Cheap Christmas Presents for Students

It's that time of year when our budgets are stretched thin, but we're "expected" to give our students presents - at least, that's what I get at my school. -Not required, mind you, but EVERYONE else does... Don't get me wrong - I love my students, but I have a family of my own to purchase gifts for and buying for all 40 of my kids can get expensive!

I'm team-teaching with one other person - the reading teacher. She's got it easy - order books for the kids with Scholastic points. LOL. The math teacher...hmmm.... So, I came up with these two little things that don't cost much.

Hot Cocoa In a Bag - bought it all at Dollar Tree, except the marshmallows. Had to go to the grocery store for those. Toss everything in a bag & tie them up. The great thing about this is that the kids all wanted hot cocoa during our movie. I passed out cups, they poured their cocoa packet into the bottom of the cup, added hot/warm water, and stirred with a candy cane. Easiest drink I've ever served my students. EVER.

• Snowman Gift Bags
• Straws (optional - they're cute, but the paper sometimes makes a mess)
• Hot Cocoa with Marshmallows
• Candy Canes (more fun than a spoon to stir the cocoa)
• Extra Marshmallows (b/c you can never have too many)
• Styrofoam Cups - not put in the bags

Cinnamon Dough Ornaments (without Glue) - This recipe was given to me by a mom/former teacher and I think she "borrowed" it from here. (http://www.mccormick.com/Recipes/Other/Cinnamon-Ornaments) Mix everything together, add more apple sauce until a nice dough forms. If it's cracking or crumbling, add a little more apple sauce. That was a major complaint on the website & something I ran into. But the extra apple sauce (or water when I ran low) did fix it. The website says to bake the ornaments, but last year the parent set them out to dry for a week or so which resulted in them turning out gorgeous - no crispy edges or curling from the oven. I'm going to try that this year and pop them in the oven if they need a little help. I got everything at Big Lots. For the Mickey Mouse ear ornaments (Disney field trip), I made 6 batches for a class of 22 (with some extras). See the picture to gauge the size of each. Don't forget to leave time for these to dry out! -I'm making mine in November next year.

• 3/4 cup apple sauce
• 2 bottles (2.37 oz. each) Ground Cinnamon - get the cheap stuff
• Straws - McDonald's work well - you only need 1 or 2
• Ribbons

Classroom Elf

Does anyone else have an elf visiting from the North Pole at this time of year? My class was thrilled when they came back from Thanksgiving break & found an elf in our room. Snowflake has been a pretty good little elf, but she has managed to play with some of our math games & manipulatives.

Yesterday, Snowflake climbed into a side pocket of my backpack & went to Disney's Animal Kingdom with us. I hesitated with the idea because I was afraid she'd fall out, but I knew the kids would get a kick out of it. They were excited, all right! But, they were also very concerned about her falling out, so I safety-pinned her to the backpack pocket. (Not an easy feat without touching her!)

While there, I managed to "escape" from my students long enough to purchase a Mouse Ears hat for her. Disney's key chain version of the traditional mouse ears fit an elf perfectly!

Now, I need help. We're coming up on the last five days that Snowflake will be in the classroom and I need some more ideas of mischief she can get into in a fourth grade room. Nothing involving too much prep...time is a luxury I don't have right now. But, I'd like to do something cute for my kiddos.

Math Ladder Game Boards for Christmas

I need to make some fraction math ladders. Like, really, really bad. My kiddos keep asking for them. But, in the meantime, (while I have them practice division, multiplication, and place value - again! - because you can never get too much practice with those skills), I've created some Christmas Math Ladder game boards. Enjoy!

Operation Elf - My S-ELF-less Act

It's just a few days before we sit down to our Thanksgiving dinner, but Krista Wallden has issued a challenge - and I loved it! A very generous person herself, she's giving away a set of clip art and challenged store owners to create a giveaway for their store. My kiddos are in the middle of working on fractions right now, so I jumped at the chance to create a math center/whole group activity/classroom decoration. Thus, Equivalent Fraction Garland was born!

My Vision: I'll print these off and get them laminated next week. Students will work in groups during our next center rotation to line up all of the fractions on a giant number line. (Preferably a piece of painter's tape on the floor.) Once they have their solution, they'll copy it onto a worksheet and hang on to it until everyone has had a chance to visit the station.

As a class, we'll discuss our results and come to a single conclusion.

Finally, I'll hang the tags off of the whiteboard tray to decorate our room. I'm thinking that a little bit of gold garland will spruce up the bare background.

Pictures to come later...

Math Ladders - 4.NBT.5 (Multiplication)

Need your students to practice 4.NBT.5? Math ladders for multiplication are here! My students have spent the last two weeks solving math problems and are getting pretty good at this benchmark.

Speedy Sally - Another use for task cards!

