Back to School Product Maddness

Holy Smokes, I can't believe that I've been on summer vacation for a month now!  I'll be teaching summer school next month, and before I know it school will be here.  My husband and I will be closing on our house right around school starting, so I've been trying to get most of my back to school products ready now, so I can be ready for the new year in the midst of the crazy sauce that will be back to school this year.  

One of my favorite writing assignments to do all year to have my kiddos research the story of their names.  They always get a kick out of learning how/why they were given their name.  In fact, I get a kick out of it too! I've had students named after actresses, after athletes,  after a family member, and after places.  They always love hearing what their name means too.  


While the book Chrysanthemum is great to introduce this project, my favorite book to read is actually When Jo Lewis Won the Title. It's a book that is less popular and therefore my kiddos pay a lot more attention while I read it, plus I use Chrysanthemum in another back to school activity that I'll be blogging about later this summer. :)

Amazon

This is one of my all time favorite books.  It's a touching story of how a grandfather tells his granddaughter all about the story of her name.  It's not only a great story of self acceptance, but a beautiful piece of multicultural literature as well.  After reading the book, I have my students complete a homework assignment where they ask their parents some questions about their name.  Then we review the structure of an informational paragraph, and my kiddos write an informational paragraph all about their name.  Once finished, we make mini versions of ourselves and hang our completed writings up outside. It makes an adorable back to school bulletin board! :)  Here's a little sample picture.  :)  The one on the left is the actual true story of my name. :) The little guy on the right is the story of my dad's name.  My hubs was sleeping at the time that I made my sample. ;)

 I've uploaded all my Story of My Name resources to my stores. 

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Teachers Notebook

We have a half hour math tutorial block at my school, and I'd like to do more with small groups during that time rather than doing whole group lessons.  To do more with small groups, I need purposeful activities for the rest of my kiddos to do. I dabbled in centers/workstations last year, and love it, but I felt I was always grasping at straws trying to get activities ready.  So I decided to get a head start this summer by preparing my centers.  I started with this Back to School themed centers to refresh my fourth graders on some of the skills they learned in third grade. 

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Teachers Notebook

 To keep myself sane, I plan on using half of my back to school centers and half of Hope's monthly centers for two weeks and then introduce the other half of my centers and Hope's for the rest of the month.   

I also like to spend a little bit of time reviewing sentences, and the various types at the beginning of the year. Oh and reminding them over and over that sentences have capital letters and punctuation.   Texting certainly hasn't done my kiddos any favors.  I can't tell you how many papers I see without any capital letters or any type of punctuation.  I created a little activity pack to make what can be a dull subject, a little more exciting. 

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Teachers Notebook

Okay so the first person who comments gets all THREE of my new products for free.  Don't forget to leave your email address. :)

Place Value Block winners I will be sending you your files in the morning! :)  So sorry about the delay! 

This weekend has flown by! I had the best time with my hubs at a Greek festival today, and he's off again tomorrow! I'm a lucky, lucky girl! :)

Place Value Block {A Math Craftivity}

One of the things that I loved about teaching math was the games, centers, and projects.  I especially loved creating our Place Value Block bulletin board every year! 

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This activity pack/craft is perfect for students grades first-fifth. It has many templates and recording sheets to best meet the needs of your students. 

Your students can practice writing and expressing numbers from twenty to numbers in the hundred millions, with and without decimals, with this pack! Many thanks to my followers over the years for sharing ways to make this product better than ever! :) 

Once your students have decorated their houses and generated a number for their house (I've included ways your students can generate the numbers to use), they represent the number on their house in word, number, and expanded forms.  The forms for the year students also include options for the model (picture) form.  This file can be used as an end of unit activity, or a formative during your place value unit! 

I always loved seeing how creative my students are during this project, and I especially loved putting all of our houses together to make the cutest little block of houses that you ever saw! 

My Place Value Block Craft is available at my Teachers Pay Teachers store. 

TpT: Leprechaun Plate Craftivity

Top of the evenin' to ya! I hope you all are having a great Saturday.  My hubs had my parents over for dinner and they just left, so now we're settling in for the night and getting caught up on American Idol.  I've fallen asleep during each of the episodes this past week.  This short week was exhausting.  

