All I Want for Christmas is ... a TpT Gift Certificate!

I am so excited to be linking up with other teacher authors at Corkboard Connections for a fun little giveaway. Perfect for last minute gifts to teachers in your life (or maybe for a little gift to keep for yourself).


Teachers Pay Teachers gift cards are the perfect gift! I secretly wished that my students gave me those instead of Starbucks gift cards. Not that I don't enjoy going to Starbucks, but I REALLY enjoy shopping on TpT!

If you'd like to enter you can complete up to 4 entries through the Rafflecopter. You can visit the other teacher authors participating to try to win even more gift cards! The deadline to enter is when the clock strikes Christmas Eve (EST). Good luck!



a Rafflecopter giveaway

Note: Comments are moderated, so if you hit "publish" then you have entered!

An InLinkz Link-up

BB Part 7 - Tropical Volunteer Gifts

It's time for part 7 of my 10 part series, Blog Backlog: Playing Catch Up. Today I am sharing another fun idea for volunteer gifts.

This year I was so lucky to have three amazing moms who came in regularly to help make copies, prep projects, and do almost everything I asked! I wanted to show my appreciation with something cute. Last year I made my volunteers these awesome Out of this World gifts, but I was in the mood to switch things up this year. 

I was browsing Dollar Tree and they have a whole tropical/island section for summer. I picked out three tiki cups, some flower leis, and umbrella straws. While looking around some more I found these adorable battery operated string lights that had colorful flowers on them. I knew these would be a great addition!

I placed everything in the cups, including the string of lights, and topped it off with a Jamba Juice gift card (obviously they need something cold and refreshing to put in those cups!). 

I also found plain paper gift bags and foam Hibiscus flower cut-outs at Dollar Tree, so I glued them on for a themed gift bag! Not including the gift cards, each gift came to about $4 each! Not bad! 

BB Part 5 - Donors Choose + Sticky Notes = Nonfiction Readers

I hope everyone is having a relaxing and fun summer. Mine is already half over, the first three weeks flew by, and I'm hoping the next three weeks are nice and slow. It's time for part 5 of my 10 part series, Blog Backlog: Playing Catch Up. Today's post is about my Donor's Choose project and a really great resource I purchased from TpT. 

We all know that with Common Core a greater emphasis is placed on reading nonfiction, which, if your school is like mine, lacks in the nonfiction department. Actually, even before CC I had realized the need for more nonfiction, especially as literature sets. When I taught sixth grade I used Donors Choose to get a set of books on Ancient Egypt, which I donated to our library when I moved to fifth. So, this year I decided we needed a class set of books on the Revolutionary War. Last year during our study of the war I had some students in my class "rooting" for the Americans and booing the British. I wanted them to understand that there were always two (or more) sides to a war, and always different perspectives. So, I read them George vs. George by Rosalyn Schanzer, and that helped. This book is at a great reading level for 5th graders, and they loved the graphic novel-like illustrations. I decided this would make a great book to use as a lit study, and so I set up a project through Donors Choose.

I am so grateful to all the donors that made it possible for us to get a class set of the books, they were a hit!

To make our study even more meaningful I purchased this amazing resource from Head Over Heels for Teaching: Reading Nonfiction with Post-its.

I picked out many of the pages from her resource that would coincide with the sections of George vs. George and made them all into a booklet. We glued on a copy of the front cover of GvG to make it official (sorry, forgot to take photos!). The students already had the 3"x 3" sticky notes that they use during Reading Workshop, but they needed the smaller ones for many of the activities. I found four packs of brightly colored ones at Dollar Tree and there were just enough in a stack for each student. 

Thanks Head Over Heels for Teaching for creating this super resource! I know I'll be using it even more this coming school year! And thank you Donors Choose for helping teachers get great resources and projects for our kiddos!

