Hot Mess Alert

Well it’s been a hot minute guys. I apologize for being a little behind on posts but life has been crazy busy. It’s crazy to think that I was going to share on Valentine’s Day about our party, and now here we are 2 weeks later and there has been nothing. Today’s post is going to be a hodge podge of a few things I wanted to share with you so, bare with me.

First things first, I know Valentine’s Day was 2 weeks ago but I wanted to still share with you my absolute FAVORITE boxes made this year by my students! I for sure have a very creative group and it shows in their boxes. (Yes, I am aware that these ideas came from Pinterest but they’re still cute!)

Plus this amazingly adorable Harry Potter Valentine!

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As many of you know, February is “I Love to Read Month” so I like to do a few special activities to get my students in the spirit. My favorite art project to do with them is actually pretty simple. Students pick their favorite book and they recreate the book cover to share in the hallway. I mentioned us starting this in my last post but I finally have the final product read! I did this a few years ago and didn’t get the best result. My kids this year did PHENOMENAL! They loved this activity and most of them took their time!

The main reason I’ve been so behind on posting is because gymnastics season was coming to a close. We had our section tournament followed by the state tournament, so it was a whirlwind couple of weeks. I’m going to take a moment to brag because our team is so amazing! Our girls placed 2nd in the section (only the 1st place team advances to the state meet) and then we had 3 individual gymnasts to advance in the bars competition and in the all around. It was a pretty special and fun time getting to be there for the girls and bond with them in a way you normally don’t get to when the whole team is there. I LOVE gymnastics and I love this team, but I am so glad the season is over! I am exhausted!!

Another fun thing that happened this week was that our books FINALLY CAME IN THE MAIL!!! My kids were so excited to see the final product of the book they created! Last year my class made a book using something called Studentreasures Publishing. Students get a chance to create their own book. As a teacher, you go and order a kit to be sent to your school that includes everything you need to make your book. Once students are done writing and illustrating, you send the book back to the company and they publish the book for you! As a teacher, you get a FREE copy, which is such a cool keepsake. Families LOVE this and get the chance to order a book for themselves. My students have been on pins and needles waiting for our books to finally come back (we sent in our final product at the end of January) and were ecstatic when they did. I have to say, I am pretty proud of the finished product!

Finally, I would like to share something near and dear to my heart. This week is National Eating Disorder Awareness Week. Last year, I shared with you a post that explains the importance this week has on my heart. My sister has struggled with an eating disorder for almost 8 years now. I wanted to attach the link to that post for you in case you didn’t see it last year, or you wanted to reread about how nasty this disease can be and how to see the warning signs in your self or your loved ones. The post was called NEDA Awareness Week 2019. Go take a look if you’re interested. I will always be passionate about healthy lifestyles and loving yourself. This post, explains why.

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I know that was a hot mess of information but I feel super behind and had to share whatever I could that I have missed. I will definitely be back on my posting game now that life is somewhat back to normal! (Fingers crossed!!)

 

For more day to day action and activities, go follow my Instagram page @lifeoftherookieteacher!

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Personification Superheroes & Ice Cream

Oh man it has been a LONG week! My kids were very good this week but my schedule was so jam packed, I barely had time to relax and enjoy their behavior.

In the winter, from November-February, I’m coaching gymnastics AND judging gymnastics. Because of that, I am usually working late every night and, about one time a week, I’m working so late I don’t get home until 11:00. The difference about this week however, is that we had 2 home meets which meant that I was home late TWICE this week. I know it doesn’t sound like a lot but not getting home until after 10 on a week night is rough once but doing it twice is SO HARD!!!!

Besides being exhausted out of my mind, I was still able to give my kids a structured but fun week. This week in reading we were talking about personification. We’ve touched on this before but this week it was going to be a focus on their story of the week’s comprehension quiz. Thursday was the day I had scheduled to really focus on this.

I wanted to find something super fun and beneficial to teach this, so naturally, I went to my love TPT and found a FREE resource (my absolute favorite!) I found this personification packet created by Creative Classroom Core and made some personification superheroes!

The task was for each student to think of an inanimate object that they use in their everyday lives. They then had to turn that object into a superhero by being very detailed using personification. They had SO MUCH FUN!! These turned out SO WELL. It also did the trick because when I graded their weekly comprehension quizzes today, NOT A SINGLE STUDENT got the personification questions wrong. Talk about a teacher win!

One more fun little thing we did this week was have a small reward ice cream party!!

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Are these not the cutest math rockstars you’ve ever seen?

