Happy, happy!

The Iowa Caucus results are on, so I'm glued to the television (and computer), so here I sit ready to chat with you.  

Usually February is my least favorite teaching month, but my district has mid-winter break now, so February is pretty darn dreamy.  A day celebrating love and kindness, and a break?  I'll take both!  {I won't mention the pre-test crunch time, shhhh}

I got some new books that arrived on my doorstep today that I've been super excited about, plus a few special visitors planning trips to ME in the next few weeks and months that I get to plan and play tourist, so my free time is pretty wrapped up in wonderful happenings lately. 

But, I'm also in the midst of finishing my written part of National Boards and am working on the video portion as well, so my planning is out of control.  Or maybe that's my stress level.  Lots of pressure to do this right, and I'm trying to juggle it all.  I want more time.  Not just more time...but more time when I feel MOTIVATED.  I mean, I have TIME, but I don't always feel like working all the TIME.  Oy.  Balance, my friends.  It's a real need.  I hope you are taking time for you and your loved ones this month!

Check out Farley's blog for more teacher blogger updates!

Honestly,  I enjoy Valentines day in the classroom.  Or as I like to call it, Fun Dip Day.  I do love a day to share kindness and excitement in the classroom.  We get to decorate and eat treats and just enjoy.  

If you're looking for a few fun school ideas- Valentines from the teacher to fun heart themed activities for kids- you can check out my Celebrate the Holidays Pinterest board because I've been pinning like crazy lately!  

Follow Miss B.'s board Celebrate the Holidays on Pinterest.

            

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My Earth Day Birthday

...Not to be confused with the Earth's birthday, because it isn't the Earth's birthday.  It's my birthday.  On Earth Day.

I have one gift to add to my list of favorite gifts from students.  She's a mop top or whatever my students are calling them... and now they are popping up all over my classroom right now!

I love having an Earth Day birthday celebration since it's my birthday (any excuse for a party, really), but we got all excited about our reading lesson today and almost ran out of time!

So I threw in my Earth Day go-to... The Lorax.  You just can't have an Earth Day celebration without this guy!  The story fit PERFECTLY with our economics and ecosystem units that we are working on right now, so it was a great high interest lesson.

After our story, we did some reflecting with this prompt page and my kiddos were working really hard on providing evidence for their opinions and responses.

This lesson ended up hitting every topic we are working on right now, so it was a huge teacher WIN.

If you're looking to add some fun activities for your Earth Day celebration next year, I rounded up a few of my favorites (per usual RTL fashion).  I'm not a huge printable person when it comes to Earth Day activities because I feel like it kind of defeats the purpose...right?  Head on over to Pinterest to find Earth related resources, websites, and activities that are fun for the classroom (Project WET and Project WILD are really neat if you ever get a chance to complete a workshop with them!).

Follow Miss B.'s board Earth Day on Pinterest.

I hope you have a wonderful Earth Day... I'm hoping to gift myself a small lemon tree this year, but who knows.  

            

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Equivalent Fraction Rainbows for St. Patty's Day!

Did you wear your green?  I don't take any chances at school and make sure I'm wearing my green.  I don't need any students trying to pinch me.  This is the first year I've ever had to work St. Patrick's Day (it was always over my spring break when I lived in the Midwest!), so I'm not used to working on this day.

I had a meeting and a sub in the morning and then the afternoon FLEW by, so here's a short and sweet update.  Pretty simple St. Patty's Day for me...

I did nothing- you heard right- nothing to celebrate this holiday even though it is one of my favorites. I had no special plans.  No treats.  No big celebration or game or party or anything.  I was a total party pooper.  And we all survived just fine.  It was a boycott of sorts since I actually had to show up to work.

I was feeling just the tiniest bit guilty about that (and you know, a bit Irish as well!), so for math we made some equivalent fraction rainbows to keep things festive.

It was a spur of the moment idea.  Do you ever have those?  Those completely unplanned moments when you throw all caution and lesson plans to the wind and just go with whatever crazy idea you just came up with?  Luckily it worked really well.  We've been working through our fractions unit and so I thought it would be fun to rainbow our equivalent fractions in the hopes that it would help a few stragglers catch up with us and be able to see it in a little different format.  Whatever rule (and color!) we used to change the numerator, we had to use for the denominator.

After we were finished, we made observations and searched for patterns.  I think/hope it helped a few of my students to wrap their mind around this somewhat complex idea for fourth graders!

So there you have it.  An accidental-math-rainbow lesson.  Whoops!

            

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Week'o'Fun! | NAEP Testing + Author Visit + Read Across America

This week is scheduled to the brim- staff meeting, teacher leadership meeting, student club meeting, math curriculum meeting (new curriculum texts...do you use something you love?)...and those are just the before/after school activities.

Once school starts we have a couple big things happening this week!

First, Monday we get to do the NAEP test.  I completed my little teacher questionnaire, and of course I requested to see the results of the teacher feedback once it was all in because I'm nerdy like that and wanted to see how I compared with teachers nationally...  Anywho!  I don't actual proctor the test- our state education department has people coming in to do that, so I just do work around the classroom for awhile.  

Now that I'm thinking about it, I should probably get some work ready to do around the classroom.  

So.  That should be exciting.

