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. 

Even More FEBRUARY FREEBIES!!

It's about time, teachers, for some more February FREEBIES!

SCRATTLE: Patriotic Edition is differentiated, making it appropriate for all grades 1-5.  Students make words from a collection of letters, then compute the value using addition, multiplication, or mixed operations.  There is a recording sheet for each of the named computation requirements.  Next they engage a friend in a Scrattle Battle, comparing their word values as =, >, or <.  The word warrior with the most >s wins!  Stand back and watch your learners quickly eschew those 3 and 4 letter words for longer ones.

February is Dental Health Month, so attend to that with this FREE product.  It includes a song, class graphing, lost tooth bags, a word find, scrambled sentences, tooth idioms, and tooth problems math.

It's Leap Year and your students will leap for joy with this free unit.  Included are word work, verbal fluency exercises, and math challenges.

February is fabulous and filled with freebies from my store.  Enjoy!

It's About Time for FREEBIES!

It's about time, teachers, for 

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is almost here.  This FREEBIE is perfect for upper grade classes.

POETRY POSSIBILITIES for MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. DAY contains 2 poems. Each poem is accompanied by custom designed teaching points covering a variety of skills. These poems are copy ready and, thus, may be added to your students’ poetry anthologies. The range of reading levels in these poems makes them appropriate for all intermediate classrooms and provides for differentiation.

It's also the time of year that classes celebrate the 100th day of school.  Primary teachers will enjoy this FREEBIE!

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 them.

It will soon be Groundhog Day.  I have 2 FREEBIES for that special day.

Groundhog Day Hink Pinks, Hinky Pinkies, & Hinkity Pinkities are the perfect way to celebrate this just-for-fun holiday in your intermediate classroom.  Your students will work on language arts skills, critical thinking, and problem solving with these fun word riddles.

Groundhog Day Scrattle is a differentiated, math and  literacy, learning center activity that combines word work with computation; individual effort with competition. As in Scrabble™, students use a set of letters to create words. After recording their words, they calculate each word’s score using the letter values. Then they engage a friend in a battle wherein they compare their scores using >, <, and =. The student with the most >s wins the battle! (SCRAbble + baTTLE = SCRATTLE!)  Because this FREEBIE is differentiated, it is appropriate for ALL elementary classrooms.

Enjoy the FREEBIES!  Coming soon will be more FREEBIES just for Valentine's Day.

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It's About Time for Valentine's Day Parties

It's About Time, Teachers for Valentine's Day Parties!

The class party for Valentine's Day is my absolute favorite party of the year.  That's because I have my students create their own treat! It's such fun to see how creative (and excessive) 1st graders will get.

Here's how it works:

• Ask your room parents to bake heart shaped sugar cookies for the party. They should NOT decorate them!  Ask them to use the largest heart shaped cookie cutter possible. That way you will need only 1 cookie per student. Since many children now have peanut and other nut allergies, I recommend using Pillsbury Sugar Cookie dough since it is safe for those with allergies. That is, of course, if the bakers are not making dough from scratch.

        

• The room parents should also provide tubs of frosting; 1 tub for every 4 or 5 children. That's way more than is needed, but it certainly cuts down on the sharing problems that 6 & 7 year olds can exhibit.

• Have enough plastic knives to allow each child to have their own. If you are nervous about knives, even tho' plastic, tongue depressors also work well.

• Your students should gather around decorating centers (paper covered tables) supplied with the above mentioned frosting tubs, plastic knives, and a generous supply of decorative sprinkles and colored sugar crystals.

• Now stand back and let your children have the time of their lives.  They will almost certainly create cookies that are piled high with every decoration within their reach and that are nearly inedible.  But, they will have fun.
• Clean up is as easy as whisking the paper covering the tables into the garbage. Woo hoo!

This party plan will take up most of your allotted celebration time, so room parents will not need to plan any games or crafts.  You may even find that there is insufficient time to open their valentines at school.

Enjoy your Valentine's Day party with your little sweeties.

Black History Month

It's about time, teachers, for Black History Month. Are you looking for some curricula? Have you tried teaching through poetry?

Black History Month Poetry Possibilities offers 14 poems (copy ready for their anthologies) about these notable African Americans:

• Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Harriet Tubman 
• Garret Morgan
• Granville T. Woods
• George Washington Carver
• Matthew Henson
• Jackie Robinson
• Leontyne Price
• Muhammed Ali
• Guion Stewart Bluford, Jr.
• Rosa Parks

While each poem provides important information about each of these people, the teaching possibilities extend the learning in myriad ways.  For example, this poem about the astronaut, Guion Stewart Bluford, Jr., provides lots of information about the man and his accomplishments.  But the poem provides many more opportunities for learning.  Note the unusual form of the poem.

That form is quite effective in presenting information.  So, why not have your students apply it to another subject?  It could focus on another notable African American, or it could be applied to something closer to home - mom.  

This teaching possibility is described in #2 below.

As you can see above, the Poetry Possibilities provide suggestions for other subject matter, as well.

Each poem has a teaching point that applies to poetry.  After all, students should learn to appreciate poetry as a literary form. 

That teaching point leads to another teaching possibility:

A quick review of basic grammar is always a good idea.

The teaching possibilities need not be limited to language arts and history.  The 3rd possibility for this poem invites students to employ a Venn Diagram in comparing the astronaut to another man of science, George Washington Carver.  A template is provided:

By using some or all of the Poetry Possibilities provided for this collection of poems, you will have plenty of curricula for this special month.

Life teaches us to make good use of TIME, while TIME teaches us the value of life.

You may also be interested in these poetry units:

Freebie February Day 28

It's about time, teachers, to say good-bye to February and hello to March.

In March, our thoughts turn to all things green -- not just for St. Patrick's Day, but for the heralding of spring.  Ah spring.  Please hurry.

To encourage spring, I'm offering Poetry Possibilities for Spring as the final gift of Freebie February.  

This is a collection of 20 poems about spring weather, holidays, and activities.  Each print-ready poem is accompanied by a teaching point that enriches your students' understanding of poetry.  Also included are activities, skill lessons, writing projects, a literacy center, and craftivities custom designed for that poem. There are even instructions for a class play of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. 

If you love teaching with poetry (and I hope you do), this product will take you all the way to Memorial Day.  But remember, this product is free for just 1 day.

You may like these products just for March. Some are FREE!