Made it Monday

It's been a while since I've done a Made it Monday with Tara at Fourth Grade Frolics. Actually, it's quit possible I did one last month but at this moment my brain is so dead I can't remember. We are still in school. Our last day with the kiddos is Thursday, teachers get out Friday, and I'm off on what I think is the first girls trip since my bachelorette on Saturday. I'm oober excited about that and it will give daddy and princess a full daddy/daughter date day :) It'll be a first for them and a first for me to leave them. Ok, ok, ok, enough with that now on to what I've been up to.

School Made it #1

This is actually from a little while back but I never shared it. We did a unit on The Mexican War. You know the one when the U.S. said hey Mexico let me buy some of your land and Mexico said uhh.. no! And the U.S. said fine we'll just kick your booties until you change your mind. You like my version of Texas history. ha ha  :) Well that and the fact we couldn't agree on the Texas/Mexico boundary. Any who we did a power point stop and jot of sorts covering the unit. After each topic I stopped and we would create one of the mini foldables for the lapboard. This probably took us 3 days. The kids really loved it. I think their favorite part was putting in their own words what caused the problem b/t the countries. The one above wrote, "This ain't yo land! This mine!" Some of my personal favorites were "You mad bro" or "Why y'all beefin" Ha this was hilarious purely b/c my kids are SO... PROPER. They tried really hard to come up with "slang" sayings for whatever reason. It was hilarious.

School Made it #2

This I didn't actually make myself. It actually came from Custom Kids Décor. Don't let the name fool ya! Yes, they make things for teachers too. :) Actually, you can get one too! It only costs a whopping $20. Awesome, I know! I'm moving grades again next year and wanted a sign for outside my door. This year I didn't have anything and it was a little hard for the people in the school. New teacher w/o a label on her door, thought I would make it a little easier this year.

 

Home Made it #1

 

This little dilly is lemon and lavender infused raw and local honey. I've mentioned in previous post about transitioning to a natural life style. This allergy season we've got rid of daily Zyrtec and tried a mix of lemon, lavender, peppermint, and local honey. Your probably wondering why I keep saying local honey. Well.. if you take raw unprocessed local honey daily it can help you become immune to the the pollen in your area. At first we just added a few drops of the oils onto a spoon of honey. Well with an almost 2yr old that can get messy if she's not in the mood for "algee" as she calls it. So, by diffusing it the honey thins out and you can put it in a medicine dropper. I know, I know, pretty genius. You can thank me later. :)

 

 

Home Made it #2

 

Now, this is what has kept me BEYOND busy lately. This also goes along with my transitioning to natural lifestyle too. I've taken steps on moving towards and maintaining natural hair, we are trying to eat clean, I order local meet from a co-op, so what only seemed like the natural next step was getting rid of the extra chemicals we are putting on our body. I figure if I'm already making hair spray and moisturizer surely I can make some lotion and body wash. Well... lotion and body wash turned into a whole line of ideas to share with others. I've got my first round of products out to testers. After a couple of weeks I'll have them fill out a little survey, make changes, and then put it out to the free world. So say a prayer and wish me luck. Here's a little bit of my newest baby:

I know this picture isn't great. We took some shots w/our Rebel but this one is with my phone. But there she is :) My labor of love that's keeping me oober busy and my hubs feeling all neglected and stuff. :/ Just when I got this whole balancing my life thing figured out, I throw something else in the mix...

 

Made with the Hubs #1

 

I just had to add this picture of little princess. I was trying to take her picture, so I squatted to get on her level and she thought that was they way I wanted her to pose. So she squatted to and gave the cutest little cheese. :) Oh how I love this sweet baby. I can't believe she's almost two. Sometimes I get sad b/c I miss my little newborn that was small enough to fit in my lap. But then I realize that I should be grateful to God that we have been blessed with her this far. She is just so amazing and I love her more than my own life.

 

 

Well that's all I've got folks and thanks to Tara for hosting Made it Monday. Although, I'm posting on a Tuesday. :)

 





Biography Scrapbook Projects



Alright, I think it's time for a crayon post! We just finished the CUTEST project. Just in case you don't remember I teach Texas History. We just finished a unit on the Texas Revolution.  Ya know the Alamo and all that jazz. I kinda found this part of our history ironic. We agreed to move to "Mexico", learn their language and practice their religion. Then we get here and are like nah this whole Spanish Catholic thing isn't really working out for me. Can you please change your laws? No, well ok guess we're gonna fight. If today's immigrants tried that with current Texans how well do you think that would go??? Anywho.. back to the projects. I originally wanted to have the kiddos create a Facebook page. I searched and searched and searched and found nothing to my liking. So then, I kept thinking and thinking and thinking. BAM scrapbook popped in my head. I did a Google search. I found this and used it as my foundation. I work with 4th graders so I made my instructions a bit more detailed. I told them exactly what to put on the cover page and pages 1-4. They came out oober doober cute. I'll go through the page requirements with you.

Cover Page- Texas Hero Name, Student's Name, Social Studies Block, and Homeroom

 

Page 1: Timeline of your hero's life

 

I love how she made out foldable for her timeline.

 

Page 2: Create a written correspondence pretending that you are your hero writing to a loved one during the revolution.