Our school utilizes IXL math and language arts. For every unit in math, we create BINGO boards that has 25 different IXL assignments for them to complete that correlates directly with the unit we are teaching. I gave my class their boards 3 weeks ago and told them it was due this past Monday. If a student got a BINGO, they got a candy bar. If they got a blackout however, they got to be invited to our ice cream party at lunch. These boards are completely optional but I do tell them if they get a BINGO they get a prize but if they get a blackout, they will be rewarded greatly for it. My other students were so jealous of the kiddos that got ice cream, that I have a feeling a lot more of my students will be getting blackouts on our next board. I HIGHLY recommend utilizing IXL if your school has it. If not, recommend it to your administration because it is incredible and promotes amazing review and practice! (Plus, students LOVE it!)

Oh boy has it been a LONG week, I am so ready to sleep and not set an alarm for the morning! Have a wonderful weekend teacher friends. Until next week.

 

For more day to day action, go follow my teacher Instagram page @lifeoftherookieteacher!!

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Blogmas Day 2 “Books of the Season” AND Reindeer Writing Fun!

Blogmas Day 2 Books of the Season: 

Oh boy, when I think of books of the season all I can think about are my favorite Christmas picture books that I read daily to my students at school. I have SO MANY favorite books of the season that I have enough books to read 1-2 different picture books everyday to my kids from Thanksgiving until Christmas break. I’ll share the list of books (and activities) I do with my class below.

When I think about the books of the season I also think about a single author who holds a very special place in my heart…Jan Brett. Her books were always ones that my mom would read to my sister and I every night until Christmas. When I see her books, I instantly begin to think about the holiday season.

I know that some people are probably going to share their favorite novels or adult texts, but Christmas isn’t Christmas without some good old picture books and lucky for me, my job lets me read them on a daily basis!

School 15 Day Holiday Picture Book List:

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Want to participate in Blogmas 2019? Check out the following guidelines!

Last year you might have followed along with the 12 Days that I did with some of the gals listed above and we had such a good time that we decided to celebrate again together this year! So without further ado here are the guidelines for my 12 Days of Christmas.

  1. use the image provided in each post, so that way anyone who might jump in later can see what the plan is for the month.

  2. for sure link back to me, Abbey@ThreeCatsandaGirl, so that way I can celebrate your Christmas with you and maybe get some ideas of how to create festive enjoyment!

  3. spread Christmas cheer in the way you know best!

 

Reindeer Writing: 

Speaking of Jan Brett, her books always inspire my favorite December lessons/activities at school. On Wednesday I read one of my favorite of her books, The Wild Christmas Reindeer, and then did a fun creative writing project. If you’ve never read this story before, it’s a great book to teach kids about how to be respectful and how being “bossy” doesn’t always work out well.

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The main character in the story is an elf who has to get Santa’s reindeer trained and ready to go for the Christmas Eve flight. After our story we brainstormed ideas on what they would do if they had to train a reindeer, whether to be one of Santa’s or to just train them as a pet. They had the best ideas!

After they wrote out their ideas, they drew a picture of them training their reindeer and then they colored and cut out a reindeer head and hooves to mount their writing on.

They all turned out so cute! I love this project. It gets them to practice their writing while also incorporating art and Christmas, some of my favorite things!

Oh man it’s been a crazy, long, and exhausting week. I am ready for the weekend but I’m even more ready for Christmas break to begin one week from today! We’re almost there teachers, we can do this!

 

For more day to day activities and live action, go follow my blog/teacher Instagram page @lifeoftherookieteacher!

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Turkey Trouble

Today and yesterday we did one of my FAVORITE activities of the year (and my favorite Thanksgiving activity!)

Yesterday, I read the book Turkey Trouble by Wendi Silvano. The book is about a turkey who doesn’t want to be eaten for Thanksgiving dinner so he dresses up in different animal disguises to hide the fact that he’s a turkey. When I finished reading the story I asked them to think of what they would disguise their turkey as so it wouldn’t be eaten for dinner.

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They then took those ideas and wrote a short story about what their turkey dressed up as so they wouldn’t be eaten. They were SUPER creative! I told them they had to write at least a 5 sentence paragraph and I had kids writing 5-8 page stories! We have spent so much time working on our writing skills so it was nice to see that they were able to put our lessons to good use.

Today, we did part 2 of the project (AKA the part that I LOVE!) I gave each student a picture of a turkey on a white piece of card stock and told them to disguise their turkey just like they did in their stories. I put out construction paper, glue, and scissors and set them to work. I didn’t give any direction because I wanted to see their most creative work. They did amazing and the turkeys turned out so cute!!

These are all awesome but here are some of my favorites!

These were all super fun but my top 3 favorites were Groot, a grandma, and me! Ha, yep one of my students disguised their turkey as me!! It was hilarious!

It was a fun couple days! I love this project so much because they always turn out so adorable and it puts everyone in the Thanksgiving mood. The only down side to the past few days has been the smell of my students…..my boys have begun to think that it’s fun to have farting contests throughout the day. I had to have a fun talk with them about bodily functions and self control. Oh 10 year old boys can be fun.

 

For more day to day action and lessons, go follow my teacher instagram page @lifeoftherookieteacher!! You won’t regret it!

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