Smart Chick Teacher's Blog

Well, this is my first Five for Friday Linky!  So let me start by saying a thank you to Doodle Bugs Teaching!  I am so excited!  This one is a lot of fun!

So here goes…

1. I have been super busy trying to read a bunch of books from the stack on my bed and most of them were really good.  I finished this one today!  It is probably my favorite of the group!

2. My wonderfully sweet kindergarten daughter is beginning to make me crazy!  This stay at home stuff is not for me!   I cannot wait to get back to school to my 30 (yes, 30) 5th graders!  I think she is ready to be back to school as well!  😉

3. I have a ton of grading to get done this weekend, but to encourage myself I went on a Scentos Marker Spending Spree today at Michaels!  They have a TON of them there!  Super cute Valentine’s ones as well as an entire endcap of other colors and scents.  I was in heaven!  If you have not tried them, you should!  They are so much fun to write with and I love the smells!

4. I will be starting a unit on Geometry once we get back to school.  I am beginning to try to find and create resources for this unit.  If you know of any good ideas, let me know!  🙂  I have already made up a couple of fun ones!

5. I found a ton of amazing clip art on this wonderful site.  Just go to: http://www.mycutegraphics.com!  They are super cute and really easy to download and use.  If you are using them, you just need to provide a link back to the site!  I am a clip art junkie and this site is fantastic!

Hope everyone has a fabulous Friday!  I hope to be blogging a lot more in 2013, so stay tuned for some freebies, pictures of ideas, and links to great sites!

Wishing everyone an amazing 2013!

Don’t forget to take advantage of the HUGE SALE ON TPT!

I love these shirts! The kiddos drew themselves with a sharpie outline and then wrote their names! They turned out so cute!  They were reasonably priced as well!  I got one for each student!

I used a local screen printer, but she has customers from all over!  Here is the link to her TPT store!  You can ask a Q & A and get prices, etc.

We are currently hatching chicken eggs in our classroom. As part of this experience, I got each of my kiddos a pet chicken to take care of during the 21 day incubation period. I got these adorable little felt cluckers from Jester’s Realm on etsy (for about $5 each)! They are adorable! We are creating books about our pet chickens (photo albums from the dollar store). So far we have entries about our chickens’ favorite things, diagrams, etc. They kids are having a blast! We will post more pics soon!

We had a fantastic time becoming Pumpkinologists (ok, I know that is not a real occupation)! We complete these Pumpkinology Labs and the kids had a great time! They especially loved counting all of the seeds in the pumpkin! Such a great way to use pumpkins in the classroom! You can find the link to the Pumpkinology Packet here (it is $2.50)…

We are currently studying fossils and dinosaurs as we are reading “The Enormous Egg”, by Oliver Butterworth. We made these Four Types of Fossils Models. Each student needed one individual package of model magic and a plastic dinosaur skeleton and a plastic dinosaur (I got these from the dollar store)! The kids had a great time and they learned a lot in the process!

Let me start by saying that my kiddos have always LOVED this project! It is a Question Poster Project. You can find the instructions and layout here for FREE!

We begin by generating three questions each about sharks. Students write each question separately on those teeny tiny post-it notes! Once all of the questions are generated, students choose one question to research (it could be their own question and it could be someone else’s question)! They use the layout provided to record the answer to the question! These turned out great! It is a great way to build background knowledge about a topic as well as researching skills!

Try it!

We created Book Ring Reports on these adorable felt sea creatures! This wonderful seller (Jesters Realm) on www.etsy.com was sweet enough to make one for each of my students for about $5 each. They were a HUGE hit!

The students each got a creature and they had to fill in the information on the Book Ring Report format. They looked adorable on the bulletin board in our room! Check out the Book Ring Report packet here!

It was pretty easy to get my kiddos to write a lot on this report!  They could not wait to get their cards laminated and hole punched!  I think it is so important to give a variety of final copy options in writing throughout the school year!

Enjoy!

I just recently discovered this author’s books! They are amazing! There is one book that contains 6 of the books, or you can buy them separately! Love Love Love!  Just click on the book cover to go to the Amazon link!