Monday Made-It {Baby Shower, Mother's Day}

Oh my goodness!! I haven't linked up for Monday Made It with the wonderful, sweet Tara at 4th Grade Frolics in SO long! I love this linky and have a few things to share. We are in the home stretch now. Last day with students is June 24th but there is so much to do before then. I am loving the warmer temps…finally!

So…my baby sister is having a BABY! She is due at the end of August but we just had her baby shower a week ago and it turned out super cute! My older sister made her invitations. She went with the hot air balloon theme. :)

Table with cookies and flowers (real Gerber Daisies that looked fake!) on table as guests enter. 

Table cloth is burlap fabric.

 Pinwheels made from paper

 Chalkboard frames from Michael's

Card basket from Michael's and my sister made the hot air ballon decoration using strips of paper, burlap and pinterest directions! Love it!

 Pom poms hung from ceiling made from tissue paper. We had about 12 of them and people took them home after for decorations in teen rooms and offices!

Banner from burlap and cut out letters from scrapbook paper. It says "Welcome Baby Brown".

Better view of banner but this was not at the shower.

 Table decorations. My sister made the Mason jars by painting them with acrylic paint and lightly distressing them with a soft wire brush (to avoid brush marks). Those were door prizes for games when we ran out of other prizes.

 "Wishes for Baby Brown" idea that I got from my friends at Pinkadots Elementary. These turned out super cute and I am taking the completed wishes to place in a photo album to give to my sister and brother-in-law as a keepsake.

One game that we played was "The Price Is Right". Everyone loved this game and it was quick. This was another idea from my friend, Theresa at Pinkadots Elementary!

I bought all the items for "The Price Is Right" game and held them up for the audience to see. Since the baby's sex is a surprise, I bought two of each burp cloths, socks, and change of clothes. The one they don't need can be take back using the receipt. One guest was only $0.82 away from the correct total!

We played Baby Bingo where guests wrote down gifts they thought my sister and brother-in-law would receive. This kept the audience active during the opening of presents. We had many little prizes to give away and then started giving away the flowers on the table in the painted Mason jars for bingos. I wrote "Brown" at the top instead of "Bingo".

Here is a picture of me (far right) with my mom and two sisters at the shower. We coordinated colors! :)

Mother's Day is over, but this would also be cute for Father's Day or an idea to pin for next year. My students created Wordles for their moms and I laminated them. They turned out cute!

The only advice I would give is to have students copy the words they type in the box before hitting "create". If for some reason, they lose the page, they would have to start typing all over again. If they copy it first, then they can just paste it again. This happened several times and saved many students!

Here is a project I completed in the past for Father's Day and I have a freebie in my TPT store for it.

 I "made" these pencils by placing duct tape at the top and writing student numbers on them with a sharpie. I used three different tapes for my three blocks since the numbers repeat for the three blocks.

 I blogged about my pencil challenge here a month ago and I am so thrilled to report that it has been working! Only six students out of 50 have not met the pencil challenge the entire month and the rest all have the original pencil! It has been great because if a student even thinks about "wasting time" to get a pencil, I just say, "So, you are out of the pencil challenge?" Since most students are keeping this pencil as a back up in their math boxes, they respond, "No! That's right! I have an extra pencil in my box." The pencil must be always sharpened and ready to go to stay in the pencil challenge as well so it works well as a backup. They can only sharpen pencils in the morning, at snack time, and right after class.

I thought this was cute. We received these from the Parent Teacher Association for Teacher Appreciation Week but it would be great for back to school.

That's it for now! I am looking forward to getting my Made Its on for next year come July!

Don't forget Tried It Tuesday is new tomorrow for the month. 

Link up anything all month that you have Tried, new or old, school or home!

Have a great rest of your week! :)

Tried It Tuesday {Pencil Challenge}

Time is flying! I can't believe that we are well into May. ELA and math state tests are done and we only have science to go. We still have almost 40 instructional days to go…but who's counting?! :)

It's Time for Tried It Tuesday! 

What have you tried at school or home?
If you've never linked up with Tried It Tuesday, just link up any idea school or home related and what worked or didn't work. Simple! 

My Tried It:

Pencil Challenge
Our fourth graders are OUT OF CONTROL this year with pencils!!
Last week mechanical pencils were officially BANNED from the grade. We always write on the school supply lists "no mechanical pencils" please. Now I remember why! We started getting relaxed on this rule and before we knew it, students had mechanical pencils everywhere!! I wish I had taken a picture of some students desks filled with them. There wasn't just the issue of them constantly breaking and students playing with the lead. I had the problem of about five boys who would crowd around each other's desks anytime it was time to line up and look at each other's pencils! One boy said he bought pencils himself at Walmart with his own money. However, he bought the wrong size refill lead and that was another issue, trying to find pencils and trade to match his lead! Ugh!

So, now with mechanical pencils gone, we are focusing on another pencil problem! Since we are departmentalized, students from two other homerooms come to my room everyday for math. I keep book boxes of math materials in my room complete with a pencil case to store a "back up pencil" and highlighters. Students should just come to class with their homework folder and a pencil. Lately it seems that half the students never have a pencil (or a back up one in their box in case one breaks). Students can only sharpen pencils during morning work time, snack time, and at the end of the day for management issues. We all know students who would sharpen pencils all day to waste time. :) I've had these containers for two years, but with 50 students in and out of my room everyday, students just take pencils to borrow them and never return them! I can't keep extra ones in there!

Possible solution? Start a pencil challenge! I read about pencil challenges in the blogging world last year. This is the deal:
I gave everyone a pencil with their number written with a Sharpie on a piece of duck tape wrapped on the end.

The picture above is actually for my block 2 class and the picture below is block 3. I had to use different tape for each block because the numbers repeat three times for each group. I used another different tape for my block 1 but I didn't get a picture before passing those out last week.

