Items filtered by date: March 2012
Recycling Activities
Earth Day is April 22nd. This was always one of my students’ favorite units. We took an entire week studying conservation and how to take care of the earth.
If you’re looking for some tabletop activities, I have an entire unit on recycling. It’s 81-pages long and chock full of a variety of skill sheets, including patterning, greater and less than and graphing.
Click on the link to view/download the Recycling Unit. 
Where’s Ricky the Recycling Raccoon? Is an easy reader booklet that will help reinforce spatial directions.
Students cut and glue the raccoons and recycling cans to the appropriate places on the page and then trace the spatial direction words.
Click on the link to view/download this cute recycling booklet. If you’re looking for some quick and easy recycling-themed “craftivities” you’ll find 4 of them in my Spring Art & Activities book.
Give A Hoot Don’t Pollute is a terrific listening and following directions owl that incorporates all the basic shapes and makes a fantastic hallway decoration.
Lend A Helping Hand is a cute keepsake that reinforces the concept of reduce-reuse and recycle. Use it as a header card. Students have the writing prompt: What can YOU do to reduce-reuse-recycle? and then attach their writing on the bottom of their "handy work".
Ricky in a tin can “garbage can” and “I CAN reduce reuse & recycle” Pop Can Dangler are truly “recycled” art projects that turn trash into a treasure!
Click on the link to view/download the Spring Art & Activities book.
I hope you’ve found something here that will get you and yours interested in going green!
Be sure and pop back tomorrow for more interesting tips to help you put some fun in your lessons.
Feel free to PIN and share anything from my website that you think someone else might enjoy.
Do you have something you’d like to share? I’d enjoy hearing from you! diane@teachwithme.com or feel free to leave a comment here, especially if you use one of my ideas! Thanks in advance.
"When you change the way you see things, the things you see change." -Unknown
Happy Recyling!
3,317 Compound Words
22 pages. NEW! This is the 6th and final updated list! I've added over 500 more compound words!
Teachers' Favorite Apps
More Jellybean Activities!
Comparing Jellybeans With A Venn Diagram
If you’re looking for another jellybean activity, try this quick and easy candy Venn diagram.
I got the paper plate Venn diagram idea from Deanna Johnston at her cute “Primary Punch” blog and liked it so much I pinned it months ago.
Click on the link to zip on over to see her cute things.
I thought I’d try it out for a jellybean and conversational heart comparison - contrast, as I use candy a lot in the classroom, for all sorts of activities and math centers.
Candy is pretty unforgettable for children, so you’ll have no problem having them remember your past activities.
After I got it done, I was so pleased with the results, that I whipped a Venn diagram off for comparing the other candy, that I doled out during the other holidays: candy corn from October and peppermint candy canes in December.
This turned into a 15-page packet entitled Venn Candy! You can either use paper plates and have students cut and glue the clipart and headers, or use the normal Venn diagram templates.
I’ve made some for comparing each type of candy with each other as well as provided a blankVenn diagram template for you to dream up whatever else inspires you!
Click on the link to view/download Venn Candy. Enjoy. I hope your comparisons are simply delicious and your students oh so sweet!
Favorite Apps For Teachers
What's Your Favorite App?
The Apple Education App store states: “1,000’s of apps. Endless potential.” While that may be gloriously true, it’s also overwhelming!
One has all this wonderful knowledge, “at our fingertips” but like the Internet, not a whole lot of time to sort through it all to find “the best”.
We also don’t have the time in our classrooms to use all of it either.
We need a few great resources that click on the light bulb quickly, hold our students' interest, so that we can move right along through the inordinate amount of standards we have to teach.
When one needs to find a new doctor or a dentist I feel the best resource is to ask someone for a reference. I think the same is true of all of these apps.
What do you use that’s successful with your students? What are your favorites?
Thankfully, there are websites who have done just that and taken surveys that list everything from the top ten all the way up to the top 100 picks by teachers themselves. I even found a contest for best apps in the educational category!
I always say go to the source. Teachers know what they want. We’re in the trenches.
