Five For Friday Easter Edition!

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs for Five for Friday!! 

Wow!! I blinked, and April was here! Then I blinked again, and now it's 1/2 way over. Does anyone else feel like that happens to you? Spring Break officially started yesterday, but my niece and I have a tradition to do lunch and a movie on Spring Break. (Her birthday is in March, and this is her present from me). This year, she decided she would rather go shopping and have lunch and ice cream. (She is MY niece after all!) So, she brought her birthday money and gift cards, and we headed out. I was excited too, because I had $40 in Max Rewards from Office Max and a save $10 off $40 coupon. 2 hours later in Office Max, and we walked out with $50 worth of merchandise for only $1.13!

Included in my haul were these goodies for me! I LOVE new pens...I bought them because I have about 1,000,000 papers to grade over break. Yet -- I'm blogging instead of grading.... I think I need more coffee! 

After shopping, lunch at Chipotle, more shopping and ice cream at Sweet Frog -- she was DONE. 

Does anyone else remember these? While in the Dollar Tree my niece and I found these! She had never had them, but my sister and I used to eat them ALL the time. I bought her some, and she and her sister LOVE them. 

All the pretty things........... 

Spring Break Organization  Project #1 complete! Thirty One party supplies and collection somewhat organized. Keep in mind...all those totes are FULL of Thirty One, and my everyday use stuff isn't even in there. My house looks like a Thirty One Catalog. I'm okay with that -- everything has a place, and a place for everything! So happy to get some of this organized! My goal is to do something productive each day -- but considering we only get Thursday-Monday off -- that will be HARD! 

Happy Spring! This is my newest Thirty One tote -- I'm in LOVE! 

I am doing a Jamberry Party from now until the end of the month! How CUTE are these Lolipop Chevron nails? Perfect for Easter!! 

Capacity!!! I love, love, LOVE teaching measurement! Hands on lessons EVERY day! Yes - I know it takes planning - but it's SO much fun! My kiddos LOVE measurement every year. Our state standards require my 3rd graders give the best estimates for capacity. I still teach customary conversions using the Measuring Monarch - because I believe that's a life skill, and I know the 4th grade teacher thanks me! This year, I have a VERY visual group. So, what better way to understand exactly how much is in a gallon than to dump it out! We picked a day that was over 80 degrees, and headed outside! It was amazing to see the kids faces as they got to DUMP water onto the blacktop. Of course I worked in the water cycle, as we saw how quickly the cup evaporated! 

The cup was so tiny! 

The pint wasn't much bigger-- the kids could quickly see this was about like spilling a full bottle of water. ( I was a proud teacher when they started having math talk without being prompted!! One of the kids said -- hey -that's about how much a bottle of water spilled looks like- remember when I spilled my bottle last week!) 

No - we weren't being mean making this child go far away from the rest-- he was dumping a Liter-- and since liters are only used in Europe - the kids said it should be away from the US Measurements. 

What a cool action shot -- every time the kids dumped water, the whole class screamed and cheered! Then, they would talk about how big/small the puddle was and how it compared -- WITHOUT being prompted! My hard work with Math Talk this year has paid off! 

Ahh...the gallon. This child had a look of pure joy on his face. Like he hadn't EVER gotten to just throw water for no good reason. :) 

Here's the anchor chart for the Measuring Monarch we made! 

Then, we wrapped up with small charts "I would use a ________ for" with all the measurements. The kids wrote their responses on sticky notes and added them to the posters. 

Measuring the Track: 

So - after capacity, we started measuring length. We have a pretty nice track (each lap is 1/8 of a mile) that wraps around our soccer field, and we had such an awful winter that we needed to get OUTSIDE. So -we took meter sticks and yard sticks, and set to measuring the track - "Goal to Goal" (length) and "Bench to Bench" (width). Then, we came back inside and converted our yards to feet and inches, and converted our meters to centimeters. 

