End of the Year Awards Ceremony and Giveaway reminder

Taking a bow after "fashion walking"
down the red carpet!

Friday was such a fun filled day at school that it really flew by! We started the morning off with our Classroom Awards Ceremony and ended with the 5th grade carnival.  

For the awards ceremony, I like to get a length of red butcher paper and "roll out the red carpet" for the students to walk down as they come to collect their awards. They usually end up dancing down the runway and high-fiving each other on their way back to their seats on either side of the paper.

Click this image to get your own set of awards!

I use my "End of Year Awards Certificates" from my TpT store. There are 48 different awards and they're all in black and white for easy printing. They feature vintage style pictures that the kids get a kick out of, and there is literally an award for everyone. The kids love having their hard work recognized with awards like "The Hypnotist Award" for the student who writes the most compelling persuasive pieces, or the "Hermione Award" for the best girl speller in the class. (Get it?!) 

But some of the awards are silly and poke a little fun at the kids. My favorites are the "Cold Seat Award" for the student who is never sitting in his/her chair, the "Tiny Bladder Award" for the kiddo who makes more trips to the bathroom than should be humanly possible, and the "Chicken Scratch Award" for the kid whose handwriting is pretty much unreadable. Of course I try to make sure that everyone gets at least one serious award and one silly one. 

I'm still excited about my 100 Follower Giveaway that is still going on! If you haven't already, be sure to scroll on down and sign up for a chance to win! I've got 4 different giveaways going on, and a runner-up will win a surprise from my TpT store, so along with the 4 prize packs, there will be 4 more winners!

Ridiculously cute.

In other news...check out my new neighbors! 

BEARS! 

These guys have been hanging out in the trees in our neighborhood for the last week or so. This city boy isn't used to seeing actual live bears living a block away from his house. You definitely don't see this living in Atlanta. Crazy! Just one of the charms of living in a sleepy college town in central Pennsylvania, I suppose!

Mama is somewhat less cute and quite a bit scarier!

Today I'll be heading up to my classroom and spending my Saturday finishing up my packing and starting the move to my new 3rd/4th grade multi-age classroom! I was SUPER lucky because the teacher who is leaving the room has already moved out and is super clean and thoughtful. She's leaving a ton of great supplies and resources too. This is a first for me. I'm used to having to dig through leftovers or scrounge for supplies in boxes in a supply closet. Pretty much every time I've moved classrooms I've inherited an empty room.

Still one and a half days to go! Monday is Field Day and Tuesday is a half day school-wide assembly...so the teaching is pretty much over for the year! Summer, here I come!

Clipart Challenge!

Several fabulous clipartists and bloggers have come together for an amazing Clipart Challenge hosted by Primary Possibilities!  Each blogger is featuring a clipartist and a product they made using that artist's images!  This is a great way to discover new clipart creators for your summer creations.   So keep reading and following the linky at the bottom to head on to the next post!  You may even pick up some freebies along the way!

I was matched up with Oddball Science! 
Click the image below to visit his TpT store!

I decided to harken back to my years as a Kindergarten and First grade teacher and make this fun little packet of Frog Life Cycle activities! His frog and wetland habitat clipart packs were a perfect fit, and the item I made is a great partner to his "Let's look at frogs" pack.

There are a lot of other unique packs to be found on Oddball Science's TpT store too, be sure to go and check him and the other clipartists in the linky out!

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Don't forget to keep scrolling down and sign up for my 100 Follower Giveaway! Lots of great products are up for grabs!

100 Follower Giveaway!

I'm pretty excited about reaching 100 followers, and I'm also pretty excited about this giveaway! I was almost overwhelmed with the response I got for donations, which was really great. I thought it made the most sense to split the donations into grade level categories. More winners that way, and hopefully people will be directed to blogs and stores that actually interest them! We've got K-12 covered here! 

The worst part of setting up a giveaway like this is seeing all the great prizes that someone else is going to win and being jealous of them! 

Seriously though, I hope you'll check out all the blogs, facebook pages and TpT stores of the people who were gracious enough to contribute. I'll also be contributing a surprise from my store to the winners and a runner-up of each of the giveaways! So even if you don't win the big prizes, you still have a chance to get a little something! So without further ado...start entering!

 a Rafflecopter giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thanks so much for taking part in the giveaway! 200, here we come?!

