Thursday, January 31, 2013

Touchdown on TpT, a Freebie, and a Super Bowl Surprise!

Are you ready for some FOOTBALL?  GREAT DEALS?  TpT is gearing up for the big game by adding an additional percentage off already "on sale" stores!  Most of your favorite players (sellers) will have items on sale for 20% off, and TpT is throwing in an additional 8%.    YOU SCORE with a 28% savings with the following code:  SUPER.   TpT is running their sale for ONE DAY ONLY on Super Bowl Sunday!   Don't fumble! Grab some goodies for spring, Valentines fun, large units or bundles that you've been saving up for, reviews for state mandated testing, or precious clipart for some half-time entertainment! My locker room (cart) is already full! YIKES!  :-)

I put my entire field on sale, so if there's something you want, you KNOW you can grab it for 28% off on Sunday!  (20% off on Saturday and Monday because I'm running a sale for a few days!)  I bundled some of my own first round draft picks to hopefully help some folks out. :-)   I currently have 6 math interactive notebooks done and more coming.  I bundled all 6 together for some SUPER notebooking fun and savings!   

I've had a few fans ask if I would huddle the monthly problem solving units together as well.  My plan was to wait until all 12 were done, but why not kickoff a good thing by throwing them together for Super Bowl Sunday?!  I have October, November, December, January, and February on a team and ready to go!  

Don't forget to quarterback sneak off with a graphic organizer freebie on Academic Vocabulary words.  My teammates and I would HIDE new academic vocabulary words in the 3rd grade hall for students to be on the lookout for.  They got to find and define them as we introduced them that week.  

"Extra points" for the amazingly talented 3 am Teacher with her adorable backgrounds (like the one in my super bowl sale ad above!) http://the3amteacher.blogspot.com   The football froggie friend comes from Scrappindoodles.com 


TIMEOUT before you go...I have some Super Bowl surprises of my own.  #1 How many SUPER BOWL (football related) words or phrases did I use in my blog post today?  Count carefully!  The first one to post the correct answer (or get the closest by toin coss on Sunday) gets a $6.00 item or less FREE from my TpT store!  (*Since my boys helped me with the words, I'll go by their count and what they intentionally helped me put in there!)
#2 Make a prediction about the score of the game!  A.) Pick the winner B.) How many points will they win by?  **Closest to the correct score also wins a $6.00 item from my TpT store. ***All predications must be made before the players leave their locker rooms to come onto the field on Sunday!     GOOD LUCK!

Bananas for my boys who know more about football than I do!  I'm just cooking. ;-)


Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Super Bowl Challenge...Recipes and a Mini Unit

Well, the results are in. It looks like we have a couple of teams set for Super Bowl Sunday!  Congratulations to the Ravens and 49ers.  So who are you pulling for?  I would love to hear!  ME?  I don't have a dog in this fight, so I'll be spending all my energy and efforts into rounding up some delicious Super Bowl munchies for all the men in my life.  (Husband, sons, their friends, dog, etc.)  
In honor of the quickly approaching Super Bowl, here are some of our favorite Super Bowl recipes. 

HANKY PANKIES--(1 pkg of sausage (med), 1 pkg of Velveeta cheese, crushed red pepper, and rye coctail bread)  Brown sausage in skillet.  Add cheese and crushed red pepper to skillet.  Continue to cook/heat until cheese is completely melted and sausage is cooked through.  Remove from heat.  Add a spoonful of the mixture to each of the rye cocktail bread slices.  Heat in oven to toast the bread.  Serve warm.


BBQ CHICKEN TORTILLA PIZZAS-- flour tortillas, cooked and shredded chicken, your favorite brand of Salsa, BBQ sauce, chopped red pepper, shredded Mexican cheese    Heat oven to 350.  Top each tortilla with a layer of BBQ sauce (like a pizza), Drop shredded chicken all over the layer of BBQ sauce.  Top with chopped red bell pepper and shredded cheese.  Place on ungreased baking sheet. Bake 15 minutes or until cheese bubbles. Serve with your favorite salsa.

HOMEMADE BROWNIES--1 1/4 cup margarine, 4 eggs, 2 cups of sugar, 1 1/2 cups of flour, 2 tsp of vanilla, 3/4 cup cocoa, 2 cups nuts (optional) Preheat oven to 350.  Melt butter and add cocoa mix.  Stir in sugar and blend in eggs.  Add vanilla.  Stir in flour and nuts.  Mix well.  Bake in greased 9x13 pan for 30 minutes.  Cool; Serve


Let's hear it Super Bowl Fans...what's your favorite snack recipe for Super Bowl Sunday?  I'm looking for something NEW, QUICK, and EASY this year to add to my existing list.  Leave me a comment with a recipe for something you think we'll like!  If I select your recipe to try, (my family gets to vote on which one we'll try) I'll send you the Super Bowl Challenge for your classroom FREE!  (See image below)   **We'll select by Monday, Jan. 28th 8:00 p.m. EST

