February Classroom Decor FREEBIE

The dawn of a new month means it's time for new decor.  This product is FREE and it offers lots of fun, February decorations.

Try this bulletin board math center:

The center is open-ended and easily differentiated, making it perfect for any elementary classroom. It is similar to Boogle(TM) for numbers. Using adjacent numbers, students are challenged to reach the target number in as many ways as possible. You post the operation symbols appropriate for your learners and change the target number as often as you choose. Critical thinking and fluency are exercised along with computation skills. And, this display is good for the whole month!

How Many Ways? makes a wonderful anchor activity, math center, fast finishers' challenge, and/or enrichment project. 

100th Day of School FREEBIE!

It's about time for the 100th day of school and that's cause for celebration!  I have a FREEBIE to help you with this special day:

There are 4 poems in Poetry Possibilities -- 100th Day of School Edition. Each poem has a teaching point related to poetry and teaching possibilities from multiple disciplines that are custom designed for it. For example:

Learn more about this unit from this video:

Enjoy the 100th day!

You may also like:

IT'S ABOUT TIME FOR GROUNDHOG DAY FREEBIES!

Although February is the shortest month, it is surely packed with more holiday and seasonal topics than any other month.  It starts off with Groundhog Day.

Bring the celebration to your students with these FREEBIES:

SCRATTLE is fun activity that is packed with learning.  Similar to SCRABBLETM, learners will make words from a set of letters.  But what makes this more fun, and more importantly, elicits more learning, is that scores are not simply the result of addition.  This DIFFERENTIATED center can combine addition, subtraction, and/or multiplication.  You choose which recording sheet is most appropriate for your students.

But wait, ...

there's more ...

After making their words, children engage in a BATTLE with a friend (or 2).  They will compare their words, determining who has the most high value words.  Prepare to be amazed. After the 1st battle, your learners will be clamoring to have a do-over. Suddenly, all of those easy, high frequency words will be eschewed for vocabulary that yields higher scores.  It makes my teacher heart swell when I see my kiddos start exercising their vocabularies and begin to strategize how to get ever higher scores.

This video may make this activity easier to understand:

For more Groundhog Day fun, try Hink Pinks, Hinky Pinkies, and Hinkity Pinkities.  

These task cards challenge your students to problem solve while applying vocabulary skills, such as synonyms, parts of speech, rhymes, definitions, and syllables.  You can almost see the cogs turning in their brains as they determine the 2 word answers to these riddles. 

Did I mention this product is FREE???

Here's a video to entice you...

My students literally beg to do Hink Pinks, et al.  I'm willing to bet your's will, too.

And now, Hink Pinks, et al. are available digitally on TPT's Easel platform!  Woo hoo!

Happy Groundhog Day and hurry up spring!

CHINESE NEW YEAR ACTIVITIES and RESOURCES

How do you celebrate the Chinese New Year? In my classroom, I use poetry to introduce the celebration. The following poem introduces some of the holiday traditions:

Chinese children will greet their parents and other adults by saying, "Gung Hay Fat Choy," which means wishing you great happiness and prosperity. Naturally, we greet the adults in our school with this phrase.

The dragon dance is often conducted in the streets during Chinese New Year. My students create a parade of their own using these templates:

We make a dragon for the parade, keeping in mind that the longer the dragon, the greater the luck it bestows.  To make the dragon's body, create an accordian fold. Use 2 strips of paper about 1.5" wide.  Choose different colors and make the strips as long as you like.  Begin by gluing the strips together. 

The head in these pictures is a template that can be colored or printed in color.

Of course I have a poem dedicated just to the Dragon Dance.

Along the way, I incorporate other learning. These activities are part of my Winter Poetry Possibilities unit. The possibilities provide a plethora of lessons from various disciplines.

GUNG HAY FAT CHOY!

 

It's About Time for M.L. King, Jr. Day!

It's about time, teachers, to get ready for MLK, Jr. Day! You may enjoy this FREE poetry resource. It comes with teaching possibilities and is best suited to intermediate students.

Enjoy!