Ah-mazing dollar deals on scholastic digital download books!

http://teacherexpress.scholastic.com/

Unbelieveable deals on digital download books.  There are over 500 books to choose from, that ranges in age and subject matter.  I just purchased 3 new books that retailed at $31.95 and I got them for 3 dollars!!!!!!!  Sweet!  Take the time to head over there and check it out!

Here are links to the one's I'm purchasing:

1.) http://teacherexpress.scholastic.com/instant-interactive-math-picture-pages-with-activities

2.) http://teacherexpress.scholastic.com/sing-along-and-learn-following-directions-with-audio-cd

3.) http://teacherexpress.scholastic.com/community-helpers-early-childhood-thematic-books

Happy Memorial Day weekend!

~Jessica

Teaching with Reading A-Z

One of the books listed with April's community unit is Needs and Wants.  It is a really great book that teaches the difference between needs and wants.  I made a couple copies of the book as readers and then made 1 copy to cut up and create an activity.  Taking 2 pieces of colored cardstock, I set it up to represent a picture web.  1 piece for needs and the other for wants.  Once I had the map drawn, I laminated it and the pieces from the story.  After helping my verbal students read the story, we went back through page by page and put our pieces onto our needs and wants cardstock.  This was extremely difficult for them to grasp this higher level of thinking.  Needs and Wants is a very difficult concept for elementary aged children to understand. 

~Jessica

The last of my Pizza activities

Here are 2 more activities to round out our learning about pizza restaurants in the community. 

This first one is a sensory box I created for the kids to play with.  The pieces are made from felt and actual Pizza Hut personal pan pizza boxes.  I made a order sheet for the kids to go around and take people's pizza orders.  They LOVED this!

This activitiy I created using Boardmaker software.  It was a simple vocabulary cut/paste/match activity. 

With our community unit, I will next be focusing on Needs and Wants.  I have several extra activties that I created to go along with this part of the unit. 

If you visit often, don't be afraid to leave me a comment or add my blog to your blog list!  I love hearing and seeing new blog friends!

~Jessica

practicing cooking with 1 Tbsp.

To prepare for the units assigned cooking lesson, we practiced another cooking lesson using one of the measuring tools required, 1 Tablespoon. This has been a tough item for my kids to recall. Since there is a major difference in a Tablespoon and teaspoon, we will continue to work on identifying and using 1 Tablespoon. This particular lesson we made Tablespoon brownies. After making the brownie mix according to the directions, we used the 1 Tablespoon to measure out the brownie mix and the sprinkles. The students loved this lesson and it was super friendly on the wallet.
~Jessica

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Practice making unit cooking lesson with moon dough

I found this at Toys R Us on clearance for 5 dollars! I couldn't pass it up. Great practice for the kids making mini pizzas for their cooking lesson. The only downside is when the colors mix.
~Jessica

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Using Tbsp. in fine motor task~ practice for unit cooking lesson

The unit cooking lesson focuses on using a tablespoon to scoop up 1 Tbsp. of cheese and pouring it onto the English muffin pizza. I always like to practice using these measurements and the motions needed before getting to the cooking lesson. This practice activity involves using a Tablespoon, a mini muffin tin, and a container of different sized buttons and beads. After demonstrating to the student what the objective of the task is, then they practice with the remaining slots.

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workstation tags

With each new unit of study, I create new workstation tags. These tags are used to help the children identify which workstation task they are required to complete. The pictures I choose are directly related to the vocabulary from the current unit of study. When finished with that particular unit, I store them in a ziploc bag inside of the unit storage box. Keeping the tags current with each unit helps the kids focus on the important vocabulary from each unit.