 

 
 

 

100 Followers Giveaway....

So I posted a few weeks ago that I wanted to do a 100 Followers Giveaway!! Then, April happened! So, during Spring Break I will be gathering some items to attempt to do this!! If you are interested in donating to the giveaway, comment and let me know! :) 

Tried It Tuesday- Fraction Tiles and Car Organization Thirty One Style

 I am linking up with Fourth Grade Flipper for Tried it Tuesday! I'm very proud of myself because I'm actually writing on Tuesday! Ya'll just don't understand.... Today my Principal stopped by my room, and gave me a hug (she's just that kind of awesome about that stuff), and told me I looked very pretty today and that something looked different. It was that I have had SLEEP! All the snow days have allowed me to catch up on SLEEP. So here I am, blogging ON TIME :)

First -- for my Tried it Tuesday, I organized the backseat of my truck. Now - the hubs and I don't have any two legged children, but I do drive my niece to school every day, so M-F she is in the backseat. I am in LOVE with the new spring patterns and organization that Thirty One has. With all this snow the south has been seeing, I really want to be ready if I ever get stranded in my truck. So, check out my organizing solutions! 

Now -- on to school things. I'm STILL on my fraction unit. I should be on to graphs, but I CAN'T do that because we have only had ONE full week since Christmas. Since we have lost so many days, I have to condense some lessons. I usually do a comparing fraction introduction that last 2-3 days where students use fraction tiles to make comparisons with like denominators and unlike denominators. We always use the tiles, and just do some illustrations on paper. I knew that I needed a VERY structured lesson to get my kiddos through this lesson in half the time. I created a worksheet to guide my students through comparing fractions using the tiles. I have students trace the fraction tiles onto the paper because this is an easy transition to drawing their own fraction bars. My students LOVED the structure and organization of this lesson, and they did awesome. (This wasn't their first experience with fraction tiles - and it won't be their last!) I am so excited to move into drawing their own fraction bars tomorrow. Check out a few samples of my student work below:

Best of all -- this Comparing Fractions printable is available for only $1 in my TpT Store! 

Check out all of the link ups in the Tried It Tuesday over at Fourth Grade Flipper!

Do You Have The Time? My favorite Telling Time activity EVER!

Happy New Year!! What a holiday season! I feel like I have been running a marathon, and the finish line isn't anywhere in sight! My weekends have been CONSUMED with school work, and I think I'm even going to have to give up coaching our school OM team this year because I just have too much on my plate. (I'm hoping to turn this over to a parent). I have had this post in "drafts" for a while.... I haven't blogged in forever, and I PROMISED myself I would do it over Christmas break. Then, the week before Christmas (on my BIRTHDAY!) I woke up sick....it started with the new strand of norovirus, then I got strep throat, then an eye infection, and then a sinus infection. I truthfully wasn't feeling better until New Years! I don't wish that virus on my worst enemy-- it was brutal!!

Anyway -- the real reason you are here! I just did a telling time to the nearest minute activity last week, and it is by far my favorite activity ever in the history of teaching math. I absolutely love, love, LOVE it! I call this activity, "Do you have the time?"

I saw this on Pinterest about 1,000 times, but didn't know if I would like it. Each child gets their own "watch", and then students travel around the room reading each others watches and recording the times. I was originally just working on some clock faces of time to the nearest minute to glue down in a folder and laminate for Intervention practice in my small group instruction. After creating the clock faces for my game, I realized I would only need to create 4 more to have a class set. Well........... 4 more turned into 6 more, because I always like to have extras. After creating the clock faces, I cut strips of construction paper to make watch bands and glued the clock to the construction paper. Viola! Construction paper/card stock watches! I laminated the final product (this is all with the help of Ms. Bailey - an AWESOME paraprofessional at our school who is working on her teaching degree!) and punched holes in the bands. My original thought was to hook the watches with paperclips through the holes. Third graders do not do paperclips well enough for this! In the interest of time, we just taped the bands on, but I may add some string for next time, or even make the bands out of string. 

The students traveled around the room asking their classmates, "Do you have the time?" The classmate would then show them their watch and let them read the clock face. This was REALLY hard for my students who could tell time really well because they wanted to tell their classmates the answers. Since I did this as a graded assignment, they knew they couldn't! Each child had a record sheet that was numbered from 1-22. In our class each student has a number, so when they read that child's watch, they wrote their answer next to that child's number. It was SO MUCH FUN. In the end, I was quickly able to see who really "got it" and who really needed help. When several students missed the same problem - I could easily tell that they had simply looked at the hour hand wrong.

If you love this activity- you can find the clock faces I used on my TpT store here! They are only $1!! I hope this post finds all in blogger land healthy and happy in this new year!