I am helping my sister create Teachers Appreciation Weeks gifts for my 19-month-old nephew's teachers.  Since she is a nurse practioner and it is also Nurses Appreication Week, she also needed gifts for nurses and medical assistants at her offices.  So, I got to do a little creating this weekend.  These treats are really inexpensive, easy, and quick, so I thought I would share the tags that go on each of these gifts with you...(you can download the tags by clicking on the graphic!)

First up, a "S'more" goodie basket...

Get a basket.  Fill with a box of graham crackers, marshmallows, and a package of Hershey bars.  Tie on the tag with some curling ribbon.

Next up, "Piece of our Team" treat...



The Reese's Pieces boxes came from Walgreen's, but I have also seen them sold at Wal-Mart too.  Simply tie the tag on with some curling ribbon.

The PDF linked below includes nurse and teacher options

I am still working on some more treats, and I will get those posted as I can!

Graphics by

Scrappin' Doodles, MareeTruelove, and MissTiina

So I was clicking through Pinterest a couple weeks ago, and I was totally inspired by this freebie by Khrys of Keepin’ It Kool in Kinderland. How adorable, right?

Well I knew that while my students would totally appreciate having a fun project like this...I wasn’t exactly sure how to swing an only fun project in 4th grade with testing a month away. Until...LIGHTBULB...hello! We are studying simple machines! Leprechaun traps would definitely need a simple machine! Voila...project on!

Now I had to tweak Khrys’ project idea to make it fit our needs...and because we are in fourth grade...I needed to add a written portion with a rubric too!

My students turned in their projects on Friday, and they are so adorable and creative! Just look...

This trap is called “Gold and Green and Glitter, Oh My!” with the simple machine of inclined plane...

As the student said, “The leprechaun is so distracted by the gold it walks over the edge of the inclined plane and gets stuck!”

Here is “Leprechaun Café” with a wedge (sorry the leprechaun already sprung this one)...

I love this adorable trap called “Lucky Larry” with a ladder acting as an inclined plane...

The leprechaun climbs the ladder for some decoy gold awaits on the top of the hat. Well, that hat’s top is actually just made of cotton which falls and traps the leprechaun inside the hat!

This is a portable trap called “The Pet Leprechaun Trap.” It uses a lever (the top pulled shut by a string!)

Here is another trap that the leprechaun defeated. It works with a shamrock decoy attached to a pulley, which springs the trap...

Just look at “Leprechaun’s Bad Day” with two simple machines, pulley and screw...

The leprechaun walks down the walkway, in the door, and pulls on the bag of gold. Pulling on the bag of gold releases a mechanism that causes the door to slide down thus causing the leprechaun to have a very bad day.

As you can see from the pictures, we already had a “leprechaun” visit on Friday after the students left. “He” got caught and escaped from the traps but did leave behind some chocolate gold coins and lots of confetti and glitter all over the place! Hopefully, the school custodian won’t get too upset with the “leprechaun” for what a confetti, glitter mess “he” made! ;)

I know it is kind of late for you to make Simple Machine Leprechaun Traps this year with your students, but please go download a free copy of this project to do with your students next year. I know they will love it as much as my students did!

                   

P.S. Have you seen this story about the Los Angeles boy, Caine, and his arcade? This video has been inspiring my students to be creative, invent, and create!

Ok...just I finished teaching a new topic from Common Core...prepositions! 

Each year I have taught prepositions since this part of speech seems to always be one that comes up as we examine sentences during the year, but, since they are not one that had been required for my students to know and understand, I have always pushed them until later in the school year. 

But this year, prepositions are now a part of speech we MUST know...therefore, I kind of felt like my instruction needed to be a wee bit stronger on this topic.  So I made my way over to TeachersPayTeachers to see what others had already come up with...and I found the perfect item for my boy heavy writing class!

Smart Chick Teaching Resources has created the cutest activity to help students explore prepositions...

(click on the picture above to go to TeachersPayTeachers to take a closer look!)  It is a simple concept...students build a paper airplane and fly it.  Then they must write a sentence using a prepositional phrase about where the airplane lands.