 

 

Page 3: Pretend that you went back in time and interviewed your hero about the Revolution. You have to ask at least 4 questions.

 





I love how he made it like a real newspaper artifact!

 

 

Page 4: Character Traits- create a bubble map with a picture of your hero in the center. You need at least 4 traits to describe your hero.

 

 

I gave the students the option to create extra pages if they wanted. I told them sky is the limit whatever they would like to do. This little girl had twice as many pages as she needed. My favorite was the family tree. It was very creative.

 

I didn't require them to actually buy a real scrapbook. The Sam Houston project used a real book. The Davy Crockett project used scrapbook paper, hole punched it, and added 2 metal rings to bind it all. I was TRUELY amazed with these projects. This was a take home end of unit project. If needed a provided 5 pieces of plain card stock and 2 metal rings. The kids did such a great job. If I had time I could easily show you another 90 books as examples. I hope you enjoy and are inspired to scrapbook!

 

I plan to share this idea with other teachers at Fourth Grade Frolics.

 



 

 



 



QR Codes In the Classroom

The last post I made I mentioned I was going to try QR Codes in the classroom. Well, I tried it and my kids LOVED it. I just took the textbook pulled out the important info from the chapter and made a QR code from it. I placed them around the room and the kids had to find them and scan them.

After they finished all the scans they had to color code their notes. I had them code by if the fact told about the tribes region, way of life, government, or a fun fact. Sorry, I totally didn't realize this picture was upside down.

After we finished doing 2 tribes we compared them using a venn diagram foldable. My principal did a walk through while I taught this lesson. He said it was perfect! I was glad but honestly I was secretly hoping he caught one of my QR code lessons. I knew he would think it was super cool. The kids did a good job on the foldables.

I decided to share my codes with you all. I hope your kiddos enjoy or that this has given you an idea :) Enjoy! I'm sharing these ideas with other teachers here and here.

This Week in 202

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I'm linking up with Kelly at Teaching Fourth and Tara at Fourth Grade Frolics to show some things we've done in class this week. I have to admit right now is not the most exciting unit. We are doing a map packet. I'm new to the team and I was told this is what has always been done the first 6wks. I could think of about 50 other ways to teach it but ehhh why rock the boat. I prefer just going with the flow.

Anywho, the packet covered the basic features of a map this week. We talked about the symbols on a map and how to read them. I've tried to throw a little note booking in with the packet when I could. On this first activity below they had to read the map to find certain cities. Once they found the cities on the map they had to use the legend to read the towns symbol. The symbol told the population of the town. Now, as a disclosure this data is not current. I'm not exactly sure how old it is. I've been told that in the textbook George W. is still governor of this great state of Texas. I explained to them the numbers weren't accurate but they still got the idea of how to read the symbols and legends. In their journal they had to record the city name, draw the symbol next to it, and record the population according to the legend. We are using giant dry erase desk maps. You can see it a little under the notebook.

Today we did a little vocab review. They chose a vocab word we used this week. In the journal they had to design the word, draw a picture, use it in a sentence, write the definition in their own words.

This one below was my favorite and it made me chuckle. He did the word population. His picture shows the welcome sign when you enter a town. "entering middle of nowhere population 100 graves" Ha! I'm so loving fourth grade and their humor :)

 



 

Interactive Notebooking TEXAS style

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This past week was the first week of school for our kiddos. I am in a new grade, in a new school, and a new style of teaching. I'm teaching 4th grade for the first time. My school rotates the kiddos just like junior high. I am in charge of Social Studies. In Texas 4th grade Social Studies is Texas history. The first two days we kept our own homeroom. Once the kiddos started rotating we spent 2 days setting up our notebooks. It didn't cross my mind to grab pictures of the set up. I planned to spend the week on procedures and routines. We did one lesson on listening and practiced using our journal. Then I decided that this group did not need any more behavior lessons.

Overall, they are all pretty good. My first block is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G I wish I could keep them all day. So quiet and such hard thoughtful workers. I have 5 blocks total and really only 1 makes me work extra. I'll take that! Since they were so well behaved I knew I wanted to do something fun on Friday. But it wasn't in my plans so and I was drawing a blank. I went to bed thinking and thinking. Then BAM in the middle of the night in my sleep I dreamt of what to do in class. I got to work a little early and printed out what I needed. I had some super sweet girls (love them already) in my homeroom help me cut before the tardy bell rang.

We did a lesson on our Texas BK(background knowledge). We had a discussion on what we already knew about Texas. I listed the topics as they named them. I left them up just in case they needed a reminder while they were working. They had to write four things they had in their Texas BK and then draw pictures of things that had to do with Texas and label them. I took a picture of my example and then I started to notice the kiddos notebooks. They did such a great job. Their artwork was so cute! I totally didn't need mine. So then I took pictures of some examples from block 1 and block 2. I asked their permission to blog them and the agreed. :) I just printed out 10 copies of the state outline and they traced and passed and began to work. The kids had so much fun with this! One of my sweet girls even asked me if this idea came from pinterest. HA! I told her nope but I will definitely pin it. This would work with any state! I hope this helps someone out there in blog land. Happy Teaching. :)

 

I'm going to link the post with Tara at 4th grade Frolics and Kelly at Teaching Fourth to share with lots of teacher friends.