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....