Story Snapshot Writing Activity

Take a look at my Story Snapshot Writing Center.

I've never figured out how to manage free for all magazine cut and paste in my classroom.

For one, some of the ads or articles your kiddos may run across as they cut and clip are not classroom appropriate.

So I did the prepping ahead of time.

I used magazines and the "teacher junk mail" packs for sources to get clip happy.

I glued pictures down to backing and laminated them.

Now I have a creative and reuseable "Story Snapshot" writing center.

Who wouldn't want to write about an elephant in a jar?

Fun story starters for the boys

Here's the writing sheet I plan to use

Click picture to download

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Swat It Games Giveaway

Click pictures to view

So my Dollar Tree shopping spree landed me with these Jumbo fly swatters.

My first thought was that these were some overkill fly swatters for a tiny fly.

But I'm not using them to kill flies.

I'm using them for my Swat It team games.

More games to come too! I'm working on one for place value as well as Sight Word sets. So go grab your Jumbo Swatters!

Display the concept cards on your board, split into teams, and call off questions.

Teams have a swatting good time to hit the answers first!

I'm having a giveaway for these games

1 winner will win all 8 games I've made so far

7 winners will get to choose 1 game of their choice

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Puppy Cam Paradise

I've been having so much fun watching this service puppy cam.

Holly's Half Dozen is part of the Warrior Canine Connection.

These Golden Retriever pups will eventually be service dogs to verterans with mobility difficulties.

I'm in puppy love

This litter was born on June 24th

Click on the picture to go to the live camera

Speaking of dogs, you can have some writing fun with my Dog Writing Pack

Bottle Cap Math Game Activities

My project today was to make more Bottle Cap Math sets.

If you want to read my original introduction post about my Bottle Cap math product look HERE.

This is a popular center in my classroom so I wanted to make multiple sets with the collection of caps I lugged home for summer break prep. 

First, I sorted all the different style caps and threw out the ones I didn't like. I'm picky like that.

I tried to keep the same color whites together as well as kept in mind the cap heights.

Then I broke out all my colored Sharpie pens and went to work. 

I suggest that you use different colors as much as possible to help separate sets.

Light colors like yellow and orange don't show well on the caps from my experience.

I labeled caps with a variety of numbers. Some were simply numbered 0-9 and others depending on the skill were 2 or 3 digit numbers. The best part about many of the worksheets are they are open ended and you can add more numbers or change them out as needed.

I also printed up the Bottle Cap concept worksheets and laminated them for yearly reuse.

Concepts include place value, rounding, sequencing, fractions, skip counting, probability, measuring, multiplication, and addition and subtraction

Here are game sets in action

You can get any of the sets {HERE}

Comparing Numbers

Place Value

Sequencing Before and After

Rounding

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Spin a Frame Probability Math Activity

Here's my touch of creativity for probability lessons.

It's a Spin a Frame!

This idea came from a simple motion picture frame like this

I made clip art frames to fit each of the 9 frames and it becomes an instant probability center.

Students spin each frame to explore data and outcomes.

I plan to interchange my clip art for year long practice.

What do you think?

I even posted the freebies for you in case you want them.

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Harley on Vacation

Okay folks. Here are some Harley highlights from my Utah mountain vacation.

Lounging on the deck. This is his 3rd year to my parent's cabin.

The first year he literally belly crawled across the deck to get inside the cabin.

He has now progressed to walking normally on it, but he still will not walk over the snow grate you see in this picture.

Watching the kids target shooting with their bows

Getting in some reading

Creek that runs right below the cabin

Wading in the creek

Trying to coax Harley down the stairs. He has yet to do it. Which made me have to go outside and around downstairs with a flashnight each night to get to bed.

We found he loves Ginger Snaps, so we placed pieces on the stair steps, but would only creep to the first step and come back up.

He wants the Ginger Snap so bad.

He FINALLY conquered his fear over the steps on our last day.

Going fishing on the lake was another new event. He did not quite like the swaying dock.

My family fishing trip was something else. We called ourselves the dork family, because everything that could go wrong did. My nephew's job was to remember the worms and marshmallows for bait and guess what we showed up without? Yep the worms and marshmallows. The owner of the boat place gave us complimentary worms thank goodness. Then my niece hooked a fish but proceeded to get it caught up on the anchor, which involved literally 5 of us to help untangle. She We got the fish though!

That's all until Harley's next year!

Skee Ball School Style

One of my favorite childhood games was Skee Ball.

I could spend hours upon hours playing it at the beach arcades during summer to collect as many tickets as I possibly could manage.

So I made a school style Skee Ball for PE.
I made 3 sets, as I plan to use them relay team style. Each student on the team will toss a tennis ball into the marked buckets. At the end of each round teams will total their point value using white boards.

This would also be a great summer party game too.

The red, white, and blue tubs came from Dollar Tree.

I laminated the numbered labels to then hot glue onto painted clothespins.

Wala! Just clip the pins to the tubs and play SkeeBall to your heart's content!

Here's an online SkeeBall version too!

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I recently started a Facebook Group for teachers to share ideas, questions, and inspiration. 

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