Teacher Appreciation and Volunteer Gift Ideas

I feel blessed to be working at a school where the administration and PTA really support the teachers and staff.  During Teacher Appreciation week, they were so kind and generous to us!  They decorated the whole school like a Tiki lounge and handed us all leis as we walked into school.  They had an actual Tiki bar set up with fruit smoothies one day, had desserts another day and redecorated each of our staff bathrooms with new soaps, lotions, hand towel and cute pictures. 

All that kindness has inspired me and gotten me in the gift giving spirit so I thought I would share a few fun gift ideas that I have found on pinterest. 

I hope you were all treated like gold during this past week and I hope these idea inspire you to get your end of the year volunteer thank you gifts going.

Thanks for stopping by and Happy Mother's Day to all of you Mom/Teachers out there!  

 

Teacher Appreciation Sale

Great news, TpT is having a big Teacher Appreciation Sale from May 7-8!

This sale is a chance to save up to 28% off of some awesome products!  Go check it out but don't forget to use the special check out code to mazimize your savings!

Geometry Fun

Who knew that combining spaghetti with marshmallows would be so much fun?

This week we used uncooked spaghetti and marshmallows to build plane, and 3D shapes.  My cuties could really see that the spaghetti noodles were the straight sides and the marshmallows represented the corners! 

When they created their 3D shapes, the spaghetti was the edges and the marshmallows represented the vertices.

             

What a fun way to explore shapes in a very hands on way.   One box of spaghetti and one bag of mini marshmallows was plenty for my whole class so with a quick trip to your friendly dollar store and you can have the supplies for this lesson for as little as $2.  A quick tip, I broke the spaghetti into thirds (about the size of toothpicks) because the larger spaghetti made the 3D shapes too unstable

Thanks for stopping by, please let me know if you have ever tried this in your classroom!  It was a first for me but I will be doing it again for sure!!

Our Promethean boards arrived!

I feel like it has been forever since I have posted but life has just gotten crazy in my classroom ever since the arrival of our amazing Promethean boards.

This fall we found out that the whole school would be getting boards, but there was no set date.  We were told that the whole school district would have them by August 2013.  Then as soon as we returned from spring break our principal told us that our boards would be arriving in a few days!  Above is a picture of my blackboard that I covered with dry erase contact paper, the night before installation.  I stayed as late as I could after school so that I might be able to see my board being installed but I finally left around 6pm!  

This is my hallway and my room is number 12, at the end of the hallway.  I took this right before I left for the day!  I was so excited that I had a hard time falling asleep that night! :)

Yippee!  I love it!  I had a board at my old school and have missed it so much for the last 2 years!  Me and technology are finally together again!!!                                                

This board has a brand new dual user function, which allows two students to work on the board at the same time!  Here are a few of my students filling in their facts about electricity! 

I have been busy revamping lessons to make use of our new board and to activity engage my students.  In my quest I have found some wonderful resources that I thought I would share with you! 

Mrs. Shannon has a ton of cute flipchart activities that are all organized by subject.   Mrs. Shannon teaches 1st grade but these resources could be easily adapted for other grades as well!  Be sure to check her site out!

Kathleen over at Growing Kinders has a great post about calendar time and using the board allow with a calendar book as a way to actively engage students in their morning calendar time!  I am totally doing this next year!  

Thanks for stopping by, please feel free to respond and share and great technology site you use!

High School and College Student Volunteers

I love having parent volunteers in my classroom.  In fact I don't think I could have survived my first year of teaching if it weren't for the amazing parent volunteers that I had that year.  Parent volunteers can be great; they copy, cut, laminate and save me countless hours! 

Last year, I decided to try some student volunteers in addition to parent volunteers.  Through the local high school, I was able to have students come in when their classes were done for the day and work with my kiddos.

This year I have a college student who comes in every Friday during our math block to work with small groups. 

It is such a win-win!  The high school students love getting the experience of working in small groups in a real classrooom.  My kiddos LOVE having a cool high school (and now a college) student helping them in small groups.  

If you are interested in trying this, just go to your local high school's website and look up either the junior, senior counselor or if the high school has a child development program, contact that teacher and ask them to help you get some student volunteers.   In my county, every high school student is required to complete 75 hours of community service so that really helps because I can offer students credit toward thier volunteer hour requirement.

Please feel free to comment below to let me know if you have ever had high school students volunteer or are thinking about trying it out. 

Superhero Alliterations FREEBIE!

My cuties are having so much fun with superheros lately that I decided they needed to create their own Superhero Alliterations.  After learned all about alliterations and created a few using their names, we read the book, Superhero ABC by Bob McLeod!  They went crazy for this book and loved all the awesome alliterations on each amazingly illustrated page.  

  

Below are some super student sample superheros!  We took two days to complete these.  The first day, we read the book and brainstormed nouns, verbs and adjectives that could describe their superhero.  On the second day, students wrote their alliterations and illustrated their superhero.   

Act fast, and follow the link to pick up this fun Freebie from my fabulous TPT store.

Superhero centers and a sale...

By this time of the year our students are awesome at their daily 5 and center rotations!  They have stamina, and they know where to go and what they should be working on - but they still need some variety so I created these superhero themed activities to jazz up my word work centers.

This Superhero Nouns, Verbs and Adjectives unit gives students some hands on practice sorting words before they complete their written follow up.  The activity my students like best is creating their own superhero and using adjectives to describe it!   

Another fun superhero center is this Superhero Sentences pack!    My students still need practice adding the correct punctuation marks to their sentences, and this activity puts a superhero spin on things!

Both of these "Super" centers are on sale this week at my TPT store! 

Zip, zoom or fly over now and check them out!