Items filtered by date: June 2012

1 page. Some of my favorite quotes by Dr. Seuss. Perfect for a classroom poster to give students something to think about. Anyone of the quotations would make a fun writing prompt!

1-2-3 Come Do An Icebreaker Craft With Me

What’s On Your Mind?  Is an easy and interesting way to get to know your students.  Use it as a fun icebreaker for the first day or first week of school.

You can do these in class, if you’re looking for a filler, or if you're pressed for time, send them home to be done as a home-school connection.

Older students can draw their own self-portrait (head) outline, or use one of mine.  I've included two boy options, as well as two for girls to choose from.

I find young children do much better if they have some sort of pattern, as they tend to draw rather small circles that items would not be able to fit into.

If you’d like to have a ready-to share activity for the first day of school, include the directions and a template in your “Welcome to school” summer letter or tuck it in your Open House packet, if you have one before the start of school. 

By doing this, you'll also have an instant bulletin board ready to go up, after students share their creations.  Be sure and make one for yourself to use to explain things and then post as an example.  This is my sample that took about 15-minutes, using clip art + adding a photo of my husband and poodle pup Chloe.

I think you’ll enjoy doing it as will your students.  No matter what the age group, I've always found that everyone seems to like sharing a little bit about themselves.  This is a creative and entertaining way to do that.

You could follow this up with some technology time, and have students type in words to their thoughts and make a word-art picture on the computer using the free tagxedo program as well!  I did a sample for me and one for my husband, so you could see a male sample. I filled in the caricature templates (see pix) so they don't look as much like a silhouette as I would have liked.

If you want to use my boy and girl "head templates" click on the link.  You'll need to change them to jpegs to use them in Tagxedo, otherwise find a sideview of some other clip art to import.

Click on the link to view/download the What’s On Your Mind activity packet.  

Thanks for visiting today.  Feel free to PIN away.  My "Pin it" button is at the top on the menu bar.

“Nothing is so strong as gentleness, and nothing so great as real strength.” –St. Francis De Sales

 Let's Get Organized!

I LOVE using graphic organizers for a variety of things no matter what grade I teach.

I think once you start using them you’ll enjoy them too.  In this particular packet I’ve designed an easy-to-use 3 and 4-column graphic organizer.

There are some for every month, season and a huge variety of themes.

Click on the link to view/download the Themed Graphic Organizer Packet.

I also made up another 44- page packet with a variety of DIFFERENT kinds of graphic organizers; from stars and a question mark to a fish bone and butterfly; I’m sure you’ll find something here that will fit your needs.

Many of these will help you with a variety of Common Core State Standards for Kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grades.

As I've stated in a previous article, I work a little each day adding CCSS codes to the items in my shopping cart, to help you find lessons that specifically correlate to them.

If you are downloading, or have downloaded an item that fits a CCSS, would you please drop me an e-mail to help expedite this big process.  Thanks!

With that in mind, I included 2 student dictionary's that they can make, that will help with a Language Vocabulary Acquisition Common Core State Standard.

Click on the link to view/download the general General Graphic Organizer Packet.

Graphic Organizers are visual displays that are used to depict the relationships between facts, terms and/or ideas in a learning task.

They are also called mind maps, concept maps, story maps, concept diagrams & entity relationship charts.

They are a pictorial way of constructing knowledge that help organize information.

They help students compress a lot of information into an easy-to-understand graphic display.

The visual display conveys complex information in an easy-to-read manner.

A calendar is actually a graphic organizer, perhaps the original “series of events” organizer.

Graphic organizers can be used for a variety of things, including problem solving, studying, brainstorming, and decision-making, writing projects, and planning research.

Colors and pictures help increase the utility and readability of your visual display.

There are many types of graphic organizers. The task you need to perform, determines the type of graphic organizer you should use.

Thanks for visiting today.  Feel free to PIN anything you think others may find useful.

I hope you can drop in tomorrow for more back to school ideas.

“When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this—you haven’t.” –Thomas Edison

Let's Decorate!

Just in time for all of you who are thinking: “Back to School”, and looking for some new posters to freshen up your room.

I’ve designed some this week for rules, reading and writing etc.

Type up your own class rules, glue them in the "book" and then laminate.

I hope you enjoy the posters! If there's something special you're looking for, shoot me an e-mail and I'll see what i can do.

Click on the links for:

Reading posters,  Writing posters,  Owl rule anchor chart,  Agenda anchor chart.

I've included an extra book template for the Agenda poster so you can write down more things in your schedule.

Laminate and put this on your white board and allow students to check things off on the side, as you complete them, or as your day unfolds.  This is especially helpful for little ones so that they can get a grasp of time.

If you are looking for more posters and anchor charts, I have LOTS!  Simply click on the link Anchor Charts & Posters to view the complete collection.  Just scroll down and choose whichever ones you like!

Thanks for visiting. Feel free to PIN anything you think others might find helpful.

I hope you can pop in tomorrow for more back to school ideas!

“There seems to be 2 choices in life: give up; give in, or give it all you’ve got!” - Unknown

1 page. This is the note that I used to tuck into my Ziploc Bagggie treat bags. Easy, inexpensive and simple to make up.