3 Million Member Sale!

I'm sure you've heard already, but Teachers Pay Teachers is having a huge sale February 27th and 28th to celebrate 3 million members! How exciting! Everything in my store will by 20% off and if you use the promo code TPT3 at checkout, you get an extra 10% off. Have fun shopping! Click the picture or {here} to visit my TpT store.

(image credit: Rachel Lamb for Blog Hoppin')

February Currently

I finally made it around to link up with Farley's Currently! I missed the last few months, so this is pretty exciting for me! :)

Of course you can tell that I've got baby on the brain! Well, the truths are... yes, the baby's nursery is purple with owls. It's almost done and is looking super cute! I'll post pictures once it's all complete. I just love going in there and looking at some of the cute baby clothes I've gotten already. So precious... :)

And yes, we start our first prenatal class next week! Nine weeks to go and counting... I'm starting to get a little nervous!! :)

And the fib... no, the car seat is not installed yet. lol. It hasn't even been bought yet! I am having a heck of a time deciding on which one. Hopefully we decide before she comes! Otherwise we won't be leaving the hospital... lol

Happy Weekend, everyone!

Happy New Year! {Math Freebies!}

I know, I know.... it has been almost two months since I last posted! This is my first post in the new year, can you believe it?? I hope there are a few of you still out there keeping tabs on my poor little blog. If you are, well lucky you! I'm here with a few fun math freebies that I hope you can use!

Things in my life have been super busy and this growing little girl inside of me is taking up a lot of my time, energy, and thoughts. I can't believe she will be here in less than 10 weeks! {Or later if she's as stubborn as her momma.} I only have 8.5 more teaching weeks until I take my maternity leave! I keep telling people I'm not sure what I'm more worried about... having a baby or leaving my classroom for such a long time! :) I can't guarantee I will be posting much once the baby comes, but once things settle down a bit, I hope I will be able to take some time to do some postings and maybe throw out a few new products.

Here are just a few simple math activities I've been using in our math centres...

First up, Hockey BUMP! We had some local junior hockey players come visit our school during Numeracy Month to do some math activities with our students, so I whipped up this little BUMP game for them to play together. I thought it would be fun for anyone doing an Olympic theme this month... or if anyone has some hockey fans in their classroom. I know I have a bunch! {Me included! Go Jets Go!} If you have never played a BUMP game, it will soon become a class favourite! Each player gets 10 unifix cubes. Player 1 rolls the dice, adds the numbers together, and places their cube on the correct number. If another player's cube is already on the number, they may BUMP it off and place their cube instead. If Player 1 already has a cube on the number, they may place a second cube on top and "lock" it in place, meaning no one can BUMP it off! Then the next player goes. The first player to place all of their cubes is the winner!

{Click the picture or here to download Hockey BUMP.}

Next up is a little domino adding centre. You can use regular dominoes, but I found these cute Ladybug Dominoes in the book order one month! I can never pass up cute math manipulatives like this! For the centre, students choose a domino and draw the spots on their recording sheet. Then they write the addition sentence below the picture. Easy peasy!

{Click the picture or here to download Ladybug Domino Addition.}

This is another fun domino activity, but for partners. It's called Spot the Dots. Each player gets their own gameboard and some unifix cubes. They take turns flipping over a domino, adding the dots together, and placing a cube on their gameboard. The first player to get three paw prints in a row is the winner!

{Click either picture or here to download Spot the Dots.}

Last up is a game students can play alone or with a partner. The student rolls two dice and finds the matching ten frame. There is a colour version that students can cover up with unifix cubes or a black & white version that students can colour! My students love to colour, so this is a fun game for them to play.

{Click either picture or here to download Winter Warm Up.}

I hope you have a had a good January! Ours has been super cold... three snow days and countless days of indoor recess. I honestly think the kids have gone outside for maybe two or three days this month.... They are getting restless and so am I! Hopefully it is an outdoor day tomorrow! Stay warm friends.

December Currently and Christmas Spirit

Oh, it’s the most wonderful time of the year! I’m a little late to the party, but here I am with my December Currently.

There are a lot of Christmas traditions that I love…. getting a real Christmas tree to decorate together, Christmas baking, dinner with families. I love Christmas movies and probably watch a million of them each year… Elf is my favourite. But I also love The Santa Clause, Home Alone, Christmas Vacation, A Christmas Story, The Grinch, All I Want for Christmas, and Love Actually. Oh, there’s so many more too!! Just not enough time to watch them all.

