Fraction Sundaes....Yum! Yum!

Amy Lemons has done it again! She is the creative genius behind the winter people craftivity from my last post. Well, this time I purchased her fraction sundae from Teachers Pay Teachers. This awesome project takes a potentially difficult concept to understand ( fractions) and puts it into a concrete, 2nd grade friendly concept- ice cream! You can find the sundae's here : http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Amy-Lemons. I highly recomend you follow her store. She is incredibley creative and crafty!

Now the prep for this was a bit time consuming. I took the ice cream template and traced it onto the colors I wanted to represent the different ice creams. This way it was more uniform...and when I say I did it I really mean I made my younger brother and his girlfriend help me while we watched PLL. :)

I also traced the bowls on a solid color. But for the label and the recording sheet  I simply copied them onto colored paper on our school printers. You could have the kids decorate their own but I thought that might get too time consuming and be to busy with color when displayed.

Once the sundaes were put together, I modeled for the kiddo's how to fill out the recording sheet and then I had them do their own. EVERY SINGLE ONE got 100%.  ( I even had some of my Special Ed. math students do it as well.)

Here is a shot of all of them on our Work We Love board. I love the color. I think they will be up for awhile!

Chasing Away the Winter Blah's

I love winter and I love snow...especially this year since it took it's sweet time getting here! But even I can sometimes forget that I love them when I am freezing cold and scraping my car off after a long day at school... Anyways, after discovering Pinterest I discovered a site called Teacher's Pay Teacher's. It is a genuis site where teachers can post cute things they have created and other teachers can buy it from them.


This site makes me feel incredibley excited and super uncreative all at the same time. I can barely function on a computer enough to run this blog. I don't know how/have the time/ have the patience to come up with these things myself, so TPT is a godsend...even if I do sometimes feel a little bad about myself in the process. :)


One person who I particularly love is Amy Lemons. She is a 2nd grade teacher in Texas and she has a REALLY great blog. You can follow it here http://stepintosecondgrade.blogspot.com/ and an equally great TPT store which you can find here http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Amy-Lemons. And that is where I found this adorable winter writing craftivity for Project Friday.

A hallway shot

An up close view

First we created the people. The template that I needed was included in the download. I had the kiddo's cut out and color their winter person and glue it on to their choice of colored construction paper. Then we did a writing activity. There were 4 different topic choices which were all about winter. There was: My Snowy Day, In the Winter I..., My Winter Story, and I Like Winter Because... We did a quick writing process activity with it and I had them do a pre-write and edit because I wanted their best work for the hallway. They did a great job with them and they really brightened up our little corner of the school.

Simple Machines Projects Are Simply Marvelous

5 years ago when I first started teaching we had the kiddo's do these great simple machine projects for our forces and motion unit. They needed to create a working simple machine of some kind. It needed to have at least one simple machine system ( wheel and axle, lever, screw, pulley, wedge,  or inclined plane) but could definitely have more than one. Then we got new textbooks the year after that and the forces and motion unit got changed.


Enter this past summer and our schools yearly teacher institute. My teaching partners and I decided to revamp our science and social studies curriculum into project based learning. And, yay!, in the forces and motion unit we included a simple machines project. My kiddo's really outdid themselves with these. Here are a few photo's of some of the projects.

J's inclined plane ball toy ( made from a ruler, a paper towel roll, and tape).

A's original pulley/wheel and axle. Then she made a bigger pulley system on her bunkbed so her sister could pass things up to her! This was one of my favorite projects.

J's tinker toy pulley system.

M's screw and pulley system. Of course it is pulling her favorite thing...horses!

J's pulley table.

L's car ramp. This was another very original one.

A shot of a bunch of the projects in the hallway ourside our room. I love this unit and can't wait to see what the kiddo's create next year!

Divine Pin-spiration: My Winter Bulletin Board

Found this little gem on Pinterest. I got it from bulletinboardideas.org but they got it from daniellesplace.com. So thank you to both places I guess. :) Last year we got this purple bulletin board paper and it really pops! ( This picture makes it look a little flat.) I have a really beautiful border with snowflakes that matches perfectly. When we have some free time I have been letting one or two kiddo's choose a snowflake to write on something that we have learned about recently. Then they cut it out and get to put it on our bulletin board. They enjoy being able to be in charge of the hallway board and I enjoy not having to change it up until March. :) Being a perfectionist makes changing a board a time consuming activity. I think they are doing a great job though. Dont you?

"I'm in Love! I'm in Love and I Don't Care Who Knows It!"

Did you catch my Elf movie reference in the title? Have I mentioned I how much I love Christmas? :)


Well, I have a new love and it is called the wonderful world of Pinterest and I am OBSESSED! I have seen people post things on Facebook before and wondered what in the world this "pinning" thing was all about. I have seen the light! I saw this estimation station on there and pinned it. Then made it and now I am sharing it! It's from the blog First Grade Parade. You can find the link here : http://thefirstgradeparade.blogspot.com/2010/09/estimation-station.html to see the original one.

To make mine I took a piece of posterboard and cut it in half. Then because the theme of my room is an Ocean/Beach one I freaked out when I found these cool wave borders, which I put all the way around the edge. I used big stickers to spell out estimation station and left a big blank space underneath for the kiddo's to put their estimate. In the litle blue tub below the poster is the container for items to be estimated,  a couple of pencils, and some sticky notes. At Math Station time the kiddo's can look in the container and make an estimate of how many items they think are in there. They will write their name and estimate on a post it note and stick it to the poster board. On Friday, we will count the items in the container and then go over the estimates that have been posted. The person who comes the closest will get a sticker for their rewards chart. I can't wait to try this out! I think it will really help because our 2nd grade kiddo's consistantly struggle with estimation, so that is an area I wanted to really focus on this year.

I love you Pinterest! I am so glad you exist! You are going to change my classroom and my life! :)

Snowman Math Facts

Well, FINALLY these are done! I had the kiddo's color these BEFORE Christmas break and it's almost February and I am just now putting them out for Math Stations. I got this snowman picture from a Scholastic holiday's book but you could do the same thing with some clip art or even have the kids draw their own. After the kiddo's colored them I laminated them and cut them out. Then I taped a craft stick on the back. I found the "ice blocks" at the Dollar Store ( LOVE!). They are for flower arrangements but I thought they would hold the snowmen well, stand up to some repeated use, and look like they were stuck in a block of ice. They have become a hot commodity at Math Station time.

Snowman Stainglass

This is a cute craft we did for project Friday. I ordered snowman dyecuts from our REMC provider to make these.  They also have a mitten and a snowflake that I thought would be cute but they weren't available. ( Guess I will have to order earlier next time.) So I gave the kids choice through the color of their construction paper.

You will need construction paper ( in seasonal colors), wax paper, tissue paper, and a glue stick ( not pictured).
Fold the construction paper in half and cut out your image.

Glue the pieces of tissue paper onto the wax paper.

You want to overlap the peices of tissue paper to create a stainglass effect.

Trim down the wax paper to fit inside of the construction paper and then glue the two sides together.

Then hang the finished product up in a window. The wax paper allows the light to shine through just like a pane of glass would. I hung these up at the end of our hallway so everyone could enjoy them.