We're wrapping up the school year here! Just 3 and a half days with kids left! I'm packing my room up like crazy in preparation for my big move, and we're having lots of fun at school! I'll be back to post about all of that later this weekend!

Monday Made It, June Currently and 100 Follower Giveaway Soon!

First, I'm linking up with 4th Grade Frolics' Monday Made It linky!

So my Monday Made It is actually something I've been working on for a while with the help of my brother, but I did finish it today. I'm a big fan of old movie monsters, and one night I was trying to fall asleep and I had a thought...why not have Monster Math Fights? So I came up with this:

 Basically, this is a bracketed tournament of "monster battles." Each day two movie monsters will do "battle" by solving math problems. There are 32 different monsters!

For this first tournament, each battle consists of 5 rounds of 2-digit addition problems (with and without regrouping). The monster with the highest sum for each round, wins that round. The monster with the most rounds won, moves on to the next battle!

There are 31 battles in the tournament, with 10 math problems on each battle worksheet. That's 31 days (310 problems) of fun math practice! 

These worksheets could be used as morning work, small independent math group work, or as a fun way to start off math each day.

Full color monster cards are included to post on your board so students know who will be doing battle that day. A blank bracket, and a tournament key bracket are included as well!

Students are really motivated by this activity, and have begged for more tournaments in the future! I'm planning to make more with different math skills.

This activity is Common Core aligned too!
CCSS.Math.Content.2.NBT.B.5
CCSS.Math.Content.2.NBT.B.6

Find the first of my Monster Battle sets here on my TpT store:

The Monster Clip Art I used is courtesy of Peter Reitz (my bro!) and can be found here:

Even though I'm late to the party, I figured I'd throw out my June Currently, from Oh'Boy 4th Grade! Click on my currently, to head over to Farley's blog to see the others!

Finally, I'm at 99 followers! Woohoo! I'm preparing for a 100 follower giveaway! If you're willing to donate something for the giveaway then head on over to my googledoc sign up sheet:

Click here to sign up to donate!

It has been a crazy busy week! This is our final full week of school, but we also have Field Day next Monday and then a half day next Tuesday! Meanwhile, I'm busy packing up my classroom and getting all of my other end of year stuff done! I'm hoping to be back later this week with an update on some of our fun activities...and maybe if one more lovely person out there stumbles this way, a 100 follower giveaway!

Five for Friday, Big News and My June Goals

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching's Five for Friday for the first time! Of course I've seen lots of others link up before, but I've just never had 5 things to talk about before I guess!
So, here we go with #1!

We've been popping a balloon each day with a couple of surprises inside for the next day. This week we had a PJ day, a Rock, Paper, Scissors Tournament, played some minute to win it games, wrote thank you notes to support staff, had lunch outside, made balloon rockets, and a few other fun things. The kids are excited, and popping a balloon before we leave each day requires "excellent behavior" for that day.
And, #2!

My kids having been wrapping up what I call their "Personal Passion Projects." It's our multi-genre culminating writing project. I have the kids pick a "people problem" and then make a 'zine about their topic. They have time to research and complete control over the topic as long as it is a "people problem." They make some pretty killer end-products, and their presentations about their 'zines are usually pretty awesome too. My kids this year have chosen topics like dog fighting, breast cancer, frakking, modern slave labor, etc. 
Here's a freebie copy of the rubric I give them. Most of the kids are so excited about their topic that they go overboard and work on it at home as much as at school!
#3!

I decided to take this ol' blog up a notch! I have been pretty proud of my patchwork self-made blog design that I've had going on here for the last couple months, but I think it is time for an upgrade! So I've sought the help of A Bird in Hand Blog Designs! Many of my favorite blogs have been designed by her, so I'm going to challenge her with designing a blog for a man (who's only kind of manly) that teaches elementary! I'm on the list for an upgrade in mid-June! I can hardly wait!
A linky within a linky for #4!
I'm linking up with I {heart} Recess for her June Goals linky! Here are my goals!

And the BIG one for #5!

