Top 5 Projects

Mrs. Sheehan over at Learning in Wonderland is having an amazing link up. She is asking us to share our top 5 projects we have made this year in our classrooms. Here are my top 5 in no particular order. I will leave link to each blog post if you want more information on each activity.

I Chews You

Autobiographies

Pot of Gold

If I Were President

Dear Deer

Make sure to link up over at...

Otter-ly Amazing!!

This was our last "normal" week of the school year. After today, each week will have something fun involved. Not that every week isn't fun already, but you know how the end of the year goes. I want to make sure that my students are still learning in the middle of all the fun. So why not being fun into the learning?

1. One of my favorite animals are otters. We are in the middle of research reports, which I will be sharing in a future blog post. My example research report is about otters so as you can image, my students are now in love with otters too. We also got lucky that one of our Scholastic News talks about otters. So here is what they created...

2. With the end of the school year approaching, I wanted to reflect on the year with my students. Mrs. Sheehan's Owl-way Remember file was perfect!!

3. Today is DIBELS testing for my second graders. Most of them started the year at 0-20 words per minute and today they are expected to read at 110 words per minute. Even if they don't all make it to 110, I am still so proud of all the gains they have made this year.

4. I have been crafting a lot lately. Yesterday I made a card for a friend. Maybe I will post it once I give it to her. I know she's going to love it!!!

5. It's Friday!!! Three more weeks of school that's enough to celebrate. I am loving that summer break is almost here. Time to start getting ready for next year!!

Dinosaurs... ROAR!!

Long time no post, right? Well if you're like me, it's very hard to stretch yourself in different directions. With my masters going on right now and teaching, things have been busy. I have also been crafting, which is a breath of fresh air after masters work and teaching work is over. I still love blogging my classroom happenings, but I always seem to make it my last priority. Today I am sharing with you what we have been doing the past week.

We started our unit on dinosaurs a couple of weeks ago and we have been going strong. Here are just a few things that we have been doing.

1. Fossil Dig

The students used cookies as rocks to dig out fossils.

2. Paleontologist

Then we used Diana Jump's dinosaur file to create paleontologists. Inside they wrote directions on how to dig for fossils.

3. Tyrannosaurus Rex

We used Diana Jump's file again to write about trex and complete an activity.

4. Triceratops

This activity turned out super cute. I wanted my students to create a triceratops, but I hadn't made a template for them. I went ahead and drew a template on the board and my students created their own. They turned out super cute and they all had their own personalities.

One of my favorites!!

5. Herbivores vs. Carnivores

A fun way to compare and contrast herbivores and carnivores.

I am linking up over at...

Update

It's been a while since I've last posted so let me just recap what has been going on in pictures.

Leapin' Leprachauns

Happy Sunday! Only one more week until Spring Break!! I am so excited. This upcoming week is going to be a long one. Not only do I have morning and afternoon duty all week, it is also conference week. Which also means there are two half days. How am I going to get it all in!! I don't want the craziness to allow me to loose my fun. To add a little color and interest this week I decided to log into my Pinterest account, which you can find HERE and complete some with my students this week.

Pin #1

Source

 This activity is from A Cupcake for the Teacher. I am super excited to use this with my kids because I will be putting my own little spin on it. What is it you may ask? Well you'll just have to stop by my blog on Friday to find out what it is. :-) 

 

Pin #2

Source 

When I saw this cute little pot of gold on Pinterest I knew I had to do it myself. Unfortunately, I went to purchase the file for this activity and it did not include the template for the pot of gold. Either way, it's a cute idea and the file did include a few centers that I may use this week. I will have to make a template for this on my own though.

 

Don't forget to link up over at...

  



Spring Fever

To say that my class has spring fever is an understatement. We had district benchmarks this week and we still have another long week of conferences to go until spring break. We are holding on though!! To make this week a little fun since it's been so stressful, I made sure to add in a lot of craftivities, my, I mean my students' favorite!!

1. Contractions
In order to get ready for our district benchmark we did a lot of review. One of the things that we reviewed was contractions.

We used these little contraction crocodiles from Cara Carrol's Crazy for Contractions file.

We also played a cute little contraction memory game that I found over at Learning in Wonderland and you can it for free here from Caitlyn Taylor.

2. Dental Health

I'm cheating a little. I actually did these last week, but I wasn't able to share this cute little dental health craftivity.

I also found this over at Learning in Wonderland and the best part is that it is FREE! My students need to be able to write directions. What's better then starting with something they do every day, brushing their teeth!

3. St. Patrick's Day

I posted earlier this week that we were celebrating St. Patrick's Day a little early since we will be on spring break. I used, yet another FREEBIE!! This time it is from The Teacher Wife.

 These two are some of my favorite. The top one is Tony Stark. He didn't quite understand that he was to write someone in his life that is special to him. He was extremely passionate about Tony Stark (Iron Man) that I let him have his fun. The second one is about me, but I love that she added that I make her laugh so much. I'm glad my students have as much fun as I do!!

4. Measurement

I also posted earlier this week that I was planning on doing a measurement activity that i found on Pinterest.

 5. Total Randomness

Today was a crazy crazy day, everything that could happen, did. Here is just a list of things that went on today...

• dropped my wallet on the ground (which holds my iphone as well oh yeah, it was raining too)
• forgot my umbrella
• forgot my classroom key, therefore I was locked out of my room all day and I had to rely on my BFF-teacher-neighbor to let us in through the connecting door
• got a new student (Not so annoying, but it was another boy. I have 6 girls and 15 boys!!)
• a kid threw up at the end of the day and it even got on our new carpet :-(
• rainy day today so the kids came in 10 minutes early while I was still prepping 
• clear day and then down pour while walking to the buses

I'm sure more things happened, but that's all I'm going to write about. Despite everything that happened today, I'm surprisingly in a good mood. I'm off to enjoy, the now, sunny day. :-)

Pinspired

I made it a personal goal to start using some of my Pinterest pins. There are so many great ideas just sitting on my Pinterest boards and that is all that they are doing... sitting. When I saw that Mrs. Sheehan over at Learning in Wonderland started a weekly link up of activities that you want to accomplish that you have pinned, I knew this was for me. I have been using pins since the beginning of the year, but I want to make more of an effort to get things accomplished. This week I plan on using two pins in particular.

Pin #1

Source

St. Patrick's Day is just around the corner and unfortunately we are on Spring Break on the actual day. Come to think of it, I have never taught on St. Patrick's Day in my whole teaching career. Since we are not at school on the day, we are celebrating early.

 

Pin #2

 

Source

We have been working on measurement to the nearest inch and half inch. When I saw this on Pinterest, I knew my kids would have fun with it. The students get one sheet of construction paper and they are to measure each link. Whoever has the longest chain, wins!!

 

Check back on Friday to see how all of these activities went. Do you have any Pinteresting ideas? If so, make sure to link over at...

 

 

If you are interested in seeing more of my pins, you can always follow me on Pinterest by clicking HERE.