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Community Helper flash cards

This is my third attempt at getting this post made. With Blogger being down for awhile, and then a Blogger app update, I was beginning to wonder if I should even bother with this post!
I couldn't give up on sharing these awesome flash cards I found at my local teaching store! The unit I'm currently teaching is about the community. These cards are an A-Z list of community helpers. The cards come in pairs with a real life picture of a community helper and the accompanying card is pictures of items that go along with that community helper. The back of the cards hold a lot of useful information about that community helper. I haven't quite figured out what I'm going to do with the cards, but I just had to have them because they fit with our unit perfectly! If you have any suggestions on what/how to use them I would love to hear from you!
~Jessica

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Yoga

During end of grade testing, we aren't allowed to follow normal routine and take our exercise break. So instead we do yoga! I found a book on Scholastic's monthly book order for yoga poses for kids. I took the book apart, cut and pasted the pictures onto large unlined notecards. Then I laminated the cards and put them into a large laminated clasped envelope. My plans are to use my projector and elmo to display the card onto the board. This will make it easier for the kids to see, and to focus on one move at a time. Yoga is great for strengthening muscles, creating flexibility, developing gross motor skills, and working on bilateral movement. There are many more great things that Yoga can do for our bodies, but those explanations are great to have in your lesson plans and to explain to others who don't quite understand why this type of activity is beneficial for our students!
~Jessica

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Happy Mothers Day!!

Here is a very inexpensive mothers day gift my students made. The yellow flowers are made from their handprints.
1. Take their cut out handprints and roll them into a cone and tape the bottom.
2. Next, you need a straw and 1 inch of pipe cleaner. Take the pipe cleaner, fold in half, shove into top of straw and tape the straw and pipe cleaner.
3. Place the straw into the hand cone and push through the bottom hole (you might need to cut the bottom of the hand cone a little to get the straw through).
4. Tape the bottom of the flower to the straw.
5. Cut out green leaves and tape to the bottom of the flower/straw.
6. Take a pencil and roll the leaves and fingers/petals.
7. Take a Styrofoam cup and place rocks in the bottom. Place the flowers into the rocks. I hot glued the rocks/ straws in cup so they wouldn't move.
8. Take strips of brown paper, crumble up and place into cup to make it look like dirt.
9. Decorate cup. You could have the child decorate the cup while you are putting the flowers together.
Happy Mothers Day!!
~Jessica

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Cinco de Mayo wall decorations

My class worked hard on Cinco de Mayo projects this week, so I had to display all the awesome work they did! There are some worksheets, sombreros, and the maracas they made earlier. Ole!!
~ Jessica

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Cinco de Mayo maracas

These were extremely easy and fun to make. I found the directions on kaboose and added boardmaker pictures to each step of the directions.

~ Jessica

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Cinco de Mayo animal matching

Here is another activity from the Cinco de Mayo package I purchased off of teachers pay teachers. This activity is a matching game of animal names in English to animal names in Spanish. You could take 10 sets of animals and flip them over to play like a memory matching game, or take a set and leave face up for the child to match. My students played this today and loved it!

~Jessica

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telling time Cinco de Mayo style!

I found an activity pack on www.teacherspayteachers.com that had some cute Cinco de Mayo activities. This particular activity has students matching an analog clock time with the digital time. The set includes telling time by the hour, half hour, quarter after and quarter til. The pack included 20-30 time matches. I plan on pulling 5 matches out a time for my higher kids to match up. My lower level kids will get one analog clock put in front of them and then 3 digital times to choose from to make the match.
The only downfall to this unit is the amount of ink it takes to print the activity.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Jessica

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What a week!

I don't know about ya'll, but it is crazy around school right now.  Preparing for end of grade testing (thanks News-2-You and Unique Learning team for providing an awesome curriculum!), teacher appreciation week, and spring fever!

After looking at Unique's summer unit that is FREE to everyone, I realized that I taught this unit last summer.  Since I track out throughout the year, this means, I'm normally behind a month or have skipped a month.  So for the rest of the 2010-2011 school year, I will be teaching April's community unit and May's life cycle/planting unit.  I know most of my followers have already taught April's unit, so I apologize that not a lot of what I'll post in the coming weeks will be relevant.  When most schools come back for the 2011-2012 school year, I will actually be ahead of traditional schools!  This will make me feel better that you can actually utilize the resources I'm putting up ;). 

With that said, I have several posts going up back to back that are in reference to Cinco de Mayo activities and Mother's Day activities. 

I hope that all of you are surviving the end of year craziness!  I know it's brutal!  Good luck to those of you that are in the midst of end of grade testing.

Happy Cinco de Mayo friends!

Jessica