Have You Checked Out Mathwire?

Now I might be late to this party, but you are all invited. I found mathwire through some pinterest boards and I've been there for about an hour. It has a collection of games and activities organized by standards and grade levels, and seasonal ideas as well. Several of the ideas cover multiple standards, so you can get extras bang for your ...I was going to say buck but it's free.
Some of my favorites to get you interested

• m & m probability game works on addition

I Have cards for 2 x 4 labels in place value, money, and operations

templates for repeated practice, laminate or place in communicator sleeves


I am on break. Even better, my big Easter fair was this morning and it is over. My church is small and for us to open up to the community and have 25-30 children participating in an an event requires planning and support. We made Easter bunnies using styrofoam balls, pipe cleaners, pompoms, and wiggle eyes, birds nests using brown paper bags, craft glue, sticks, and Spanish moss, decorated eggs using crayons on warm eggs (back to that in a minute) and sticky flowers with tissue paper squares
(pictures soon).  We hid over 1,016 eggs and had to give the kids second baskets since several of them had over 80 eggs! Hotdogs and sloppy joes inside, then sack races, parachute games, and hula hoop games outside.
Back to the eggs. Crayon wax melts GREAT on hot eggs from water that had been near boiling. Boiled eggs in a crockpot on high was not hot enough to melt the wax. Teacher minds unite-- how can I keep the eggs really hot without keeping them on the stove in boiling water?  This might also be good for big river rocks to get decorated for paperweights. The wax would wash off in a garden environment, but there have to be other uses for crayons at this winding down time of the year.


I am looking forward to calmly planning/ grading /cleaning/ blogging/ pinboard surfing /laundry:(/relaxing? over the next week.

TBA is almost one year old so they are having a giveaway. Go over and enter.
http://www.teachingblogaddict.com/2012/03/celebrating-tbas-1st-birthday-with.html#more

The Talk

We had the Talk today. 3:00 everyone was called to the media center.
Next year we are down a second grade ( my grade) and up one first and one third.
So anyone that wants to retire or transfer had better speak up now.
One of my teammates kinda volunteered to move up or down. She hasn't been holding on to things this year and getting them organized.
We spoke up for my amazing student teacher from last year. And a current long-term sub.
The principal will let us know who she is moving after spring break.
I don't want to switch again yet.
Is your staff pretty settled, or do you get moved to promote your growth?  After many years in third grade, I didn't want to teach the same stories one more year. I was ready for a switch. I wasn't done fifth grade when I was moved. I do not want to switch unitl I've had at least one year of reteaching a math or reading program. Is that lazy?
Hopefully I do not have to post about this after spring break.

One kid had his meds refilled. Today was WAY better than yesterday. Everyone went home on green and I didn't have a headache. Happy teacher.

Hunger Games

Just got back from the movies. My daughter and her fifth grade friend were slightly disappointed because they wanted more details from the book in the movie. My husband was trying to explain that they couldn't tell every detail but they need to get the key points across. My second grade son laughed at the kissing and covered his eyes and held my hand for the dog scene.  He hopes to be able to read book 1 and 2 before the second movie comes out. And it is also set up for elements of the third book to be turned into a movie. I wonder how much they will make this weekend.

Spring is in the Air

We're going on our field trip tomorrow, which means lots of parent visitors in the building. I convinced my teammates to take down Seuss day projects for two reasons.
1. We're a bit past his birthday.
2. I wanted to hog the wall!
Our current unit in Treasures is Growing and Changing., and I wanted to do something spring-y.  We've been noticing so much academic growth lately that I wanted the kids to get a chance to show off how they have changed. I can't type too much longer because I am so excited.

I dragged my two children to the grocery story at 6:50 am (we're an early school) to buy the cupcake liners for the middle of the daffodils.The petals each tell a growth or change, and the flowers are taped on the wall to show the child's actual height.
I'm getting ready to put the organizer and printables together. Look for this as a freebie in the stores later tonight!

Spring Freebie! Tell Everybody!

28 is good.
It's a nice number.
I trust you are all wonderful people.

Can you help some more wonderful people find me? I am offering a spring freebie for suffixes, a memory match game for words with the suffixes -ing, -less, -ful and -est. It's cute, quick and easy to laminate and cut up, and it might help one or two of your babies say, "Oh! That's what those suffixes mean!"  Tell me they don't. After you've taught it for WEEKS.  Maybe this will help.
I'd appreciate comments here and any wonderful people you know are also welcome to download or join us wonderful people.  I have turned off word verification if that is extra motivation for comments. And this download might save you some of your personal time so you can go out and enjoy the beautiful spring weather.

Click here for Duck, Duck, Caboose Memory Game Freebie

Good News, Sad News, Sad News, Good News

I haven't done a very good job of posting- or commenting on your blogs either- lately.  L:ast week was busy, but at least we had an amazing sub (my old student teacher) for Thursday and Friday. We have her in again for this week. We are giving her the page from the planbook, and she is going to teach. We don't have to write up sub plans!!!
Not too long ago, I posted about a teammate whose mother had cancer in three systems. Last week was her second week in the hospital, ans she passed away Friday morning.  My teammate doesn't like hugs. It's been almost exactly a year since her grandmother passed away.We are lucky to have wonderful supportive people in our lives but we miss them so much when they go on. I'm gonna hug her anyway.
The teaching assistant in my classroom that assists with my behaviorally challenged friends lost a pregnancy at the end of last week as well. There are two other staff members who are also pregnant and the three of them had been comparing symptoms. She will also have a hard week.

The weather has been beautiful. I think we are beyond any hope of snow. The crocuses have bloomed, the daffodils have bloomed, and yesterday I even saw irises blooming. In Maryland? In March?  We are still two weeks away from our spring break.  This week we are headed to the Natural History Museum to check out the rocks and dinosaurs. We went last year, and some of the exhibits downstairs had me totatlly lost. Hopefully I do better this year.  I think we might be a little early for the cherry blossoms, but we can hope. Have a great Monday!  I will try to get around this week.

Is it Friday Yet?

We've split classes all three days so far this week.  After we each took a day to write the sub plans for the classroom without a sub. Every night they tell us there will be a sub, and every morning there isn't. Did I mention we are then spending our planning period splitting papers and checking with the other classes to see how far they made it in case the class gets to really have class tomorrow?
The first day while I was moving furniture,  I told my kids we're having friends over. The second day they asked if we were having friends over as I rearranged the furniture. This morning one not-so-happy guy actually growled when our "friends" joined us .
It's also over 70 degrees, and that's before the extra body heat.
Tomorrow is my day to provide sub plans again, so I figured they needed something different to have extra practice graphing so...Spring Count, Tally, and Graph. Currently only at TpT.
There better be a sub.

I'm feeling vicious.