If you have a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th grade classroom, you might enjoy the Super Bowl Challenge for your students! This mini-unit has a variety of activities that appeal to all the little sports fans in your class. (And even those who aren't)  If you purchased last year, be sure to RE-DOWNLOAD it...as it has been updated for 2013!  You and your class can make some predictions, do some problem solving, interpret a graph of super bowl wins, share some recipes, practice with fact/opinion, etc.  It makes for great fun on the Friday before the big game!  $1.95  

Bananas for a good excuse to have a smorgasboard of goodies sitting around to GRAZE on,

Monday, January 14, 2013

Geometry Fun & Freebie

As a student myself, years and years (and years....but we won't go there) ago, I didn't like Geometry.  I didn't understand it, didn't see a need for it, and certainly didn't enjoy it.   So how did it become one of my very favorite things to teach?  I think that occurred when I realized there were so many fun things you could do with Geometry when presenting  it to youngsters.  I wish some of my teachers 'back in the day' had presented it a little differently.  I might have actually had a good time with it!  I decided to dedicate this blog post to a smorgasbord of Geometry FUN!    Check out the some amazing interactive websites, blog posts, and products all dedicated to GEOMETRY!

Need a quick online interactive practice for your kiddos at a computer station?  This website (click image) will take you to a good handful of geometry games with SIMPLE instructions and very little clicking to get started!  Let your students try their hand at classifying triangles, classifying polygons, or other geometric figures.

Here's another website with quick and easy access to a variety of geometric games, including shapes, angles, and transformations.  This site is a little more challenging than the previous one, so if you teach geometry 3rd grade and up, this might be a better place to start.  The image will take you there.

Finally, this one is a site that our school bought a membership to after a 30 day trial.  It's IXL math.  They have some free games and promos that you and your kids can investigate to see if it's worth a subscription.  Our students LOVE the site and welcome any time they can grab to practice their math on IXL.  As an educator, I love the immediate feedback given to students if they miss something.  A small tutorial "reteaching" that skill pops up when they miss a question. Check it out!

Some of you know I'm totally into my Math notebooking these days.  I started them last year with my students and became a believer that if students can journal about what they've learned in their own words, with their own explanations, then they know it!  I started creating some math notebooks for my teammates and I to use along side our Math series.  They've been a big hit.  I finished the Geometry one and can't wait for some classrooms to give it a whirl!  **SO...the FIRST 3 teachers that teach grades 2-4 that want to try it out, give me a shout out in the blog post comments with your email and I'll send it to you FREE!

It's my favorite of the interactive notebooks so far!!  Grab your notebooks, colored pens, popsicle sticks, glue sticks, etc. to have some interactive Geometry fun!








FINALLY, grab a FREEBIE while you're here!
I always loved putting out some solid shapes on the table and letting students make some guesses on the number of faces, edges, and vertices each solid shape has.  They record with their cooperative groups, then we discuss and clarify any misconceptions.  It's a fun way to investigate shapes!

Bananas for Geometry after all,

Sunday, January 6, 2013

Giveaway Winner & 103 Things to Do With a Book

Let me start with a YAY and CONGRATULATIONS to my Giveaway winner, Laura Cooney!  Rafflecopter has spoken, and she won with her blog comment entry!  Thanks to everyone who joined the fun and participated in one way or another.  I appreciate you!

I read so many books to students and with  students, it's easy to find myself getting caught up in the "same ole', same ole' " activities.  I stumbled upon this website and found a helpful article on a variety of things (103) to do with books...before, during, and or after reading.  In my new coaching position, where I never know what will unfold in front of me, I often have to think fast and on the fly.  I've bookmarked this article and found that it's a fantastic resource on the days when I have no time to plan. It can be adapted to ANY age or grade level.   Some of my favorites include:

  • Business Card book-Students retell the story in as many creative ways as they can on a business card (*You can simply use small paper, the size of a business card, but the REAL business cards are more fun!)  They'll come up with a variety of ways to express what they know...story maps, lists, summaries, etc.
  • Roundtable-Students LOVE to talk, right?  This gives them the floor and the opportunity to just "discuss" the book as adults would at a book study....What confused you?  What do you think the author meant when...?  What would you change about the book?  
  • Timeline-Timeline skills can always use a little extra practice. There's no better way than to create a timeline of the events in the story!
  • Transparencies-Who says you can't have fun with "old school" teaching?  We still have some overhead projectors sitting around the school collecting dust, but they still work.  Give students some transparencies to create a story map on, character list, setting drawings, theme statements or illustrations, problem solution and/or cause and effect situations.  Slap them up on that dusty overhead projector and let them present.  
  • Make Your Own Test-Kids quickly find out how difficult teaching is when they have to design their own questions and test to go along with their reading.  They get creative and have to really think about the answers before they write them!  

Enjoy the article and trying some of these creative and fun things to do with your students and the literature they're reading!  The image at the right will take you to the article!

Bananas for somebody else's quick ideas when my brain is on overload,

nomonkeybusinessmichelle@gmail.com

Search