Shamrock Art and Writing

I wanted my students to do a different type of brainstorm today before they dove into their quick write.  

The topic - "I'm Lucky Because..."
Not that I believe in luck, but I do believe that we are blessed....
So we made shamrocks for a quickie art project.  

Took a piece of green construction paper, folded in half vertically, folded in half again horizontally (fourths), then folded one more time to make eighths.  I told them where to hold when they cut, and some drew a half a heart as a little reminder as to where to cut.

They cut out 4 equal hearts (if they were paying attention), some ended up with 8 tiny little hearts - it still worked.
Then we glued it together to make a shamrock, using leftover scraps to make a stem.

This was their brainstorm tool.
One leaf was "I am lucky...", the other 3 were reasons WHY they were lucky.

After they wrote out their reasons we stuck them up on my rolling cabinet door for our little 4 leaf clover garden, and they wrote a quick paragraph with their reasons to stick up on our writing wall.
I LOVE how simple it was, and how it got the kids thinking as to why they are special.  
Hope you had a great day!

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Tuesday Trade Day: We're Going on a Sentence Hunt

Jessica from Joy in the Journey offered me a trade of her awesome We're Going on a Sentence Hunt activity for my Figurative Language Task Cards.
 I had time last Thursday morning and needed to review types of sentences anyway - so it was a perfect 1/2 hour activity.  I chose the sort activity for groups to work on together (saving the other items in the pack for later on).  
First they had to cut the titles and sentences apart.  I know I could have done that for them (and sometimes I do) but this was also a team building activity - and we needed some team building on Thursday.  
They sorted the sentences into the 4 categories - Declarative, Interrogative, Imperative, and Exclamatory and then had to show me it correct to get permission to glue it down.  It was tricky for them to figure out the Imperative and Exclamatory - at least it was tricky for the groups that were trying to rush through it.  It was a good reminder for them that Imperative means a command.      

I gave each group a large piece of construction paper and folded it in half for them to be able to glue.  

These are now hanging on my writing wall as booklet reminders of the different types.  
Thanks for trading with me Jessica!  Head to her blog to see her review of my task cards.  
Anyone else want to try something from my store?  I might be interested in a trade with you... :)  Just email me!

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Monday Made It - Camping Party

Monday Made It is here, so I'm linking up with Tara.  :)
This month has already proved to be crazy.  I've been decorating the classroom for Easter & Spring, making new products, and this past weekend we celebrated my son's birthday with a camping themed party.  Just an FYI - party stores do not carry camping party supplies around here...  Bring on the craftiness!!
We had his party last Friday night beginning at 5pm, so it was a matter of running around crazy like in the hour between leaving school and until the kids showed up - picking up balloons and then setting up the party scene.  I even came home for lunch to get as much cleaned as possible (since we all know you can't really clean with kids in the house).  I made his cake the night before.  I'm pretty proud of how it came out.  Of course this is plan B since plan A fell apart - literally crumbling trying to create a smores cake.  We did make up smores bags as part of the party favors to take home.We set up our family sized tent in the backyard and found these glow in the dark lanterns to use... in addition to our regular camping lanterns.  The boys each received a clip on flashlight when they showed up and wore them during the evening - they came in handy during a game of backyard flashlight tag.  The boys ate dinner in the tent after making it themselves - make your own pizza.    I like to have a craft at the boys' parties... so our craft was decorating small birdhouses with birdseed.  We thought it went with the nature/camping theme.  :)

We also had a fishing game - just like those carnival fishing games - with the prizes being small sacks of colored gummy fish.  Gotta love Winco's bulk area.
All in all it was a success. Hope you had a great day!  

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Sunday Store Update

Busy week! Here's what I added since last Sunday.  If interested, every image is a link to the specific place over at TPT.  

1. Rounding Task Cards (Tens to Ten Thousands)

2. Rounding Task Cards (Thousands to Millions)

3. Gold Rush Mining Journal

4. Geometry Task Cards

5.  Addition with Missing Addends Task Cards

6.  Subtraction with Missing Addends Task Cards

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Five for Friday

Five for Friday! Today I'm linking up again with Doodlebugs Teaching to share my 5 random things from this week.
Yes, random pictures that made my week...
1. This wall of my boys' faces make me smile every time I walk down the hallway.  I've had that sign (Thank Heaven for Little Boys) since my oldest was a tiny baby.  It was in the nursery, and then moved out to the hallway as we kept having boys... 
2. I finished Season 2 of Downton Abbey earlier this week.  I've been at a loss since I finished it.  Target was sold out of Season 3... :(
3. My big 3 year old's artwork.  Isn't it cute?  We hang up our kids' art work on our pantry doors.     
4. I made up some Rounding and Geometry Task Cards.  

 

This made me happy since it's been on my to do list for a while... and with test prep/review starting I really needed it done!

5. Tonight we are having my son's camping themed birthday party.  I made up the cake last night and am planning to post more pictures next week of the entire party.  
Hope you had a great week!

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St. Patty's Pins

One of my favorite boards on Pinterest is my Holidays in School board.  I stick anything related to a special day in that one place.  Yes, I know there isn't as many pins in that folder as some of the other boards, but those pins remind me to also have fun in the classroom.  You can probably relate... with all the curriculum, sometimes it's not fun to be a teacher all the time.
With any of the below images, just click the picture to take you to the pin.  You can then go onto the original website, or you can repin/like it. :)

I made these for my class last year.  Of course I used a sandwich bag, but the label was super cute (and free).  

These I Have, Who Has templates come in handy.  
I used these Would You Rather prompts for my journal writes last year during the week before St. Patrick's Day.

My class used this information last year to learn more about Ireland.

This costs some money, but is super cute.

Totally doing this one this year. 

Love the idea of this art project.
Linking up with Brenda from Primary Inspired for her Linky Party.
Hope this helped someone.  :)  Have a great day!

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Wednesday Writing - Gold Rush and State Test

Yesterday was the state writing test. You all know that I can't talk about the content of the test - so instead I will just tell you how glad I am to be back out of testing rows. It was only for 26 hours but that was 26 hours too long. No floor space stinks!!

See what I mean??? UGH!!

Talking about writing though, my kiddos finished their mining journals last week. It took 3 weeks of pulling teeth, but they did it, and they look fantastic.

I know they were proud of their hard work. They have grown so much as writers this year. To celebrate them I took Tara's idea and used her writing star bookmarks to "fill their buckets". I didn't have a ton of stars like she did, but I did have some of my shiny little stickers I stuck all over their bookmarks before I laminated them. That was a job my boys helped me with.

Just wanted to share my Gold Rush Mining Journal writing pack with you. It's 6 pages with a cover, all pages have mining clip art on them. I included the brainstorm page, in addition to the writing prompts my students used for each part of their story. 

In the process of creating it I found a new to me website that has tons of free, royalty free, no copyright needed clip art. At least they had gold rush clip art that was appropriate. :)

Hope you had a great day! I'm now off to Dr. Seuss night at school. :)

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