Crafting and Creating

Hello my friends...this is going to be a long post with lots of topics - so bare with me :)

Last night was the first time I could actually sit and read posts in a while....do you know how many I had??

422.

Nope, not  a typo..

422...isn't that crazy??

I was able to get it to about 220 last night...
(I'm sure it's higher now since it's taken me about 30 minutes to do this post. lol)

I have good reasons though...

I was getting my craft on....and made my friend's baby shower gift:

I took the cloth diaper inserts (that everyone uses for burp cloths) and sewed ribbon on them to make them cute...

Then I was busy planning my friend's goodbye party...
I made this cake:

(yes, little miss A got to it - not only did she pick at the bottom there, but she also ATE the P!! lol  Luckily I had some more yellow to do the P again...oh my child. NEVER a dull moment around here!)

Do you see her on the right?? She was so surprised!!  That's me on the left - I'm so bummed I couldn't get a picture of her face, I was just excited to see her reaction, that I forgot to take a picture.

And then, in the midst of all the crafting and planning, I've been distracted by this cutie pie:

I just LOVE this picture of B!

AND I've been making a new unit...

I bought Reagan's Piggie unit a while ago and I'm finally getting using it next week!!

But, you know me - I like my math and reading centers to coordinate, so I had to make a centers unit to go with it :)

Reagan's unit has a lot of stuff that I want to use for whole group, so I only really needed to create my centers, so it's a little smaller than my other units.

It's not completely finished yet though, it was finished enough for me to go to UPS to print the stuff up, but not enough for me to share/sell it...lol..

BTW - I refer to the UPS guys as my boys now...lol! I'm there almost every week printing my stuff in color, they even told me that to keep my cardstock there (I have to bring my own cardstock, but the printing is MEGA cheap, so WHATEVAS!). So they have a drawer labeled "Jen's Paper" - haha!!

This past week, we did my Goldilocks centers - they kids had so much fun with them!!

We also did the science experiment using Teddy Grahams that's in the pack...

ewww....lol

They loved it!!

Before they made their hypotheses, they got to eat one of each to be able to use that as their reasoning for their hypothesis. Love when we can add food to science...or math...or writing...or reading. lol

Then...I came up with this Teddy Graham Math activity on the spur of the moment..so it wasn't in my Goldilocks pack - but it is NOW! ha!

I stole  borrowed some teddy bear counters from our K teachers...and it was perfect because there were small, medium, and large sizes - JUST LIKE the Goldilocks bears...ha!!

I also came up with next idea on the spur of the moment...I found this book in our public library...

So cute!!  So I had my parent volunteer cut out some shapes on the die cut machine.

Afteer the kids passed their 2-D shapes "quiz" with a perfect score, they got to make a shapes picture - I LOVE how they turned out!!

And we FINALLY finishef the "Who Is Goldilocks?" writing and craftivity.

If you bought my Goldilocks unit, check back soon for the revised copy (both lit and math), I've added some stuff to it!! It's now a whopping 83 pages! Still the same price though :)

Also, don't forget to join my linky!! 

(if you do, you may just have a better chance to win something...like a new unit maybe?? (when I finally get it posted... hint hint! ha!)

Thank you to all of you who have already linked up - I'm seeing some GREAT ideas that I need to start working on over the summer...

Ok, I must go laminate and cut out my Piggie centers...

Hope y'all had a GREAT weekend!

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Word Wall Linky - by Popular Demand!

Graphics by Melonheadz and Mauree Truelove

Yay!! It's my first linky!!!

Everyone was chanting for a linky - lol..it's true.

After showing you my embarrassing "word wall" (er... cabinets, I mean)

I had some great ideas in the comments - and some were begging for ideas!

So, PLEASE link up -  not only do I want ideas, but I don't want to be a loser for my first linky! ha!!

Take your camera with you to work on Monday, take some pictures of your word wall - or whatever you use as one, and plan a word wall activity - your favorite - to show us!

If you're not in the classroom - like Mrs 3 AM - ahem! (since you love word walls!!) hehe...you can still write a post about it and link up!

I know we're all in "end of the year" mode, but a lot of us can use this to help plan for NEXT year!

Make sure to use my super cute picture - hehe..and then just make a link go to THIS post.

Also, when you link up, make sure to give the url of your Word Wall POST, not your whole blog.

Can't wait to see!!

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A change of posts - help please!

Ok, y'all...this wasn't what I was going to originally post about - but I'll save that post for tomorrow...

I have a confession...

I hate word walls...lol.

Well, not really, I just don't ever use ours.  First off, I have no WALL to put them on, so I'd have to use my chalk/white boards. Ummm...kinda need that space for other things.  So I've started using my cabinet doors - it's "eye-ish" level (when they're sitting on the floor - ha!) for the kids to still be able to read, so I thought it would work....

Yeah....this is what it looks like - don't laugh - PLEASE! lol

I started the year off doing pretty well...but then I had an intern, went on maternity leave, and well, I just never thought about it again.

I've never been really good at using a word wall though. I admit it - it's one of my short comings.

So, I NEED your help!!!

WHAT can I do to make sure I use it next year? How can I make it more user-kid-friendly? What kind of activities do you do?? What words do you put up there?? Do you have a blogpost so I could see yours??!

(Should I just make this a linky???)

HELP!!!

Ok, now I must leave you with a smile - or two! :)

Today, it was nerd day at our school - since we are FINISHED with the FCAT testing!! 