Before my mom and dad came over, I finished up the newest item for my TpT store, a St. Patrick's Day themed craftivity!

 I've made these paper plate leprechauns every year and my kids LOVE them.  I pretty sure it's the yarn.  My boys love making goatees and the girls love making fun hairdos. 

 If you're feeling super adventurous, you could paint the paper plates.  However, I've never had that kind of time and my friends usually make some of the cutest/creative leprechauns using crayons and markers.  I always love this project and I hope that you and your students do too! I have it on sale for $1 until the end of the weekend, or midnight on Sunday.  I can't wait to show off my kiddos creations, as drawing is not one of my creative talents, and theirs come out so cute and unique!  Click on any of the paper plate leprechaun images to head over to its TpT listing!

Oh, and I FINALLY cleaned my office today! It was getting a little scary.  So glad to have my workspace back.  I don't do a lot of planning at school, so I love having my serene, organized office back!

 You see that Samantha doll? It was my wedding gift from my hubs.  I always wanted one and never got one.  My husband remembered me mentioning that I never got one and found one on eBay for my wedding present.  It's such a special present.  Additionally, can you tell that I live minutes away from an Ikea? 

Hope all of you are having great weekends! :)  Be pack tomorrow with Treasures from Treasures. :)

The first THREE people who leave a comment telling me their favorite American Girl, will receive my Leprechaun craftivity for free! :)  Obviously, I love Samantha but I also think Molly is super cool too!

Craftivity Management and a Freebie

Hello, friends! I hope you all had a great Tuesday! Is it just me or did today drag on forever today?  The 4:00 bell to dismiss the kids couldn't come fast enough.  I have last plan and it makes days like today seem like they last for-ever.

Today we finished our winter unit and I'm a little sad to say goodbye.  We really did have a lot of fun with this unit over the past week or so.

Tonight I'm talking craftivities.  When I taught third grade, I never had the time in my curriculum map to really do any crafty projects with any of our units, the extent was making a foldable book to use as a reading graphic organizer.  However, since moving to second, I've dabbled into the world of craftivities and have loved every minute of it.  :)

My kids this year love to do craftivities too, so I'm lucky.  When we made the soliders from Deanna Jump's Veteran's Day unit, several of them exclaimed "Today is the best day ever!"  So I try to incorporate being crafty into our lessons when I can.

But I've learned a lot since our first crafty project in November where I gave them packets of tracers, some construction paper and said, "Have fun.  It looks like this."  Now I'm sure I said more than that but that was about gist of it.  It was quite the learning experience.

Since then, I've started trimming the extra paper off the tracers and make the construction paper cut more to size.  We then put the pieces of the craftivity together in sections, so if we run out of time at the end of the day, it's easier to stop.  Make sense?  If not, well here's a picture.

All the kids started with the face, hair and hat of their winter kid and then moved on to the body and arms, then the legs and then the mittens and shoes.  Eventually looking like this:

Pretty cute huh?  I think so.  I good chunk of my class is still working on them.  But we'll finish up tomorrow and do a little unit on Martin Luther King before moving on to a study on Africa.

I know every one manages craftivities differently, but that is what works for us in my room this year.  I'd love to be able to  to cut each little piece out on my own, so all the kids have to do is assemble, but I don't have that kind of time and we can't run construction paper through our copy machine.  That itself would be a HUGE time saer.

Instead, I just pick and choose craftivities I can hang up for a long time, like these winter kids.  Honestly, these babies will be up until March.  Generic and cute.  Love it.   On the coats of their winter kids, I had my friends write informational paragraphs about winter that I used as an assessment, gotta love rubric graded writing, for the end of the unit. We used this organizer to help us organize our thoughts.

Click on the organizer to download your own free copy!  :)

If you are interested in my winter unit, I have uploaded it to my TpT store. Click on the picture below to head there. 

I also uploaded the winter kid craftivity separately, just in case you don't need a winter unit but would still love a cute craftivity for winter!  Click on the picture below to pick up your own copy!

I'll be giving away three copies of my Winter Kid Craftivity Templates to the first three people who comment! :) Good luck!

Have a great Wednesday! Our three day weekend is almost in sight!