We're Outta This World!!!

Today I want to back track a little bit to a topic we covered a few weeks ago in class. I finally got my progress reports done, so I was able to upload the files. Plus we did our activity for day #18 of our end of the year countdown....a Read-A-Thon!!!!!

I love how my kiddos were so excited to read in the "Think Tank." It was a really special to see them enjoy books so much! <3

For the month of April, our school theme was Space. This theme is one of my absolute favorites that we do. I have a ton of ideas that I like to do but the one I like the best are my astronauts.

Each child gets a astronaut that has the words: If I landed on the moon, I....  They then complete the sentence and make the astronaut look like themselves. Afterwards they color in the small picture of the planet Earth (we go over which is the land and which is the water). Next, they add a half moon piece of grey construction paper to the bottom of a piece of black paper (I have used white that I've precut and then colored grey if I didn't have any grey paper). Finally, they glue it all together and add stars using white crayon or chalk. I think they came out pretty dang cute...what do you think?!

I love this little bugger....didn't his face come out so cute????!!!!!!!

You can grab your astronaut freebie below, but please leave a comment. I'd love to hear form you!

astronaut freebie

Hope your astronauts are outta this world!

It's the Final Countdown!

Hope you all had a fantastic Memorial Day Weekend. I know I did! We traveled to San Francisco and Wine Country for the long weekend. It was a breathtaking experience. The Golden Gate Bridge was celebrating it's 75th anniversary with a massive fireworks display. Between that and Napa, I was loving life!

View from the overlook of the Golden Gate Bridge

Enjoying Napa!

Now that we are back to school, the final push to summer vacation has begun. We only have 19 days left til the students' last day. We decided to get a little crazy and have some fun. We followed many others and are doing an end of the year countdown in our classroom. We created a list of activities for the students to do each day. We then wrote them on slips of paper and placed them in balloons. Finally we blew the balloons up and hung them around the room.

The kids were super excited to see all the balloons and can't wait to pop one each day. We tried to add a variety of activities that were fun and reasonably each to do. You can get our list of ideas below. We left a few slips blank for you to add your own ideas. If you use it and/or have any other ideas, feel free to let me know in the comments below.

End of the year balloons

Off to get some coffee....definitely feeling the jet lag!

Ahhh!!! That's better!!

Have a great day!

A Pirate's Life For Me!

As I mentioned earlier, we are working on pirates for the next few days since our theme is Sand & Surf.
The students  imagined themselves as pirates. We did a foursquare writing to create the projects. You can pick up a copy of it below.

Pirate FourSquare Freebie

After they wrote their final draft, we "painted" the papers with a mixture of black tea bags and water. We stuck it under a dryer and it boom, aged paper! After rolling the edges to give it a scroll look, we added it to the pirate ship my co teacher made. It's pretty unbelievable to look at!

Using a mixture of water and black tea we coated the paper.

Finished look.....vintage scroll!

Our AMAZING pirate ship!!!!!

So my co-teacher is pretty ridiculous when it comes to crafty things, I finally managed to snap a picture of her, which she hated by the way. Have to give her credit for all her awesome projects!

Ahoy Matey!

This month's theme in school is "Sand  & Surf." Coincidentally, our class is working on bossy R. We figured, let's combine the 2 and learn about pirates! Thanks to Babbling Abby at the Inspired Apple. Click here to get it from her:   Learning /ar/ with Pirate Mark

I think everything came out really cute and the kids loved the activities!

Pirate Mark book laminated

                                                                   Treasure map

                                                               Arrrgh Pirates!

Finally, we  are making a huge pirate ship outside our classroom that will go with writing pieces the kids did. Here's a sneak peek.....

I'm pretty sure it's going to look amazing when she's all done!

Have a great day mateys!!!!!!!



Let's Get Organized!

First off, I'm sorry it's been so long since I've been able to post on here. Things have gotten a little hectic in my life. We started to refurbish the house I grew up in. Take a look at the living room before and after pics:

                                                                         Before

                                                                           After

I think it came out pretty awesome considering the whole room cost under $6,000 which includes the hardwood floors for the entire house and adding the lighting!


 Now that it's over, I can finally post again...YAY! I know many people are almost done with school, but we still have a bunch of days left. Since we still have some time we decided to start getting the classroom organized.
    I always find it important to clean and organize before I pack my things for the summer. This makes unpacking them that much easier. It is especially helpful if you are going to be in a different classroom next year like me. I go through this every year and have never been able to find a good solution. However, I think I've finally found it!

    I went to Dollar tree yesterday (LOVE IT!) and picked up a bunch of square containers, kinda like tupperware. They are from the "Sure Fresh" line. These containers are large enough to hold almost all of my supplies and materials. I also picked up some small ones for little things like cotton balls, beads, and googly eyes.

Take a look at my cabinets now:

Don't you just love it?! I haven't finished yet because I ran out of containers and I want to add labels, but I just couldn't contain myself (see what I did there...hahaha!). Today I'm heading to another Dollar Tree to pick up some more since I cleaned out the one in my town. I'll post more pictures when I'm all done.

Good luck and happy organizing!