And the winner is....

I finally picked a winner (I'm a little late..ooops!)  for my 100 follower give away! Thank you to all of you who entered and to all of you who follow my blog.

And the winner is....

Allie from The Gypsy Teacher.

If you don't already follow her, stop on by and tell her I sent you. :) I will be emailing you shortly, Allie!

Hope you all had a happy, Wednesday! We're over the hump....

2 more days...

   2 more days.....

More Tangram Fun .... And Last Chance for a Giveaway!

Happy Monday! Hope you had a good one! Mine ran fairly smoothly but I am exhausted tonight. Not a good sign since it is ONLY Monday!

Anyway, I wanted to share a fun activity we worked on this morning.

I blogged about using tangrams HERE, and we continued the fun this week with this fun vocabulary tangram puzzle:

I used the tangram template from Laura Candler's freebie back. Then I wrote the geometry vocabulary words and their definitions on the tangram pieces. The kids put the tangram puzzle together with their partners and discovered the meanings of  the vocabulary words for the week.

They then recorded the meaning and drew an example of each word in their math journals. It was a fun quick project. The kids were challenged and really enjoyed working with the tangrams!

I was inspired by this pin:

(Source)

In other news, I will be drawing a winner for my 100 follower giveaway tomorrow. If you haven't done so already, enter NOW!!!

I will be giving away a $30 Target gift card. Think about all of the damage you could do at the dollar spot with $30 dollars. :)

To Enter: 
-Follow my blog and leave a comment w/your email address saying that you are a follower....
-If you are already a follower, you can play, too!  Just leave me comment telling me that you already follow my blog.
-Don't forget to leave your email address so that I can contact you if you are the winner.

Ends tomorrow! 

a Rafflecopter giveaway Thanks so much for entering! :) 

100 Follower GIVEAWAY

Hi all! This post will be short and sweet.  I just wanted to remind you to enter my 100 follower giveaway!


I will be giving away a $30 Target gift card. Think about all of the damage you could do at the dollar spot with $30 dollars. :)

To Enter: 
-Follow my blog and leave a comment w/your email address saying that you are a follower....
-If you are already a follower, you can play, too!  Just leave me comment telling me that you already follow my blog.
-Don't forget to leave your email address so that I can contact you if you are the winner.

Drawing ends  next Tuesday (Feb. 26th)!

a Rafflecopter giveaway Thanks so much for entering! :) 

Have a wonderful Sunday!

Five on Friday

I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for the Five on Friday Linky (and I'm actually on time this week!). 

1) Tangram Fun! 

We had lots of fun with Laura Candler's Tangram Polygon Exploration freebie. It was really fun to see the kiddos working and thinking with shapes in new ways. The best part was seeing them work together and help each other meet each challenge. 

I love the paper tangram templates. Such an easy low tech way to create manipulatives. I printed mine on astrobrights paper and laminated. Easy-peezy! 

I also downloaded this fun app for the high tech version. The kids loved this one too! :) 

We have a few more activities with our tangrams next week and while I was searching for ideas on pintrest I found this gem! 

(Source)

How fun is that! I'd love to attempt this for a fun snack for my students.....we'll see if it happens....

(The picture links you too a great blog with lots of other great ideas with tangrams, too!) 

2) Yummy Soup

On the home front, I am trying to cook more meals at home. I tried this crock pot soup this week and it was super yummy and super easy! 

It is from 365saysofcrockpot.com. If you haven't already, go check it out. So many great recipes on my "to try" list! 

3) Pizza! Pizza! 

Our admin had a pizza party to celebrate the students who improved their benchmark grades. There was lots of extra pizza left over for the teachers....it's the little things that make this teacher happy! :) 

4) Astrobirghts Everything

I love this paper and cardstock! I even just found sentence strips in astrobright colors t Michale's, Live, love, love! 

5) Cheap, comfy, cute shoes! 

I love these Payless flats. They are the comfiest flats I own....even better than my more expensive pairs. I own four different colors and I think I'm gonna swing for this black and white pair this weekend. So cute! 

Also, don't forget to enter my giveaway! 

To Enter: 
-Follow my blog and leave a comment w/your email address saying that you are a follower....
-If you are already a follower, you can play, too!  Just leave me comment telling me that you already follow my blog.
-Don't forget to leave your email address so that I can contact you if you are the winner.

Drawing ends  next Tuesday (Feb. 26th)!

a Rafflecopter giveaway Thanks so much for entering! :)

Enjoy your weekend, teacher friends! 

The important things about a blog is that...

you can share lots of ideas.

Some are old and some are new.

You meet new people and collaborate.

You become a better teacher.

But the important thing about a blog is that you can share lots of ideas.

Now I know that this idea would fall into the "old idea" category but I had forgotten about using the Important Book  and thought that you might have forgotten about it, too....or  maybe it is even new to you.

Anyway, the basic premise of the idea is to use Margaret Wise Brown's classic, The Important Book, as a model for your students' writing. I love using important books in my classroom. 