This Christmas is pretty special to us because it’ll be the last one with just the two of us. Next year it will be us and our new baby girl (yes, just found out it’s a girl!!!) starting some new traditions. Can’t wait!
Here’s a few pics of our classroom from last week. I actually put up my classroom decorations the last week of November. I was too excited!





We started our gingerbread study with this big gingerbread house story map chart. Looks pretty cute!



We made these adorable shape & pattern Christmas trees from Tunstall’s Teaching Tidbits cute Christmas Art Projects Pack. It was a fun and simple art project with a little math thrown in. You can clearly see some of my peanuts are not grasping the whole pattern concept… lol

This was actually spur of the moment decision… I wasn’t sure if the classroom elf was going to make an appearance this year, but alas a brown wrapped packaged addressed to our class was left outside our recess doors! The kids were pretty excited. We unwrapped it together, read the story Santa left for us, and had to decided on a name. Well, one of my students had been playing with some “What is your elf name?” iPad app over the weekend and discovered her elf name was Glitzy Festifingers. Well of course that name made it to our list and was voted most popular, so Glitzy Festifingers it is. It really makes me laugh. Better than the usual Elfy.

Here’s Glitzy in some of his hiding spots of the week:

Last up I just wanted to share my Christmas cake pops with you. I took them to a potluck last night and they were a big hit! My snowmen looked a bit like snow-ducks, but they turned out pretty cute! And were delicious!

Cyber Monday & Tuesday Sale!!

28% off everything in my TpT store when you use the promo code CYBER. Click the picture above to check it out!

Christmas Around the World Make Over!!

It started simple enough... Make the scrapbook look a bit nicer.... Then I thought about adding a couple more countries.... A couple turned into six... And now I present to you, the updated, made over "Christmas Around the World" unit!

It used to be a 9-day unit, starting in the USA/Canada, visiting 6 countries, and ending up in the North Pole. Now it is a 15-day unit that visits 12 countries! I added Sweden, Holland, France, Italy, England, and the Philippines. The great thing about this unit is that you can pick and choose which countries you want to do, so the unit can be as short or as long as you wish! I only have time to do two weeks this year, so I'm only going to be picking 8 or 9 countries to visit.

I added scrapbook pages, suitcase stickers, and craft ideas for the 6 new countries.

I wanted to make the scrapbook a bit cuter, so I updated it with a cute border and new graphics.

This was one of the first units I created when I started my TpT and it is my best selling product! If you have already purchased it, log in to your TpT account, go to My Purchases, and download the new, updated file. I think you will happy with the changes! If you have not purchased the unit and would like to, click the pictures below to check it out at TpT.

Oh, and don't forget! TpT is having a big cyber sale on December 2 and 3! Time to checkout those items on your wishlist. Have a great Wednesday everyone!

Science Design Process starring The Pigeon!

As I am in the middle of finishing up the dreaded report card comments, I just wanted to pop in and share a project that I did with my class last week.

With our new provincial report card, we have to report on the design process each term. I've never really done a design project so close to the beginning of the year. I usually save it for our five senses unit later on in the year. But because we have to report on it each term, I had to come up with a fun design project for my kiddos.

I fully admit that we have a very boring Grade 1 Science curriculum here in our province. The worst unit I think is called "Characteristics of Objects and Materials". I hardly every teach it thoroughly. It's all about the materials that make up different objects. Blah, blah, boring. There is one outcome in the unit that is kind of fun though (1-3-10 Use the design process to construct a useful object by selecting, combining, joining, and shaping materials. Examples: pencil holder, crayon box, desk organizer...). I've done Valentine's Day boxes or pencil holders, but wanted something different for this year.

Our author study this month is Mo Willems and his silly pigeon and friends. The kids are loving the pigeon books so I thought to myself... how can I use the pigeon in my design process? And that is how this project was born.

The Pigeon Wants a Chair!

We started off by having the pigeon send us an email asking the students to make him a new, comfy chair.

We talked about the criteria for making the chair--had to use more than one material, had to use some sort of joining material (tape, glue, etc.), and had to hold the stuffed pigeon without breaking. Then I just laid out a bunch of materials from around the classroom and recycling bin--plastic cups, paper plates, foam, construction paper, pipe cleaners, popsicle sticks, duct tape, q-tips, straws, plastic containers, toilet paper tubes... Then I let the kids have at it!

They came up with some pretty unique designs!

The next day we drew a diagram of our chair and listed the materials we used. 

Then the fun part--testing out whether or not the chairs would hold the pigeon!

Here's the sheet that I used for this project. If you are interested in trying out this design project, you can download the sheet from {here}.