BBQ and Boo-Boo's

Hey everybody!  I've been working on this Backyard Barbeque unit for a while now.  My internet has been going down daily and it has definitely put a kink in my extracurricular  activities. :) Anyway, it is finished now!  Click the image to check it out on TPT. It is on the clearance rack until Friday.

Here's a bit of what is in it.

I am offering this unit along with a basic blog design (header, background, and button) in Katie King's 1000 follower giveaway.  Click the pic to find out how to win.  There are so many fabulous units offered!  I want to win it myself!

Now for the Boo Boo.  Jen from The Teacher's Cauldron very kindly let me know that a blue text box was popping up on some of the pages in the New Grade Advice Writing Paper packets.  Weird because I just duplicated the slides and changed the top and bottom lines.  Anyway, they are fixed now. You can download them {here} for free.

Oh, and P.S.: The first person to comment, telling me their favorite cookout food along with their email address, gets my new unit for free.

Math Monday Linky Party

Hey folks, if you haven't checked out the Monday Math Linky party at love2learn2day, you should right now!  I just added my stained glass window activity, and there are TONS of great ideas.

I hope everyone had a magnificent Monday!

Area of a Stained Glass Window

Don't you just love beautiful stained glass windows?


 This video was uploaded to YouTube by ArtmagicK.  This is not my original video! :)


A few years ago, I started doing stained glass windows with my students for area.  We've always just done them on plain paper, and they are super adorable in the hallway for a display.  This year I am going to run off the stained glass templates on transparencies, and we will hang them in our windows.   Just a side note, I have plenty of transparencies leftover from when we only had the old school overhead projectors.  I think this is a perfect way to use those transparencies! 

Money, Money, Money!!!

     Here are some coin and price tag cards you can use to practice counting and identifying money.  They can be used in centers or in a classroom store.  To differentiate instruction,  there are two different coin cards for each price tag.

Butterfly Fact Families

        If I give my kids 3 numbers they can knock out fact families like crazy.  If I give them 2 numbers, they can do it if it is the 2 smaller numbers.  Anyway,  I made these butterfly fact families to give my kiddos more practice, and we are learning about butterflies in our reading series. Did I mention that next week is spring break?!?! Click the pic to get a copy.

Measurement with Jack and the Beanstalk- part 2

             I posted a few days ago about how I used Jack and the Beanstalk to get a better understanding of the students' background knowledge of measurement.  Keeping with the Jack and the Beanstalk theme, the students worked in groups to create a giant using non-standard units of measure, their feet.  Each group was responsible for making a different body part for the giant.  Since each group used a different student's feet to measure, the body parts came out different lengths.

Marking the starting point.

Measuring in "feet"

Drawing the body parts.

           Before we put the parts all together, we compared the 2 arms to each other and the 2 legs to each other.  Students who were not in the arm groups measured the arms with their feet, and, of course, they came up with different measurements.
     By the end of the discussion we had come to the conclusion that the parts were all different sizes because they were all measured with different feet.  If we want the parts to be the same length, we have to measure them with "the same feet," as one student said.

   This is absolutely one of my favorite lessons!  Coming up next, making a giant with "the same feet."  :)

Measurement with Jack and the Beanstalk

     I began this unit by reading Jack and the Beanstalk  to my students.  Then as with any book we read, the students answered a number of questions and retold the story.  Next, I asked the students to tell me different characters and important things from the story.  Each thing they told me, I wrote on a note card.  The students then put three or four of the cards in order from lightest to heaviest, shortest to tallest, and so on.

       


          Next, we created a chart of the characters and objects from the story, what we could measure on the characters, and what we would use to measure them.  I used this to get an insight into what the students already knew and where I needed to go with my teaching.

 The next step in this unit is for the students to use their feet to measure out parts of a giant.  I can't wait to put those pictures on here.  That is always a super fun activity!