BB Part 3 - Rubber Duckie Gifts

It's time for part 3 of my 10 part series Blog Backlog: Playing Catch Up! If you missed out on previous posts you should definitely check out part 1 on our state mobiles and part 2 on Go Noodle!

Today I'm sharing one of my favorite things...gifts. I love creating cute thank you gifts for the amazing people who give so much of themselves to work and volunteer for our kids. Some of the past gifts include: thank you cubes, out of this world space themed gifts, and flower cards.

For the past two years I have been teaching the 5th grade intervention math. Most of the kids have an IEP or just struggle with math. We are lucky to have a wonderful para and resource teacher who come in three days of the week to work with us. Last year these awesome gals got calculator cards and fun flexible calculators. This is even a freebie in my TpT store!

Since I had the same lovely ladies this year I needed something different. I was wandering around Dollar Tree and stumbled upon some cute rubber duckies. I immediately had the song, "Rubber Duckie you're the one..." in my head. My next thought was, hey, I could replace "bath" with "math", and this new gift was born. 

Each gift basket includes: cards from each student, two rubber duckies, a loofa, a bottle of bubbles, a lavender bath soak, and a gift card to Bath & Body Works. Most of the items I found at Dollar Tree!

I found a cute image of a bath with a duckie in it and just used that as the cards that students wrote on. The front of the cards says "Mrs. White, you're the one! Making MATH time oh so fun! Mrs. White we're especially fond of you!"

Inexpensive, cute, fun and full of gratitude! That's my kind of gift! There will be another volunteer gift post coming up in my 10 part series! Stay tuned!

*FREEBIE* A Gift for Volunteers and Awesome People

The past couple of years I have been teaching our intervention math class. This group of students includes those with IEPs and ones that just struggle with math. It's a small group, and we have the pleasure of getting extra help from teachers/paras during the week. Last year, my students and I made these calculator thank you notes at the end of the year to show our appreciation. I found some fun calculators that were bright and flexible to attach. The students wrote a sweet note on the fun calculator cards (that say things like "all your help really adds up") and I used our binding machine to put them together in a cute little book.

The calculator cards are free in my TpT store...go get them and make some fun gift of appreciation for the awesome people you know!

Gift of Appreciation ^cubed

It seems like I can never keep track of all of those days/weeks of appreciation...you know, Administrative Assistant's Day, Boss' Day, Monkey Trainer's Day, etc. The resource teacher emailed me earlier this week alerting me to the fact that this past week was School Counselor Appreciation Week. Our school counselor is full of awesome. She and I used to have rooms right next to each other when she taught resource, but last year she moved up to the office as our counselor. Now, I am still super lucky to have her come to my room 3 times a week for my math intervention class. On top of all this her and I share a love for TV shows ranging from Downton Abbey to American Horror Story. We try to meet once a week to dish on the latest episodes.

Anyhow, we needed to have our intervention kiddos make something to show their appreciation, and I wanted to make sure that I didn't lose instructional time. Well, it just so happens that we have been studying 3D shapes and volume and I had already copied off a cube net on pretty pink. The idea hit and I knew what to do. The kids wrote notes and drew pictures on each face and then cut and taped them together. One girl even rushed back to her classroom for a piece of jewelry to put inside of her cube! We brought our cubes to the floor and used them to make some rectangular prisms and found the volume of each. Then we took a walk over to the front office. I sent a few kids at a time into her office and they built a rectangular prism of appreciation right there on her desk.

Today's Formula . . . Learning x Fun x Gratitude = Gift of Appreciation^3

I'm linking up with Head Over Heels for Teaching's "Spark Student Motivation Saturdays"

Reddit Gifts for Teachers ROCKS!

Last year a teacher friend received a bunch of goodies for her classroom from an anonymous gift giver through Reddit's Gifts for Teachers. She reminded me about it this year right before the deadline. I didn't think I would be matched with a gifter as there were over 8,000 teachers applying and about 5,000 gift givers, but I was! A lovely gal from Texas sent my class 60 sticky note pads!

