TPT Challenge Week 1 - Makeover Madness!

Today I am linking up with some awesome and inspiring teachers for Week One of the TPT Seller Challenge! The challenge is being hosted by Third in Hollywood, Sparkling in Second, Teach Create Inspire and The Peppy Zesty Teacherista. If you have not already joined in on the challenge, you should definitely check these ladies out for more info!

This weeks challenge is Makeover Madness! We were challenged to give a facelift to one or more of our old products. 

Here is the very first product I ever made: 

Y'all.... I was SO PROUD that I actually made something! I was brand spanking new to the world of Teachers Pay Teachers and I thought my little classroom jobs looked pretty darn good! Ahhhh how time changes things lol. ;)

Here is the "Makeover" of the original product.

That is all well and good and I definitely think that it looks better than the original, but I wanted something brand spankin' new for my room next year. I still love ya chevron, but I think I have had a zig zag overload the past 4 years and we need to take a break!

So here is my EXTREME makeover!

I gotta say, I am really happy with the way my new little jobs came out and cannot wait to start switching over my entire room to this color scheme! What do you think?!

If you like them, both the chalkboard and chevron jobs will be on sale all week!
Click the photo below to get your very own set of classroom job signs. :)

Amazon Gift Card Giveaway!

I'm very excited to be joining some of my fabulous blogging friends to help Stephanie from The Learning Chambers celebrate 1,000 TpT and Instagram followers.  I mean look at all of the FABULOUS bloggers that are involved in this giveaway!!

To celebrate, we are giving one lucky follower an Amazon Gift Card worth $100!!  That is just in time for summer and it would definitely help purchase all of those books that you want to read this summer.

Make sure you enter the giveaway by entering in the rafflecopter below.  Good luck friends!  Fingers crossed!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

O is for Ocean and Octopus

We just wrapped up or second week of summer school! :) During the summer, we don't have school on Fridays so I try and make Thursdays fun days! This week, all of our activities revolved around the letter  O. 

During literacy time, we made "pudding oceans" and wrote a numbered list of how to make them. The kids LOVED making these and they are soooooo EASY to do! All you need is vanilla pudding cups, food coloring, a spoon, and some sort of "gummy fish".

First, we added blue food coloring to our vanilla pudding cups.

Next, we stirred like crazy!

Then, we added our little fish!

Looks really appetizing doesn't it? ;)  

Here is one of my sweet little guys writing. 

1. Open Pudding 

2. Make it blue

3. Stir

4. Add fish

5. Eat 

I am so proud of them and how far they have come this year!

In math, we created Octopus Pattern Hats. I pre-cut 8 strips of construction paper and 1 octopus "head" for each student.  Using bingo dotters, students created 8 different patterns on their paper "tentacles" and I stapled them to a sentence strip. Anytime they can wear their product, they think it is amazing (and I think it is adorable)!

During science, we created Oceans in a Bottle. For this, we used bottles of water, glitter, vegetable oil, foam sea creature stickers, and these weird little plastic beans I found in the art closet. Obviously, you can put whatever you want in there! 

 I let students drink some of the water (to make room for the oil) and added glitter with a funnel.

Then, students added food coloring, sea creatures, and the little beans. Although many students wanted to squirt as much food coloring as possible into their bottles, I found that if you only squirt 1 drop you can see everything in the bottle much better. 

Next, we made predictions about what would happen when we added the vegetable oil to the water and tested out our hypothesis. 

Finally, it was time for the kids favorite part....

SHHHAAAAAAAAAKKKKKKE!

And watch everything dance and swirl around until it all settles back to the way it started. 

It was a fun week and I can't wait to start on all of our "W" activities tomorrow!

Calendar Time (Part 2)

Here is the rest of our calendar routine! If you missed part one, you can find it here :)

Next up, days in school!

A new student helper comes up and adds a stick to the one's place. (As you can see, my fabulous matching sticks that came with the calendar have slowly disappeared and are now replaced with popsicle sticks.) We all count the sticks to see how many days we have been in school (starting with 100) and then change the number at the bottom so that it matches our sticks.

While students are still working on number ID, I like to hand the student leading "days in school" several different numbers so they can show them to the class and the class can "help" him/her find the correct number. It sounds a little something like this:

Student: "Is this number 8?"

Class: "No! That is number 4!"

Student: "Is this number 8?"

Class: "No! That is number 9!"

Student: "Is this number 8?"

Class: "Yes! That is number 8!"

After days in school comes tally marks! The tally marks match how many days we have been in school.

I always start the year leading and modeling the calendar for my students and then gradually release one part of the calendar at a time over to the students for them to lead. You can probably look at the tally mark chart and guess when students began to take over that section. It's not perfect but it sure is authentic! ;)

The student who leads this section of the calendar first points to each group of tallies as we count the tally marks we already have by 5's. Then, the student says our "tally mark chant"and adds another tally to the chart.

To remember when to make a vertical line and when to cross the 4 vertical lines with a diagonal line (and yes, even the students use the words vertical and diagonal. Parents can't believe their 4 and 5 year olds actually know what those words mean but we start using the vocab in context on day 1!) we say this cute little poem and do hand motions to go with it.

One, Two, Three, Four, (move hands up and down vertically for each number)

Number Five Shuts the Door! (Move hands across the body diagonally)

Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, (move hands up and down vertically for each number)

Number Ten Draws a Line! (Move hands across the body diagonally)

I cannot begin to tell you how much I love this rhyme! It really has help my students draw tally marks.

If you would like to download a free printable of the chant for your own calendar, just click the picture below :)

Up until the 100th day of school, we add an apple to fill in our giant 100's chart. I have made enough numbers to take us through the last day of school because I used to use these little apples as one looooong number line, but this year I use them as a 100's chart. I created the apples so that all of the odd numbers are blue apples, the evens are green, the 5's have a purple circle, and the 10's have a pink background. This really helps the kids not only see number patterns but also count by 2's, 5's, and 10's!

 If you would like to snag these numbers for yourself, you can find them here.

For the weather, we use this cute freebie found here. (There are several other options for types of weather in the freebie but where we live, these 4 pretty much have us covered!)

And sing this weather song:

What is the weather, weather, weather?

What could the weather be today?

Is it sunny, sunny, sunny? (raise arms above head to make a big circle)

S-U-N-N-Y today!

Is it cloudy, cloudy, cloudy? (move hands like you're forming a big fluffy cloud)

C-L-O-U-D-Y today!

Is it rainy, rainy, rainy? (wiggle fingers down in front of you like rain falling)

R-A-I-N-Y today!

Is it windy, windy, windy? (move arms like your hula dancing)

W-I-N-D-Y today!

What could the weather, weather, weather,

What could the weather be today?

We also discuss how a thermometer measures temperature. When the temperature is warmer, the red liquid inside the thermometer goes up and when it is cooler the temperature goes down. As the year progresses I also show them a real thermometer and we begin to check it for degrees fahrenheit.

Finally we work on positional words! Since we are the Amazing Ants, naturally we practice this with an ant and a picnic basket ;)

The ant is thumbtacked to the board and we move it all around the picnic basket practicing our positional words. For example, I may move it above the picnic basket, far from the picnic basket, inside the picnic basket, etc. This is also useful when we are talking about antonyms or opposites. For example, "The ant is inside the picnic basket. What would be the opposite of inside?" I also teach them synonyms for positional words like under or below, beside or next to.

By the 2nd semester I have pretty much phased this part of the calendar routine out because the students all have a good understanding of positional words. Every now and then I will throw it back into our routine for review though.

I hope my calendar routine breakdown has been helpful! :)