We’ve test marketed your baby with our babies, and if there’s a glitch we’ll find it, because children are apt to do most anything.
FREE of course is always wonderful, but we’re willing to pay for something if it’s one of those “must haves” that gets all the rest of the train running.
I’ve spent a lot of time amassing this list of everyone else’s list so that you don’t have to. I hope it helps save you some time in the proverbial quest for the best apps.
Like everything else, this list is already outdated as I’m typing, because there are apps. being created for more wonderful things that will help light bulbs shine even brighter--that’s just one of the reasons I LOVE LOVE LOVE technology!
Click on the links for the following “Best” to check out their interesting lists. Relax and enjoy.
2011 Best Teacher App Ever Awards Page. Lists the Winners and the ability to download them. Also has past winner archives to 2008
There's An App For That: A Wiki with 86 favorite Apps.
Top 10 teacher picks for the IPod Touch
Top 10 From the people at Emerging EdTech
10 terrific web apps for teachers for back-to-school
Top 15 Favorites from Emerging Tech: Selected by teachers.
Top 20 Must Haves: A list of favorites of real teachers.
I Love Ed Tech: 37 Teacher Favorites.
Live Binders: Earl Wilderson filled a binder with his favorites. Check out my binder while you’re there: FREEBIES for elementary school teachers.
100 best free I phone apps for educators
6 Top Smartphone Apps: Improve Teaching, Research, and Your Life.
Top 20 Apps for teachers and librarians
Top 10 Apps for the classroom with Common Core Content: From A Teacher’s Perspective.
Teacher's With Apps. A great blog that lists favorite apps. and explains them.
Top 50 iphone apps for teachers
100 apps for tech savvy teachers
Best Free IPad Apps. Just-for Fun "Must Haves" from a good tech blog.
30 Awesome Apps. With 25,000 followers this tech blog must know something.
Apple's list of all the educational apps by aligned by subject. You go shopping.
So now you've got the apps. How about some tips and tricks of how to use your IPad...
Do you have an app that you’re ape about? PLEASE take a moment to share it here and save someone some time!
Let's get a nice list of our own going! Thanks in advance.
Scroll down for article #2 a jellybean activity.
Candy Venn Diagrams
Easter Bookmark April Writing Prompt
Spring Into Writing!
Do you need a quick and easy spring center?
This Easter bookmark reinforces counting skills for little ones and doubles as a cute keepsake card for someone special.
Run off the template. Students fold it in half and glue it.
They trace the numbers on the front and write 10 reasons why they love the person that they’ll be giving the bookmark to.
Make it an extra-special keepsake by running off your class composite. Cut students’ pictures into ovals and have them glue their photo to the bottom back of their bookmark.
Click on the link to view/download the Easter-Writing Prompt bookmark.
Be sure and pop back tomorrow for some more springtime activities.
Do you have one you’d like to share? I’d enjoy hearing from you. diane@teachwithme.com or feel free to leave a comment here, especially if you use one of my ideas. Thanks in advance.
Teaching With Glyphs
Groovy Glyph Graphics: An Easter Egg Glyph!
I love glyphs. Even though they are extremely popular with teachers, glyphs are hard to find anywhere, so I dream up my own.
I wanted to make a glyph for April and thought a really pretty patterned egg glyph would be a great way to whole-group assess listening and following direction skills, as well as help teachers learn a little bit more about their students.
My Y5’s really enjoyed doing glyphs. Glyphs are “instant” artwork for a bulletin board or hallway and provide a great “hard copy” of something I can actually show a parent to prove that their child is listening and following directions or not.
Click on the link to view/download Easter Egg Glyph
If you have time for two glyphs then you'll want to make this honey of a bunny too. Add a cotton ball for a tail to give it more pizzazz.
Click on the link to view/download Bunny Glyph
Scroll down for another cute Easter idea: An egg-counting bookmark that doubles as a wrting prompt and Easter greeting card for someone special.
Bunny Glyph
5 pages. Glyphs are wonderful ways to whole group assess listening and following directions, students enjoy making them, and they create a lovely bulletin board or hallway decoration.
Easter Bookmark Writing Prompt