Each of my students has a pencil bag in their Reading Workshop binder that includes a pack of 3" x 3" sticky notes. My students use them daily during independent reading time and I knew that they were going to need more throughout the year, so I asked for this simple gift, but I wasn't expecting so many to arrive! When I brought out the giant stack and explained that an anonymous person gifted them to us they were so appreciative and also excited because now there are color options (I only purchased yellow for them).

Thank you to our awesome gift giver and to Reddit Gifts for Teachers for putting this together!

Out of this World Volunteer Gifts

I had the two most amazing volunteers this year! I could always count on them to come in each week to make copies and put together projects. I am going to miss them tremendously next year! I like putting together cutesy themed gifts for my helpers. Last year I put together a "summer fun" basket with some fun items.

This year I wanted to include something from LUSH. If you have never had a LUSH product you are seriously missing out. Their bath and body products are handmade and vegan. They have awesome bath bombs and soaks! I had seen some bubble bath wands around Mother's Day, but unfortunately they were exclusively for Mother's Day and had no more left when I went in. As I was browsing I saw these little Out of this World gift boxes and I knew my theme! I had so many idea of things to include with their gifts, but left several stores without the stuff I wanted to include.

I ended up getting dark blue gift bags and putting star stickers all over them. Inside I included the LUSH gift (which smelled divine and I got a heavenly whiff every time I walked past them), a starry notebook, a star post-it pad, glow-in-the-dark star glasses, and a STARbucks gift card.

To cutesy them up I bought this adorable clip art from ReviDevi and added some spacey sayings:

* You are out of this world!

* You're a STAR!

* You ROCKet!

* Thanks for helping us BLAST off this year!

* I couldn't PLANET without you!

Volunteer Gifts

The art curriculum in our district is not taught by teachers, instead we have parent volunteers come in and teach monthly lessons. This year I had two wonderful moms who did an amazing job with my class! This week was our last lesson. I put together a Pinterest inspired thank you card/gift for them. 

It was really easy to put together. I just traced some petals onto colorful cardstock and the kids wrote a lovely thank you note and cut them out. Then I threaded them onto a large flower brad, swirled them around, and hot glued them onto some wooden dowels. Easy peasy!

Mother's Day

Last week I was called "mom" by the majority of my class. For some reason I've been called "mom" more this year than any year previous, maybe because I'm getting older I'm more mom-like now. I think it is cute and the kids are less embarrassed when I make it a joke and call them "son" or "daughter" in return. One of the girls told me that she even called her dad Ms. W one day! Although I am not a mother I am mom to fur babies and during the school-day I am mom to my 5th graders. That's just the way I like it!

We've been working on writing some amazing poetry so one of the other 5th grade teachers came up with a really cute idea to make a paper bag scrapbook and fill it with poems written by the kids especially for their moms. It took a lot of time, but since we tied it in to poetry writing we could get away with it. It was worth it because many of the students came to school today talking about how their moms loved their gifts and I even had a mom write me a note of thanks.

To make the book we took 4 paper bags and folded them in half. This allowed the students to have 8 pages and 4 pockets. Inside the pockets the students placed a card with an original poem on it. On the first three pages of the book we were inspired by a pin from Brilliant Beginnings Preschool and did the adorable "Mom,  I love you...to pieces". Then they had the freedom to be creative and they added poetry/art/quotes to the outside of many of the paper bag pages. A couple of hole punches, half of an 12"x12" scrapbook paper, and a piece of ribbon bound it all together. My photos do not capture the greatness of their work. 

My mom came down for the weekend and we had a lovely time. I cooked delicious Persian food for my family and we made sure to appreciate my mom and sister, two incredibly amazing mothers! I hope that Mother's Day was special for you and the mother's in your life. 

