"Hey Girl"

I have nothing curriculum related to share today... But I think you'll enjoy this post anyway.

If you're obsessed with Pinterest even half as much as I am, you've seen the Ryan Gossling "Hey Girl"s. If you haven't, they're pictures of Ryan Gossling (hotness) saying things that would make any teacher swoon. Finding one is as exciting as finding Waldo for me. They make my day!!

Here are all the "Hey Girls" I've found:

THESE MAKE ME LAUGH SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Have you found a Ryan Gossling "Hey Girl" that's not on my list?? PLEASE SHARE!!

Multiplication Madness!

Monday starts our multiplication and division unit. Our Fourth Grade TEKS (the Texas version of Common Core) state my kiddos need to be able to mulitply two digit by two-digit numbers and divide three digits dividends by one digit divisors. This is hard when they still struggle recalling basic facts... To remedy this, I've created several basic multiplication activities for my kids to do during math stations.

While enjoying one of my favorite past times, Pinterest, I stumbled upon The Crafty Classroom's Times Tables Folders. LOVE! Each pocket contains multiplication facts so students can study their areas of weakness.  I had to create my own IMMEDIATELY!!

The Crafty Classroom provides those cute little pocket templates and I found the perfect sized flash cards from Multiplication.com HERE.

I attempted to use our school laminator to laminate these babies (my laminator was too small to accommodate the file folders) and almost ruined all of my hard work. I had let the machine heat up for over an our but I guess the thickness of the folders was too much for the aging laminator... EVERYTHING PEALED OFF and took some of my pockets with it. I fixed my poor folders and decided to reinforce with clear packing tape instead.

Next is my super cheap up-cycled multiplication game.... Using bottle tops my dear family and friends had been collecting for me since summer time, some garage sale stickers I found at the dollar store and modge podge, I made these little guys:

FUN! I've seen a lot of these games on TPT and Teacher's Notebook. A few versions have the fact on top and the answer inside of the top... I opted for a "blind draw" so my kiddos can't get away with only answering the easy facts. 

All the bottle tops are flipped over and students draw and answer their fact. If they get it right, they keep the top. If they get it wrong, they put it back. The kiddo with the most tops wins! Easy enough, right?

There are enough for me bottle top facts for me to introduce this game whole class, then split up and make three different sets for station use. I also have wide bottle tops (from Gatorade bottles and such) that I'm thinking about using as "challenge questions". For example, "Recite your 5s Facts," and things like that... 

What are your multiplication ideas??

Math Journal EXCELLENCE!

We are rocking out with Math Journals this year... Check it out!  


We started of the year with understanding place value vocabulary.

Then we made a foldable that allowed us to identify and practice with our places (whole numbers to 999,999,999).

After that, we began studying tenths and hundredths (please excuse the spelling error in the title... It should say "hundredths" not "hundreds"! I assure you, this student now knows there is a difference!)

Check out our tenths and hundredths odometers. THEY ROCK! Kim Sutton (math guru) has place value odometers for whole numbers that I LOVE to use. Since my kiddos struggled with tenths and hundredths last year, I decided to make odometers for these places as well. LOVE THEM! So do the kids! They did a phenomenal job of putting them together. Minimal stress for me and huge payoff for them! 

Like these? Stay tuned for my TPT Place Value Pack I'm putting together! Hopefully I'll get it posted this weekend. :)

GIVEAWAY WINNER!

My Rockin' Giveaway is over and Katie S. is the winner!! 
Check out her blog at 
I want to be a Super Teacher!!

From one Katie to another, congrats!! 

NOUNS!

This week in writing, we're reviewing nouns. Fun stuff! We worked on plural rules yesterday and each group of kids created a mini-poster for their plural rule. Then as a class, we thought of examples or helpful hints that could help us remember our rules and put them on sticky notes... Here's the finished product!

Have you entered my Rockin' 100 Followers Giveaway yet?? ONLY ONE MORE DAY! Click here to get your entry on!

Giveaways Galore!

I'm not the only one hosting an awesome giveaway (see what you could win and enter HERE)!

Tonya at Tonya's Treats for Teachers is hosting a whopper!! There are three prizes you could win, 1st gets a $50 gift card to Amazon, enjoy!, TPT or Target, and 2nd & 3rd get a plethora of teaching goodies from some rockstar teachers. GO ENTER! 

Rockin' 100 Followers Giveaway

In my absence, my little ol' blog has reached 100 FOLLOWERS!!

I'm soooo stoked and to say thank you to all my bloggin' peeps, I'm hosting a rockin' giveaway.  

Giveaway Items include:

$5 Starbucks Giftcard

$5 Teachers Pay Teachers Gift Certificate

$15 Target Giftcard

Winner will be announced next Saturday! 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

My Classroom :)

It has been WEEKS since I've updated, but I know my fellow teachers understand... The start of school is EX-HAUST-ING. But I survived and am back to share pictures of my classroom!

Here's my lovely desk area that I barely get to use... The arrow is pointing to my super secret copy machine (don't want the whole school to come use it) that my wonderful in-laws got for me!! My mother-in-law is a 20 year veteran teacher, but it was my father-in-law (who's married to a 20 year veteran teacher) who thought of this wonderful gift! LOVE THEM BOTH!

I LOVE my library area, and so do my kiddos. My husband made me that GORGEOUS tree last year and it's held up well. He's so talented! Right next to library are my Boggle & Noggle centers. If you're wondering what Noggle is, just click HERE! These are new activities this year and my students are LOVING them. They constantly ask to play them.

    

The colorful stuff on the left side of this pictures is my "Math Workshop" board. This year for math I'm mixing whole group instruction with targeted math rotations. My kids will have "teacher time" (one-on-one instruction), "math facts", "at your desk" (worksheet for the day) and "hands on" which will be reinforcing our topic with games/ manipulatives.  My Math Workshop is inspired by The Clutter Free Classroom (rockin' blog!). I'm also dedicating an entire bulletin board to math vocabulary that will correspond to whatever skill I'm teaching. No more missing questions because of a lack of math vocab! 

This is a whole classroom pic - what you can't see (which is to the left) is my small group area (just picture a rainbow table with little chairs and you'll get the idea). Way off in the distance you can see little cards which is my MATH ALPHABET! I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE THIS! It's a FREE download from Bridget at Lovely Little Leaders. I would have paid major dinero for it though! It's so stinkin' cute and gives my kids MORE MATH VOCAB! YAY!






And last but not least, my handsome boys & me on the first day of school!! My sweet angels are in 7th and 4th grade this year... They're growing up SO FAST! I love first day of school pics and I LOVE MY BOYS!!