Here are some ways that we've used in our class: 

-Summarizing chapters in a novel 

"The important thing about Chapter Three is that Nana comes to visit....." 

-Writing our own nonfiction texts in content areas
"The important thing about your heart is that it pumps blood to your body...."
-Writing special books about classmates 
"The important thing about Stephanie is that she is a great friend...."

This is a great template to use when you want your students to work on main idea and detail.  It is a great tool to use when you are working with struggling writers. The format is structured so that everybody is successful. Whenever we write an Important Book we always have an author's read aloud. The best part is that my kiddos are always so darn proud of their important books. Love it! 

For your free Important book template click HERE.

Also, don't forget about my 100 Follower Giveaway!!!!

I will be giving away a $30 Target gift card. Think about all of the damage you could do at the dollar spot with $30 dollars. :)

I really hope they have the gift card in the image above available! It is so cute! 

To Enter: 
-Follow my blog and leave a comment w/your email address saying that you are a follower....
-If you are already a follower, you can play, too!  Just leave me comment telling me that you already follow my blog.
-Don't forget to leave your email address so that I can contact you if you are the winner.

Drawing ends  next Tuesday (Feb. 26th)!

a Rafflecopter giveaway Thanks so much for entering! :)

Well, I am off to school now! Nothing like a little early morning blogging. :)
Happy Wednesday! 

Five on Friday (Super Late!) and a GIVEAWAY!

Well, I'm finally linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for the February 15th edition of this weekly linky.

I'm getting later and later with this linky! Oy vey! But better late then never....

1) M&M's and Math 
Candy always makes math a little more fun! We completed this fun activity from Teacher's Resource Room during our math block on Valentine's Day.

 

 Each student received several m&m's. They then had to sort their baggie by color and determine the percent, fraction and decimal of each color. For example, 5 out of the 25 m&m's are red, which can be written as a fraction 5/25 or 1/5 are red or written as a percent, 20%,  or  decimal, 0.20.

Such a fun way to reinforce decimals, fractions and percents! Click on the picture to purchase your own copy (only $1.00). This would make math on an ordinary day really exciting...plus now all of the Valentine's day candy is on super sale! :)

2) "My Life as a Raindrop"

On Friday we wrapped up our water cycle mini unit with some creative writing. Each student  wrote a story entitled "My Life as a Raindrop". They had to incorporate our vocabulary words into their story (condensation, evaporation, collection, precipitation, and water cycle). They had so much fun with this assignment and had me cracking up when they shared their stories! :)

We used the sweet image above for inspiration! It is from mycutegraphics.com.


3) The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe 

We dove into this book on Wednesday. So far the kids are loving it! :) I'm busy working on some activities that go along with the book today. So many possibilities with this book! Now to FOCUS my energy!


4) Cupcakes

How cute are these cupcakes?!?!?! 

There is a new food truck called "Sweet Treats" that just popped up in my neighborhood. (Are food trucks popping up in your area too, or is this just a Bay Area thing???)

Anyway,  it parks right next to Target. Uh-Oh....I see a lotta cupcakes and extra lbs in my future!

Speaking of Target....


5) A Giveaway 
As promised, I am throwing a giveaway to celebrate reaching 100 followers! Wohoo! I want to send out a huge THANK YOU to all of my follower so...

I will be giving away a $30 Target gift card. Think about all of the damage you could do at the dollar spot with $30 dollars. :)

To Enter: 
-Follow my blog and leave a comment w/your email address saying that you are a follower....
-If you are already a follower, you can play, too!  Just leave me comment telling me that you already follow my blog.
-Don't forget to leave your email address so that I can contact you if you are the winner.

Drawing ends  next Tuesday (Feb. 26th)!

a Rafflecopter giveaway Thanks so much for entering! :) 

Now, I'm off to catch up on all things school work and housework ! I was away for the weekend visiting my mommy at the beach. So relaxing! But now I have a lot to catch up on! I hope you are all enjoying your long weekend, too! :)

More youtube finds!

Happy Sunday! I hope you are all enjoyed your weekend. The weather looks pretty crazy back east...hope you are all safe and warm if you are in the path of the snowstorm.

In other news, I am officially at 100 followers! Thank you, thank you, thank you! I am planning some sort of a celebration soon. Stay tuned....

I love using youtube with my class! I've already blogged about some of my favorite finds HERE but I wanted to share my newest finds with you all today.

I love to use youtube as a way to reinforce topics with a catchy tune. It doesn't take much time to throw these into a lesson and the kids are always begging me to play them again and again and again....Plus those little songs (and their concepts!)  get stuck in everyone's head. We learned a song about dividing fractions last week and it has been in my head ALL day!!! I hope that it's stuck in my kiddos' heads too.

Here are the songs we used last week:

Dividing Fractions

An oldie but a goodie.....

This Integer Rap is on the books for Monday....

What are your favorite videos to use in class??? I posted about some other favs HERE. 

Have a great week!