say it has been a bit of a rocky road.  We have experienced many challenges in building our stamina.  But we finally have reached a level of stamina where I am able to take small readings groups which makes me very, very happy.  And the kids are LOVING their reading time.

I have quite a wide range of learners this year.  I know that every classroom has a wide range, but I find that with the split the range is that much greater.  We have been working hard on our printing for the past little bit.  My school requires us to implement the Handwriting Without Tears Program.  So that is a focus in writing right now, as well as personal writing in our journals.

In math we have been focussing on the hundreds chart, counting, dot patterns for numbers as well as ten frames!

Here is a look at what my classroom looks like this year.  It is not the most ideal layout but it works for what I am given.  It also is quite old and excuse the mix matched tables.  I had desks my first year at this school and had to scrounge to get tables.  Therefore they are of all different sorts.  But they work!

 

 

 

I hope to post a math freebie soon!  I am in the process of creation.

I hope everyone had a great Monday!

Lauren :)