An opening appeared in our school for an intermediate teacher, and I put in my request for it a while back. My principal has honored my request to change grade levels! 
I'll be moving to a 3rd and 4th grade multi-age class next year! I got to meet next year's 3rd graders today!
Before moving to 5th grade last year to fill the spot of a teacher who moved, I had previously taught K, 1st and 2nd for the previous ten years. 5th grade has its charms, but my heart is with the younger grades. I think 3/4 will be a really great fit for me and the science and social studies units we teach in intermediate here are awesome. The units change every other year. Next year we'll be teaching Africa, Japan and Festival of the Arts for Social Studies. Ecosystems, Air/Weather/Aviation, and Energy and Electricity will make up Science! I taught a Japan unit for years in GA as part of 2nd grade and I think it is probably my favorite unit ever.
I am beyond excited about the move. Learning two grade levels worth of curriculum and teaching two grades at the same time will be interesting, but I taught a 1st/2nd multi-age class for the 5 years before I moved to 5th so I know I can handle it. 
So now I need to go find about a hundred boxes to pack up my classroom, AND I get to dig through my spare bedroom and pick out all of the things from my 2nd grade boxes that I think I will be able to use with my thirdies! 
So, any exciting changes coming for the rest of you out there?

Tried it Tuesday and What I'll do differently!

I've got two this time!
So, I've tried the old shaving cream on the desk routine before, but not with 5th graders until today. 

 As I somewhat anticipated, some of the kids took it a step further than they needed to. Before I knew it these three had smeared the shaving cream all over their faces to make beards. Usually I'd cover my kids' faces on here, but that would have defeated the purpose of this picture, so I got permission for this one. The kiddo in the middle told me he was Santa Claus and that "he sees me when I'm sleeping." It cracked me up so much because it was SUPER creepy when he said it and he wasn't trying to be creepy. 

So, my second one is my Human Body Systems lapbook activity. The kids have been studying the human body for the last few weeks and we've been keeping KLEW charts inside the flaps. 

We learn about a new system every couple days. I've been doing a series of cool experiments, watching Brainpop clips, reading informational texts, and of course having class discussions to go along with the lapbooks.  The kids have learned a lot and have come up with a lot of great wonderings. I think the best part of the lapbook has been that they've got a place to record their wonderings.

Find the lapbook in my TpT store:

Finally, I'm linking up with the brand new "What will you do differently?" linky from joyin6th! 

I was a little late to the party when it comes to using task cards in my classroom, I think. Though I think I'm the only teacher in my school who uses them. Reading a thousand blogs has its advantages I suppose! I've blogged before about how I've used task cards to great effect since I learned about them, and I'm looking forward to making a set of them for all of the math units I'll be teaching next year. I want to use them throughout the year as part of my math workshop. They make a great independent center.

In other unrelated life news, I'm officially down 17 pounds since I started trying to lose weight 6 weeks or so ago! I'm pretty excited. It's crazy how I don't even crave or want some of the bad foods that I used to snack on with reckless abandon. I'm looking to make even more progress over the summer!
I've also got a bunch of great TpT products in the works that I'm super excited about. One of the big ones is one I'm working on collaboratively with my brother! He's a high school English teacher in GA, and also happens to be an awesome artist. I've told him all about the unexpected success I've seen with my TpT store and he has decided to set one up himself  for his secondary lit resources and to start working on clip art! The stuff he's made me for my current project is just ridiculously good and I see lots of cha-chings in his future as a clip artist. 
Whelp, 9 days of school to go! Still trying not to be too jealous as I read everyone else's posts about summer!

Social Studies Mentor Text Linky

I know, two posts in a day is taboo...but they're both short ones!

I'm linking up with Collaboration Cuties' Mentor Text Memo Linky. This week they're looking at historical fiction texts. 

When I was a kid the biggest fad in books were these fun and weird "Choose your own adventure" books. I think I must have read 30 or 40 of them. I still have some in my classroom now! I loved reading through and seeing all the different endings. 

Well, some smart people have taken this idea and applied it to historical fiction! 

I read this one on Colonial America to my kids earlier this year and they loved it. I have several books from the series. Each book comes with 3 or 4 different stories from that era. They have these books for everything from Ancient Egypt to the Titanic. 

Usually the kids beg me to "go back in time" and read the story over again from the last choice...just like I did as a kid. 

The stories in the books are interesting, accessible, and historically accurate. I'll definitely be looking to add more of these to my library in the future. 

Check out some of the other books in the linky! I see some of my other favorites there already!