My last post focused on having students create an answer key or check one for you. This week, I came up with a great idea for my task card sets (that can be done with ANY set of task cards).

Speedy Sally (or Speedy Sam, Too Fast Fred, Rushed Ralph, etc. - name you DON'T have in your room this year!) has already complete the task card set you want students to work on. The problem is, they - like many of our kids - rushed and made many, many mistakes. The kids work to solve each task card and then "check" Sally's work. I had my kids give her a check by problems that were right and a big, 'ole red X by problems that are wrong. Of course, problems that are wrong need to have the correct answer written beside it so she can learn from her mistake. :)

To create this, I grabbed a blank answer sheet, wrote in about half of the problems correctly. Then, I flipped through the task cards and wrote in answers that were close or had common mistakes.

Centers...without Answer Keys (or even a WRONG key!)

So, this year my district has adopted Florida's version of Common Core, but NO textbook. Ack! I've been working like crazy every night to put together an interactive notebook (thank goodness for Blair Turner!) and figure out which pieces to use with my students. Well, that left very little time for center prep - not that we've really had time for centers!

Enter this week...a breath of fresh air.... My students are picking up the cut & paste system, so we're able to complete our notebooks much more quickly. They even seem to be doing fairly well with the content. So, I needed something for my kids to work on to review. The thing is, I knew exactly what I wanted them to do...I just hadn't yet created it!

Last night I stayed up until nearly midnight creating Math Ladders based on 3-digits & 4-digits x 1-digit numbers. They're not available in my stores because...well...they haven't been checked yet. Today in class, my kiddos checked the answer keys for me. They were so excited to find an error (we found 2 mistakes out of 20 ladders - not TOO bad considering these were made so late at night) that they didn't realize they were doing hard work.

And then I used the same trick on some task cards. The two sets of cards were created late one night...and don't have an answer key yet. As students solved a problem, they wrote their answer (in pencil!) on a class key. The next person who solved that problem compared their answer to the one on the key. If it matched, they went on to another problem. If it didn't match, they reworked the problem. If they still weren't sure, they called in a friend to help them rework the problem. If the answer on the key was wrong, they then fixed it. It was an excellent activity and has made me seriously reconsider giving kids keys at all....

4.NBT.1 - Place Value & Power

Whew! This week has been crazy. My kiddos have been hard at work learning about how a digit's place affects its value. I think in our minds we, as adults, know that the 3 in the tens place is worth 10 times as much as a 3 in the ones place, but getting my fourth graders to understand this has been grueling! Thanks to a couple of WONDERFUL resources (mainly Blair Turner's Interactive Notebook) my students finally got the idea!

My school uses a great website - www.MobyMax.com - free to teachers for a basic account. I assigned my kids this benchmark for homework and was able to check their progress around 10 pm (when I knew their homework should be done and they should be in bed). I saw that they were struggling with multiplying by 10 or 100 and multiples of 10 and 100. So, before we even made it to class the next day I had a set of task cards created, printed, and waiting for them. I've spent the weekend tweaking & adding to the set to add to my little store. Enjoy!

Mystery Science Lab - A Little Off Topic from My Usual Math Posts...

Ten years! Today marks the tenth year I've held Mystery Science in my classroom. I look forward to this activity every year and I talk it up at our Meet the Teacher & the first day of school. The kids came into school today READY for our first science lab.

The kids love the labs because they're a bunch of mini-exploration activities that require them to use four of their senses (no tasting!) to describe the world around them. Some have right answers and some are completely open. I love the labs because they really let me see the kids in action for the first time each year. Who works well with who? Who tends to isolate him/herself from the others? Is the "new kid" making friends? Can the class follow directions and do they know how to handle lab materials?

A couple of things I  noticed today - they respected the "keep the lab volume at a manageable volume" rule! Yes! Let's celebrate! I love doing science labs, but I dread them if I have kids/groups that feel they have to talk over each other. And, even better, my kiddos really respected the lab materials. I've got some things in our lab that are quite old - like the birds' nest my mom found back when I was in college (yep, that makes it older than my fourth graders). They used their hands to very gently touch it - exactly as I asked them to. :D

Need a beginning of the year lab for your kids? Download the preview file and grab 3 of the stations for free - as well as the list of materials for the full lab.

Math Ladders

I'm so excited to release this post today! I've been working on a center activity for the last couple of months with my students and, after going through several changes to work out finer details for keeping these things numbered in an organized manner, the first few sets are ready to be released! I'm calling them Math Ladders. Basically, students work independently (or with a partner) at a center. They're given a baggie of strips that have problems on them. They find the START piece, solve the problem on the right side, and find the corresponding answer on another piece's left side. Laying the second piece above the first one on the game board, they solve the new problem. And so on, and so forth, until they reach the top. My kids loved it those last few days of school and didn't even mind doing long division the week before school let out!