I added a step.  We took pictures of where our airplanes landed.  I got out the 6 iPod Touches I have and each student worked in pairs to record the flights of their airplane through photos and prepositons.  And we got down to business...

Some of us got creative too...

Then off to the computer lab we went.  We typed them up our sentence, added the pictures we took, and created little books!  We had lots of fun, integrated technology, and learned a new part of speech...all in one activity!  Whoo hoo!



So I have gotten a lot of questions about how I make these name clouds...

And I happened to have a moment to respond tonight...but for some reason I can't respond to the comments that I have gotten...so instead I made a little video for you...

I hope this helps you out!

UPDATED- -
I just finished mine for this year’s class! This is how I fixed the size issues…
In the “Appearance” section click to make a rectangle shape.
Where it says aspect ratio change to 1.35.
I saved changes then under “Grab and Share” I click save as a graphic image.
I insert that graphic into Word or Publisher and resize to make it fit properly on the page.

If you have read my blog before you know I like doing Random Acts of Kindness with my students. I saw this fun project that reminded me of my students as soon as I read it.

Source: befickle.blogspot.com via Jessica on Pinterest

Why did this project remind me of my students? Well, they love being ninjas...ok I know this sounds kind of crazy! But, we needed to be quiet traveling the building during some testing...and the suggestion of being hallway ninjas totally worked! Now anytime we need to do something secret-like, we become "ninjas."  Hey...it's only crazy if it doesn't work!

I did have to change up the project a bit to make it public school appropriate.  (Plus nothing is ever cute enough for me!)  Here is how the Secret Random Acts of Kindness work...

The secret R.A.K.s start with each student receiving the "Top Secret" package...

Inside the envelope is a letter outlining the mission (in Mission: Impossible style...including the warning statement...well not really!).  Also included in the package is a list of Secret R.A.K. Ideas.

The Secret Agent is to chose a "target" and perform a secret RAK.  The mission is to do this each day for SEVEN days!  They will list the "Target" and the R.A.K. they performed and report back at the end of the assigned time.

Look at how many I made...can you imagine how much kindness is going to be spread!  Gives me chill bumps!!!!

Another thing I am doing differently from the original project is...I am not telling my students, but I have a little prize for those that successfully complete the mission.  Just a little prize...nothing big!  I am really trying to emphasize through all these acts that it feels better to do for others with no expectation of something in return.  I can't wait to see how many of mine complete this!

If you would like to do this project with your class, click on the picture below to download a PDF copy for yourself! 

Wednesday was our last day of school.  This has been such a challenging school year that really tested my nerves and skills as a teacher.  I was very happy to have almost all my students pass the C.R.C.T. (just my one E.S.O.L child did not pass...but she has only been speaking English for a year and a half and was expected to pass all of the tests! Umm...yeah ok...passing the English/Language arts section alone was pretty amazing...)  I am happy to see this group move on to fifth grade!

Before I let them go for the summer, we marked the day with a few special events.  I found 350 and 500 piece puzzles at the dollar store, so we had a little puzzle competition.  (Kids today just don't do puzzles anymore!  I remember as kid being excited to go picked out a new 1,000 piece puzzle to complete as a family...maybe I was just a big geek though!)  We also watched the movie Tale of Despereaux.  (Thank you Netflix for having it for instant download!)

I ended the day by giving them the special end of the year gifts.  First I gave them a personalized water bottle with a special little tag on it...

I adapted these from B. jane brewing... and Lorraine from Fabulous Fourth Grade Froggies's Classroom DIY post.  (If you haven't already noticed my little OCD self has to have things match, and the phrase "Don't Reinvent the Wheel" just doesn't make any sense to me!)  Attached to the back of the tag with two little mini glue-dots is a packet of Kool-Aid.  If you would like a some simple directions and a copy of my tag, click on the picture below...

Then I gave them a little something else...

This gift was inspired by Teresa at Confessions of a Teaching Junkie.  I used the Just One Word like she did...

but since we have learned hoe to use this resource this year (and they love it)...I challenged my students to use a thesaurus to help them find better descriptors for their classmates.  They have been eager to find out what words their classmates used to describe them.  (What was more funny to me was the word they picked to describe themselves!)