The students can save their pencil and not use it or use it everyday. They just have to still have their pencil by "pencil reward day" which is Wednesday for my homeroom.  They received their pencils last Thursday. Today I asked how many still had their pencil and EVERY student raised their hand! I didn't tell them what the prize would be, but said there would be a reward. I'm going to mix it up a bit and sometimes give lunch in the classroom or outside time and other times a prize from my prize bin. It's close enough to the end of the year that I think I can keep it going all year and it will save my sanity these last weeks!!

By the way, my Classroom Friendly Supplies pencil sharpener I first blogged about in January 2013 here is going strong! Here is a picture of my pencil sharpener yesterday. I had it wall mounted in a creative way.

These are my pencils sharpened with the Classroom Friendly supplies sharpener.

These were sharpened with the electric sharpener. :(

I will update on the pencil challenge soon and let you know how it is going. 

Have you ever tried a pencil challenge?

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Tried It Tuesday {Math Review for Testing}

Well, I almost forgot about Tried It Tuesday in my sickness slumber. Taking a break from my nap to try and get caught up with my neglected blog. My daughter caught this virus over a week ago and she was stuck on the couch for FOUR days (very unlike her!). Fever, vomiting, diarrhea, AND she got pink eye. Now I have it and haven't eaten since Saturday. This is day two home from school. The temps reached over 70 here yesterday for the first time since last year sometime and I was stuck inside in bed all day. :( This too shall pass I tell myself but I wish it would hurry!

It's Time for Tried It Tuesday! 

What have you tried at school or home?
If you've never linked up with Tried It Tuesday, just link up any idea school or home related and what worked or didn't work. Simple! 

COPY THE NEW BUTTON ABOVE!

My Tried It:

Math Review for Testing
We are in full state testing mode here in New York. The ELA exam is this week and next week is the math exam. I thought I would share some resources that I have found for review.

This Fourth Grade Math Year in Review resource by Ideas by Jivey is a great handout for students and parents! Shown below is the first page of the ten page handout.

It is a study guide that give examples and definitions of all fourth grade Common Core skills in math. There are even options of pages to send home for multiplication depending on how your students learn the skill (partial products and one for the lattice method).

Of course, what test prep would be complete without more practice solving word problems? Our state test is comprised of almost all word problems. These Multiple Choice Task Cards Whole Number Operations by Coffee Cups and Lesson Plans are a great way to amp up your review of word problems in a fun, engaging way!

I have also been using Math Moves: Daily Spiral Review by Fun in Room 4B. Each spiral review page covers all 5 domains every week. I started using this late in the year but it could be used all year. There are also separate weekly assessment pages covering the same standards from the daily work for the week. I am using it right now as spiral review for homework but would also work great for morning work. Check it out!

Our district also purchases the Common Core Coach books by Triumph Learning and I have pulled a few lessons from here to cover standards that I thought were lacking in the GoMath series.

Do you have other resources that you have found to be great for review of skills from the year?
I would love to hear your thoughts and comments!

This link up will be open for the month! Link up once or more than once! Thanks friends. :)

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Tried It Tuesday {Math Workshop Games}

Happy Tuesday friends! I hope your week is off to a great start! I am in countdown mode for a two week spring break. We have this week and next week, then a two week spring break! Wahoo!!

It's Time for Tried It Tuesday! 

What have you tried at school or home?
If you've never linked up with Tried It Tuesday, just link up any idea school or home related and what worked or didn't work. Simple! 

COPY THE NEW BUTTON ABOVE!

My Tried It:

Math Workshop Games
I have blogged about how I started using math workshop this year during my three 80 minute math blocks a day here and here. During the "Hands On" rotation, students work on centers from my math bins. I have eight drawers in this cart from Lakeshore Learning.

Students absolutely LOVE the math "games" hands down more than any other center choice. They are so excited when I introduce a new game as a center. They are allowed to play the games at center time but also have to work on the other independent activities. They would only play the games if I let them though! Students who are fast finishers on our daily math meeting that I open the class with, have anywhere from 5-10 extra minutes and during that time, they can grab a quick game to play.  

We just finished our fraction unit, and students loved the matching/go fish game that I made several years ago as part of four fraction math centers.

One way I have found to help organize game pieces is to make two copies of the cards and laminate the cards onto a colored sheet of paper. 

I use two different colors and it is super easy to keep the stacks together!

This is the "Monster Half Smack" game from Monster Fractions. Students compared fractions to the benchmark fraction 1/2 and are able to keep fractions equivalent to 1/2 if they "smack" it first. The other cards go on the game board next to < or > than 1/2.

The concept we just finished last week was 4.NF.4 multiplying fractions addressing:

CCSS.Math.Content.4.NF.B.4b: Understand a multiple of a/b as a multiple of 1/b and use this understanding to multiply a fraction by a whole number. 

CCSS.Math.Content.4.NF.B.4c: Solve word problems involving multiplication of a fraction by a whole number, e.g., by using visual fraction models and equations to represent the problem. 

The students are in love with this "Monster Land Race to the Finish" math game where they must find a fraction of a whole number to determine how many places they move on the game board. If they answer the problem incorrectly (partner checks using the answer key), they don't move on that turn. They start to master this concept quickly when there is a game for it! Here is the bin I have this game in with two sets of cards (two different back colors to keep packs organized). 

This is part of this math pack and also includes another center with word problem task cards.

During the last Teachers Pay Teachers sale, I snagged two great game packs by Angela Watson. I'm really excited to use these geometry partner games.

I laminated game directions and put pieces in baggies to place in bins later.

What have you tried recently? I would love to hear about it!

This link up will be open all month. Link up anytime! 

New link ups posted the 2nd Tuesday of the month.

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