Snow Beautiful

Well, it's a sunny 75% in California and I just got back from walking Harley.

He's decked out in bells and jingled all the way on our walk.

Since snow is a rare occurrence here I wanted some holiday inspiration.

"Snow" Beautiful

Falling Snow from Matt S on Vimeo.

Wishing everyone a wonderful holiday!

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Happy Turkey Day

Happy Turkey Day Song!

Click to listen:

Boy my Thanksgiving this year has me feeling like I'm running around with my head cut off.

To give some background, my family dinner is postponed this year until Sunday since my mom and dad are out of town. And since they've always cooked the turkey no one else wanted to take on that job. My ONLY job today was to take the turkey out of MY freezer and drive it over to their house to thaw out in their fridge for the next few days. Sounds simple, but not really. Yesterday my automatic garage door was acting up and not shutting properly, so I put it into manual mode.  So I got up this morning, put the frozen turkey in my car, manually lifted up the door, pulled my car out and then the trouble started. I got out of the car to pull the door back down and my middle finger got caught and pinched in the now closed garage door. I was literally stuck to the garage door. I started hollering for help like crazy.

Luckily some volunteer workers for the annual Turkey Trot heard my ruckus and I told them to call 911. After what seemed like forever a police officer saved the day and pulled up the garage door and I was released. Now I'm nursing a big, fat bruised finger and I REFUSE to park my car back in the garage until I can get someone to figure out how to get my garage door to work properly. Said car is sitting in my driveway and I'm icing my finger.

Hope everybody else's Turkey Day was a little less hectic.

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Teaching about Immigration, Ellis Island and Today's Pilgrims

My class just finished an in depth author study of Patricia Polacco.

We learned how her family immigrated to the U.S. from Russia.

I read the book Coming to America to teach more about the immigration process.

Then we explored Scholastic's site on immigrants which includes video clips of immigrant children today as well as background on Ellis Island.

Finally, we connected Patricia Polacco's family history of being Russian immigrants to the novel Molly's Pilgrim. A video is available for the story too that we compared the book to.

View a video clip

To wrap up our pilgrim and immigration focus students made their own Molly's Pilgrim doll.

 

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Classroom Management: Tips for Keeping Kids on Track

I posted over at All Things Upper Elementary today about ways help students stay focused and on track.

Pop on over to read more

~Enjoy

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Happy Birthday Harley

My Harley is 9 years old today so he got some special treats.

I got him Biscotti biscuits with chicken and cranberries

Also did you know that Chick-Fil-A hands out dog treats?

I had Harley in the back seat the other day when I went through Chick-Fil-A drive thru.

The cashier saw him and offered me a biscuit.

Since Chick-Fil-A is closed on Sundays, I couldn't treat Harley to that on his birthday, but maybe I'll take him tomorrow.

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California Dreamin: California Regions

I just love this California Region song

What a perfect way to learn about the central valley, mountains, coast and desert regions of the Golden State.

Even Harley loves cruisin' California!

A good car ride makes a dog's life.

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The Elements

I'm soon to be wrapping up a science unit on matter.

One of the final lessons on elements, compounds and mixtures is more difficult to grasp.

So I turned to finding these catchy songs as a resource:

The Periodic Table Song

My students couldn't get enough of listening to These Are the Elements Song

Study Jams also had a quick video on compounds and mixtures

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Memoir Text

I read a wonderful memoir text to my students this week written by Lester Laminack. It's titled Saturdays and Teacakes which tells the author's memories of his Saturdays spent in the south with his mammaw. The book is filled with vivid vocabulary and descriptions of their "Every Saturday" events:

having hot biscuits with Golden Eagle Syrup, mowing the lawn, picking tomatoes for sandwiches, sitting in the glider that goes criick, crack (great for teaching onomatopoeia), and best of all making tea cakes. After reading and discussing the special relationship between Lester and his mammaw I showed my class this video retelling

A great follow up with this story is to share about the history and background of teacakes.

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In Rememberance

Birthdays Celebrations in the Classroom

Just sharing how I'm recognizing my students' birthdays in a quick but fun way this year.

The past few years my school put into place a No Food treats school birthday policy, which I do like because one year, on the same day, I had 2 sets of cupcakes dropped off unannounced and a whole sheet cake to slice up and serve from 3 separate families. YIKES, talk about sugar overload and interruption of instructional time.

My solution to still giving a bit of attention to birthdays is using this Ice Cream and Cake dance song on each students' birthday. It gets the kids' attention and celebrates the birthday girl/boy in a fun way.

Click picture for  Ice Cream and Cake song

 Happy Birthday Mice (another option)

 I print and label this free birthday calendar graph from Scholastic to keep track of every birthday so we can celebrate it Ice Cream and Cake style.

Now, I'm off to call my mom because it is her birthday today.

~Enjoy

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