I presented each student with their framed word art...and they were thrilled!  I wasn't prepared for just how excited they would really be...just look at them...

I was so excited that they were excited! 

Quickly came the end of the day in which we must say our goodbyes (including some sad goodbyes to student who would not be returning to the school) and lots of hugs!  So long Fourth Grade class of 2011-12...you will be missed!

An update for this post explaining a little more about these name clouds can be found here.

I am proud to say that we already got our Mother’sDay projects finished!  This is theearliest I have ever had these projects complete...and it feels so good to beon top of it!  Curious what our projectis?  Take a look..

Isn’t that cute?  Ican’t totally claim this idea all for my own...when I came to fourth grade, twoof my teammates told me about this cute idea they do that moms love!  It is a persuasive writing piece about whyour moms should be on the cover of People Magazine.

Itake time to introduce this writing piece. We talk about People Magazine, and how in this magazine, whilethey do talk about celebrities, they have stories about normal people as well.  I talk about how only extremely specialpeople are on the cover of the magazine though, so we have to convince themthat our moms should be on the front.  Iput up this outline on the Mimeo Board...

(You can click on the picture to get your own copy!)  We talk about roles Mom plays in our life...that’sthe list we created on the side.  Then Igive the directions about the outline. This is the minimum that I want to see in their final piece.  We talk about how they can expand on this anduse their own words.  I also remind themthat in a persuasive writing piece that every reason we give should have twopieces of evidence or examples to support it.

Sooff they go getting to work on their rough drafts...while I circle the roomconferencing and providing help when needed. After they get their ideas down, they take the time to revise and edittheir piece.  When it is time for thefinal draft, I give them some special lined paper (only because it looks nicerthan loose-leaf notebook paper) to write their final piece.

Then I give the student a cover page.  To combat, the too tiny drawings that fourthgraders sometimes, I have already lightly drawn a circle on the paper and givethe student instructions mom’s head should be about the size of that circle andmake sure mom has shoulders so there are no floating heads!  I have the students outline their picturewith an ultra-fine sharpie marker.

We gluethe finished writing piece and cover on a folded read piece of constructionpaper and add a People banner to the top. Here are some more examples of finished pieces...

Do you like this idea and want to try it withyour own students?  Click here to download your own copy of the cover sheet,lined paper, and People banners.

Do you have an interesting Mother's Day project that you do with your students?  Tell me all about it! 

It seems part of my Spring Break every year consists partly of getting ready for testing preparations.  Beyond getting ready to review everything we have learned the whole year, I take time getting together some little incentives to boost morale during testing week. 

Smarties Test Prep Treats

This treat is a fun little way to remind students and parents of some tips and guidelines to be ready for testing on Monday.  Inside a Snack-sized Ziplock baggie, I put a few Smarties candy rolls and a slip with the reminders.  I send these home with the students on the Friday before we start testing on Monday.

The Test Fairy

The first day of testing my classroom gets a visit from the Test Fairy, the Tooth Fairy’s very responsible older sister. :) She leaves us a little note...

along with a bucket of these special freshly sharpened test pencils

I love these kind...Dixon Ticonderoga...they sharpen fabulously...and erase great...plus since they are sparkly, they look like a fairy pencil!  (I wish I had a picture of them in there bucket...I will update with it!)

Testing Treats

The final preparation is testing treats.  Each morning of the test, I put a test treat along with a little note on each student desk.  This year my treats are...

Monday ~ Reading Test ~ Lucky Charms

Tuesday ~ English/Language Arts Test ~ Fruit Roll Up

Wednesday ~ Math Test ~ Rice Krispie Treat

Thursday ~ Science Test ~ Goldfish crackers

Friday ~ Social Studies Test ~ Mini Oreos

The treats are a surprise, so the students have no idea what will be there each morning.  I love giving them this fun little surprise to look forward to each of these not so fun days.

Now a fun little surprise for you...free goodies!  Click on the pictures below to download the Smarties Test Prep treats, the Test Fairy letter, and the daily Test Treats. 

Please take some time to comment below and let me know how you like them.  I would also love to hear what testing motivators you use!