December 2012

Happy 2013 Friends! December was mighty busy and I was a bad blogger with a total of 0 posts last month! So, I'm going to start the year off right and get caught up! My class was busily learning and I had some excitement of my own this December!

Much of the month was taken up by BizTown preparations (we go in two weeks!) and Science Fair preparation. But we also managed to wrap up our learning on explorers, and get some other fun activities in.

December 3
NaNoWriMo was over! My class and I (plus all of the 5th and 6th graders, and our prinicpal at our school) spent the month of November writing novels. We celebrated by having a NaNo Cafe! Students brought in their favorite mugs and a drink mix and treats to share. We enjoyed our hot drinks and listened to an excerpt or synopsis of each students' novel. I was blown away by my amazing authors! I too met my goal of 50,000 words!





December 12 (12/12/12)
My math class dubbed this day "Mega Mode Day". My math class has really been enjoying doing Calendar Math during our intervention rotation. On the back side they have to use numbers from the date to find the mean, median, mode, and range. Because we hadn't done Calendar Math on a day which had any repeating numbers they were anticipating December to finally have a mode. December 12 was a big deal to them, our para even brought them some treats to celebrate Mega Mode Day! I'm guessing this group of kiddos will always remember what the mode is!

This was also my sister's due date! We were hoping that my new niece or nephew (she didn't have any ultrasounds/sonograms and wanted it to be a surprise) would arrive on this day and have a memorable birthday. Even though I had sub plans ready to go, there was no sign of baby.

December 16

My niece was born! I was so lucky to be able to be present for the birth of my niece. She was born at home, in a birthing tub in my sister's room. She had amazing help from the midwives and after only a few hours of labor caught her baby! It was so amazing! I just love being an auntie!







December 17-20
Our last week before break was filled with so much! I'm surprised we were able to finish everything. The highlights...

I had purchased Mr. Hughes awesome holiday dodechahedron ornament project, but because we were short on time I ended up using his template (don't be mad at me Mr. Hughes!) and combined it with our reading marathon. Unfortunately I have misplaced the origin/inspiration of the reading marathon, but I have been trying it out at the end of each quarter since I expect my students to read X number of words each quarter. This gives them a last push to get those words in. So, the students read for a set amount of time (usually around 10 minutes) and then they complete an activity for 5 minutes. This continues until we've completed all the activities and we've read tons! Some of the activities included...draw a picture of the main character, describe the problem, make a prediction...we only had time for 6, so I had the students use red/green paper to fill in the rest. These looked great hanging in our classroom windows.

This year I was inspired by this Pinterest find for the students to make as their holiday gift to their parents. My whole team loved the idea and so we had to special order 100+ embroidery hoops from Hobby Lobby. I have a wonderful parent helper who cut out 100+ squares of muslin for the project and my class used watercolors for theirs. The other teachers also had success with Crayola markers. I'm really pleased with how they turned out, I hope their parents liked them as much as I did. If I were a parent, I know I'd just cherish these!

Another Pinterest inspiration was our gift to our students. We each whipped up a Wordle for our kids and we had two amazing elves (parent helpers) who put them in frames for us, and even wrapped them! It was so generous of them to spend several hours of busy holiday time to help us out. The kids absolutely LOVED them! As soon as they opened them each kid set them at their spot to admire all day. Many even told me that they knew exactly where in their rooms they were going to put their framed name art. I heard multiple thanks during the day, and enjoyed being asked what some of the adjectives meant.

Our two week break has been flying by! I've spent much of my time with my sister/nephew/niece or snuggled up on the sofa with my husband and kitties. I had hoped to get some planning in for the next quarter, as well as get some more resources created, but I've been perfectly fine with relaxing. Plus, my MacBook has been slowing down on me recently (hey, I've had it since 2006!) and so last night put in an order for a new one. I'm looking forward to some increased speed and power! 

I know I don't have many readers/followers, but I appreciate those that do stop by. I hope that the coming year brings renewal and prosperity for you all.