This is the lady behind it all - she's one of my buddies - a 4th grade teacher. 

This super-nerd was JUST fabulous!!

(please don't judge our mess - we're seriously purging our stuff in our pod - and it's gotta get worse before it can get better, right?!)

And here is one of my kiddos - LOVE HIM!!!

And it's not a nerd, but B wanted to make you smile too! How could I NOT show you this picture?! :)

Hope y'all had a tremendous Thursday!

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Pulling My Hair Out - with a Math Freebie

A story for you first...

As I was holding my hole puncher waiting to punch someone's (behavior) card....

can you guess it???

A COCKROACH crawled OUT of my hole puncher and onto my ARM!!! 

Really!??!

C'mon!!! Yesterday - one crawled out of my "neighbor's" paper towel dispenser and onto her arm!! ahh!!!

So this is why we have to pack EVERYTHING!!!

I'm serious - EVERYTHING.  Even our pods, which houses the junk that has been there since I was in grade school...lol..They think they're breeding behind our bulletin boards and such, so they're even taking those down over the summer....

It's good we're finally "forced" to purge, but now I'm feeling even more pressure for the end of the year - bc I don't like going in on that last teacher planning day....

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So this week, we've been working on my Goldilocks Unit - they kids are having a lot of fun!!

Although....today we started writing our letter as Goldilocks....I about wanted to PULL MY HAIR OUT!!!

It's like these kids FORGOT how to write a sentence.

"sleeping in your bed"

yes.  That is an example.

"broke baddy bear chair"

Another FINE example.

Yes - you can picture this as me...I finally just said "OK! Put everything BACK into your writing folder - we're DONE!" (yes, done - not finished...that's a pet peeve of mine, but today we were DONE like a turkey! ahhhh!!! lol)

Anyone else feel like that right now?!? PLEASE tell me you do - lol.

Anyway...onto math centers - they've been practicing word problems...

And graphing/analyzing the data....

And Ordering and Comparing numbers...

This math center isn't part of my Goldilocks unit...I found this (a whole class set already copied off - apparently, I never got to it last year) while trying to clean out BOTH of my filing cabinets...yes, I have TWO full filing cabinets. What? I've been teaching for almost 10 years, and I've taught 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th! Although, I don't ever want to go back to 4th and 5th - I love the littles (most days), so I'm weeding out and passing it on to my friends :)

Sorry - back on track.  I actually did this at my teacher table - we use decks of cards and they create either the smallest or greatest number, whatever the directions tell them to, and then they compare the numbers.

Click the pic to download the FREEBIE!! And at the bottom of this post there tons of other freebies from other wonderful bloggers!

(don't forget to leave feedback...and some lovin' here! :) I seriously PUFFY HEART comments! hehe)

The pack contains pages that are 1 and 2 digits, 2 and 3 digits, and 3 and 4 digits...so you can use them all year, differentiate, or just use the ones that fit your grade level. :)

My friend and I created these a few years ago - you know her...she's my science and art and craft guru that I always talk about?? lol

Speaking of her....

Last week during FCAT, she had her students do some art...

You know the American Gothic picture?

I'm sure you do - it's this one...

Anyway - she had her students create their own versions!

This one is hers...isn't she so skilled??

I love the universe one (this was actually made by one of my students I had in 3rd!)

And the cheerleader is cute on this one! ha!!

Ok, must go start my nightly routine...hope to make a dent in the 190 posts on my google reader too! :)

Hope y'all had a Terrific Tuesday!

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Ladybugs and Raining Numbers!

Sorry I've been MIA all weekend - Hubs worked ALLLLL weekend long, so the girls and I HAD to get out of the house - so we went BACK to the zoo to see the Dinos!!

and then had an impromptu beach trip

and went to one of my bestie's baby shower

and then A decided she was so tired from all the fun...hehe

hehe - I have LOTS of cute pictures...but I won't bore you with them...

Instead, I'll bore you with some school pics! ha!

Friday, we released our ladybugs that had finally "hatched" (can I tell you the REAL reason we released them was because I saw baby cucarachas in the "house!" ahhhh!!!)

Don't mind my "still chewing on them" nails...bleh!

Kelley asked me before, and I thought it'd be a good question to answer "out loud" - Where do you get your ladybugs??

insectlore.com

 I also get my caterpillars, ants, shrimp, praying mantis, etc there! Yes - I really have gotten all that before - ha! I really do love having my kiddos have that first-hand experience - oooh!! The chicks are hatching this week too!!!

And real quick, I want to show what I did in small groups last week - we've been working on 4-digit numbers. So we're analyzing them, doing all sorts of fun stuff with them - lol. 

sorry - computer won't upload it the correct way :-/

This is one of activities I use a deck of cards as my "random number generator." The kids are so funny - they actually call my deck of cards that - ha!!

These are in my new pack I just uploaded...

This packet has the option for the students to analyze 2, 3, and/or 4 digit numbers!

Great for differentiating instruction - or for the whole class to use to practice the place value on which you are working.

Included are posters and number cards (should you not have a deck of cards). There are 3 different analyzing sheets for the students to write on, and 2 different crafts to either copy off onto construction paper or you can make tracers out of them.

Click to get it on TpT or TN

 Ok, I must go prepare for my week - and did I mention I'm SOOOO behind on blog stalking - AGAIN! grrrrrr...

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