What's really great about these - at least what I intend to use them for next year - is that each center has multiple sets and they build on one another. So, differentiated curriculum is a breeze. I just have to print enough sets and then hand each child the set they need to work on depending on their individual skill level.

I have a bunch of different ideas up my sleeve, but for now check out two freebies (basic facts for addition & division) and a couple of long division sets. Each file contains at least 8 different sets which could turn into 8 centers. A table of contents/skill list is on each product page and part of the file.

 

  

Silliest Little Invention Yet - Ceiling Magnets!

So, my school's custodian asked that I stop putting paperclip hooks in my ceiling leaving me at a loss for how to hang things. I came up with the coolest invention - only to discover it's already been invented! So, if you'd like to pay $1.85 (plus $1.20 S&H), click here and follow the link to Amazon. If you'd like to make a million of these things for pennies - well, dimes - keep reading.

These are the three types of hooks I've tried. Do-it-yourself good old paper clips bent every which way, purchasing the clips that slide into the ceiling (Too expensive! But, I will continue to keep a few around for the heavy solar system pieces), and my little magnetic paper clip.

Supplies you need: magnets, hot glue, and paper clips.

Simply hot glue the paper clips to the magnets, let them dry, and hang them from the ceiling. When hot gluing, I took my time and supported each paper clip until the glue hardened enough to let it stand alone. I was able to make about 50 of them in an hour.

These easily hung a food chain craftivity. Granted, they won't hang heavy things - like an inflatable sun or most of the planets. But, they're good when you have 50 student projects to hang from the ceiling.

Oh, and to get them up there without using chairs - run over to Dollar Tree and pick up one of those long-handled tools with a claw on the end to pick things up.

Long Division

Ahh....a teacher's favorite skill to teach a bunch of kiddos that haven't quite mastered basic division! My class has been hard at work - our new benchmarks require students to divide using up to 4-digit dividends. To help them practice, I created a little game that grows with them. Best of all, they enjoy it and even ask to play it! :)

TPT Sale Extended!

Due to traffic overload on the TPT site, they have decided to extend their sale through May 8th. My site will also be on sale, 20% off, through May 8th. Grab a few things while you can get that 28% off (code TPTXO).

Teachers Appreciation Sale!

Combinations in Math

Okay, when I first started teaching students how to figure out how many different sets of outfits they can make out of 3 pairs of pants, 2 shirts, and four pairs of shoes (or the sheets & quilts that showed up on our practice test), I had no idea how to do it myself and make sure I actually had all the sets. Fast forward nine years and I've finally figured it out. The hardest part now, for me, is to get my kiddos to follow my logical instructions. So, as soon as I saw Krista Wallden's clipart set - Fashionista - I knew instantly what I was going to make with it. But, instead of this simply being another set of task cards, I included four pages students can use to lead their own small group as a review of how to find ALL combinations.

Spring Break

Well, this week has been crazy. I've taken some time off from the classroom and am ready to head back to school on Monday to get ready for my Survivor test prep before our state testing. Actually, the kids & I are quite excited about the test prep. I base the two weeks between Spring Break & the test on the TV show Survivor - complete with award challenges, immunity challenges, & tribal council! While the kids were working on math games & make up work the last half hour of class last Friday, I dug out my Survivor decor and started inflating palm trees, monkeys, & the treasure chest. That sure got their attention! They left excited to come back and see exactly what's in store for them. :) More to come later about my Survivor theme - and probably something for Teachers Pay Teachers.

In the meantime... I've uploaded two more products I finally had time to finish. The first one I used before we left for the break and then cleaned up/created an answer key/made an answer sheet for posting. The second one was created to use for review next week during our test prep.

Transformations

My class is in the middle of a unit on Transformations - flips, slides, and turns or reflections, translations, and rotations depending on your level. Soooo, of course I had to create a set of task cards. These will be used a little differently in my class this time, though. Instead of using them for test prep, I'm going to use them as a quick quiz (under my doc cam and graded with clickers!) and then as a Fast Finisher activity. My kids picked up this skill so quickly - thank you third grade teachers! - that they really don't seem to need much extra instruction.

TPT is 3 Million Strong!

You've probably seen the news splashed all over the blogs you follow and your Facebook page....but, just in case you missed it....BIG SALE!

My store will be 20% off on top of TPT's 10%. Save 28%. Go! Start shopping now! :)

Sale runs through Friday.

Area, Perimeter, Oh My....

Our last chapter had my students solving tons of area & perimeter problems. I was originally going to create one set of task cards for them....well, I got carried away. I realized that they really struggle with breaking down complex shapes and so I created several resources to help them do that. Then, once they could break down the shapes they needed practice finding area with all sides labeled BEFORE they tackled solving for missing sides. So, I ended up with a bunch of different sets to help all of my students.

    

And, if you're interested in grabbing all of them...save some money and grab the bundle.