On to more thrilling school events.  This week, our school has author Seymour Simon coming to visit!  We have book signing and assemblies lined up for the day.  He has written a ton of non-fiction books and will be sharing his writing craft with our students.  We have done a lot of prep in the classroom using his books.   

Plus, this week is Read Across America and although my school hasn't done any real build up for it (besides an author coming...so I guess that is kind of huge), I'm planning a few classroom activities to sprinkle throughout the week.  First up, we are going to use this great (and free!) reading on Dr. Seuss to learn about him as a person/author.  I love it because it is geared toward the "big kids" and a lot of the Read Across America resources are more for K-2 graders.  I'm planning a few more little things to do throughout the week, plus ample reading/stamina time for students.  For more ideas, check out my Pinterest Read Across America board.

Follow Miss B.'s board Read Across America on Pinterest.

Lots of good stuff happening this week!  Mostly I'm spending my time getting everything ready so that I can have my act together!  Sometimes the prep is more work than the week's activities...

Link up with Farley @ Oh Boy 4th Grade to see what other teacher bloggers are up to!

I thought it would be fun to bring a few fun Dr. Seuss themed treats for the teachers tomorrow...because who doesn't love workroom treats on a Monday???  Sometimes the ideas in my head become more work than I expected... I'm off to prepare some Yertle's Turtles, apples, and goldfish, plus some bookmarks for the kiddos.  Lots to get ready!

            

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Happy Birthday, Washington!

Happy President's Day!  

There I am hanging out with some presidential friends.

Hopefully you aren't working today.  Yes?  Maybe you're having a birthday party for Mr. Washington today?  Just another reason to have cake, and maybe some Taft-y.  Perhaps give yourself students a little President's Day Quiz when you return.

I'm not going to beat around the Bush.  There are a lot of Cool(idge) resources available for teachers out on the internet.  Don't Polk fun at it, this is pretty serious business.

If you need to Fillmore time in class, and are feeling extra patriotic, the History Channel has some great presidential resources, plus videos and articles.  We shouldn't take these resources for Grant-ed.  They are very cool! 

The Presidential Libraries are also pretty great and provide lots of educational information.  The National Archives even provides historical digital documents and other great teacher resources, so it's worth a glance!  If you think you can't afFord it, don't worry-  these online resources are totally free!

Do your students know the presidents?  Here's a word search to help sneak some president names into their knowledge base.  

I came up with all of these puns Obama self, but I can't think of any more (and let's be real, they aren't great) so I guess it's time to move on with my day.   

            

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Hey, Valentine! | Classroom Valentine's Brunch

I love you all.  Did you get all the Fun Dip in the world yesterday?  I swear we could just hand each kid a pound of sugar and it would be exactly the same thing.  The kiddos showered me with Fun Dip, chocolate, and even some stuffed animals.  Such darlings!  

As I had mentioned in an earlier post, this year we did a Valentine's Brunch with our classes in the classroom.  I really wish I could claim this idea as my own, but I can't.  It's my lovely 4th grade team who has done this brunch in the past and I'm just hopping on board as the newbie.  I loved it!!!

I went out and got an extra package of waffles just in case, and grabbed my own toaster as I was flying out the door in the morning.  The waffles I could have done without (we had TONS- I think someone brought some in without signing up to bring them!), but my toaster ended up being the only one we had (one parent showed up with one, but it was after we were all finished!), so I was glad my teacher instincts kicked in on that one!

I contemplated picking up a cute plastic table cloth for our table, and found a cute one that was $5-7 (I can't remember) but I am just too cheap for that.  I will check back after today when everything is on sale and maybe it will be cheap enough for me to spend my hard earned teacher money on it.  In the end, I decided to just grab some red butcher paper and cover the table, and it worked out wonderfully....because I could just throw it away.  I didn't even have to clean up spilled syrup!

Anyway, I got our table all prepped.  One student brought me a sweet little rose plant, so we put that on our table, too.  We were festive.

I had run off a little reading skill packet onto pink paper (and we did an afternoon packet as well- thank you I {Heart} Recess!!) and put it on each students desk with a new pencil (duh, teacher gift).  I don't do packets/worksheets a whole lot, so this was almost a treat.  Almost.  Students got right to work on it when they came in the room, and it continued to give them something to do throughout our brunch.

I got straight to work toasting those waffles because I only had my one little toaster!  Two waffles at a time takes awhile!  But while I was toasting and calling students up to grab some brunch, I called other students to pass out valentines, and the rest were working and chatting at their desks.  It was actually really great...aside from the unbelievable amount of butter each student used on their waffles and the syrup top "falling off" at least twice (you can picture that, right?  "Miss B!  It just fell off!").  So gross.

Students went through their valentines and shared what they got- they were super cute getting all excited about which valentines received.  I was a little nervous about getting them to focus after all that sugar and morning excitement, but they handled it really well.  Happy teacher!

We are on mid-winter break now (anyone else have this random week off of school right now?!?!) so I have big plans to be pretty lazy.  Hopefully I'll finish a few TpT projects and keep up with you all on here!  I'll be hitting up every after-Valentine's-Day-sale in town.  Anyone else?  This is when I stock up on my cake and brownie mix for the pantry...

And now Valentine's Day is on a Saturday so we can all unwind and feel the love with our family and friends!  Enjoy!

Happy Valentine's Day!!

            

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