Recipe for a Great Friendship and My Exhausting Day

I am exhausted! Why is it that special holidays always take so much more energy than the normal routine?

Here is what my class tackled today.

Writing: Ladybugs "Recipe for a Great Friendship"

We brainstormed together on the board, 

and then I set them free to create their own recipes.

My criteria: At least 4 different ingredients, using fractions or mixed numbers with specific measurements. They then had to write a sentence with the directions of how to make it.

They were cute!  Though they were also challenging since my class just learned about mixed numbers this past week, and I don't believe some have them have been in the kitchen before... since they seemed dazed when I was describing the different measuring equipment.

We also did our Conversation Heart Fractions, regular lesson for Reading, and helped our First grade Buddies graph conversation hearts. 

Then it was party time this afternoon. 

The kids voted to watch part of Monsters Inc. (goes with the monster valentine boxes from yesterday) and it's rated G. We passed out valentines and had treats they brought in from home. I think that I'm one step closer to diabetes... :(

Hope you had a great day!

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Heart (Valentine) Treat Bags and Conversation Heart Fractions

My school neighbor is super clever and she shared her awesomeness with me this afternoon. Look how cute these turned out. 

I'm totally doing this next year!!

Pretty simple to make, just fold the grocery bag and round the top corner. Then trace and cut a half circle. When they open up the bag the kids ohh and ahh because they are impressed with the heart handle. Then they decorate it with their name. I of course chose my favorite name from her batch of kids to share with you. :) Yes, I'm slightly biased.

Here's another idea that might help you tomorrow.  I'm sorry that I forgot to share this earlier on this month.  

Basically I give my students a small package of conversation hearts (since we've been learning about fractions for the past 2 weeks), and they have to estimate, identify, simplify, add, and subtract fractions. It's a lot to do, but they can totally handle it!  It's a freebie over at TPT.  

Hope you had a great day!  I'm gearing up for tomorrow's craziness...

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Valentine Pins

I know there are a ton of different activities to do this next week, but I wanted to share the ones that I'm excited about regarding Valentines.  
All of these courtesy of Pinterest.  :)Click the pictures to take you to the pins.

30+ crafts

Fun with Valentines - keeping it educational :)

Minute to Win it games for a party

This is a freebie - Math and Literacy Activities

My 4th graders enjoyed making this for their mom's last year - even though it's supposedly a prek activity.


This hat was easy to make - last year I changed it up to a vocabulary game headband thing.

I have my students use Kleenex boxes (they bring them in from home) to create Monster Valentine holders.  I just used card stock for the eyes instead of egg crates.  
Have a great day!  We are off on vacation today.  I love 3 day weekends... :)
P.S. - I've been changing around things in my TPT store since so many of my task cards were Valentine themed... now I also have Robot Multi Digit Multiplication and Long Division Task Cards, as well as Super Hero Addition with Regrouping and Subtraction with Regrouping Task Cards.  My goal today (besides cleaning the house) is to update my TN store too.  I hope this helps someone out there.  

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Mode and Median

Today I felt the urge to jump off a cliff.  It really was one of those moments that I couldn't wrap my head around WHY these children didn't GET IT?!?  It was the first day of learning Mode and Median and those first moments with the glassy look in their eyes terrified me.

At least until a moment later when I had them all up out of their seats with their whiteboards having them act out median.  We stood in number order with their number on their whiteboard, the line stretching across the classroom.  I had them sit down going in order - least (#1) then greatest (#32), least (#2) then greatest (#31) until we got to student #17 who happened to be our median for the day (a student went home early so we had an odd number).  The kids celebrated the student and then we dove into our textbooks to find other median "heroes".  

After it was all said and done - we will need to review this concept again - definitely tomorrow, maybe again next week, definitely again before testing.  

So I whipped this up tonight.  A cute little scoot game and then another thing to stick into the math center rotations.  Isn't it adorable?  

32 task cards with an answer key.  5 or 6 numbers per card to learn how to find median and mode in a group of numbers.  Sometimes there isn't a mode... I'm so tricky.  :)  

It's over at TPT in case your class needs it!

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Reviewing Multi Digit Multiplication

Look what I made today!  
In between cleaning the house, decorating a gingerbread mini village with my boys, participating in my toddler's speech session, and wrapping gifts - I also made up 2 different Valentines multiplication sets of task cards.  
The first one reviews 3 digit by 2 digit multiplication.

Click to head to TPT

The second set reviews 2 and 3 digit by 1 digit multiplication (since my own 3rd grader was getting a little sad that the other ones weren't for him).

Click to head to TPT

We are going to do a little scoot action at school before I stick them out into the math center rotation.  Planning on sticking these out the end of January to last until Valentine's Day.  Can you tell that I love the game of Scoot?  The kids always get into it, and it's a great way to review 32 problems without getting bored.  I usually time them for a minute - so it encourages them to speed up so we can rotate.  There is an answer key too for both, so it can make a self checking math center.   
The past couple of days I seem to be posting things and giving them away on my Facebook page to the first couple of people that comment on the posts.  Just an FYI if you haven't found me there yet.  
 Thanks everyone for all the support in Blogland, on FB, and this new venture at TPT.

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