Monday, April 28, 2014

Longs weeks... Freebies everywhere!!

Hello everyone!!!
I am so sorry I have not posted anything for the past two weeks!! I promise I have a good excuse...It is only one word.. STAAR.. lol As you all know STAAR was last week, so the week before the state testing we have been reviewing, reviewing, and MORE reviewing!!
Now it is all over so I am hoping to hear good news once we have the results in :)

I wanted to share with ya'll the last time I took a picture of our beetles, we have released them and we don't have them as pets anymore. I'm telling y'all... my students were NOT afraid of grabbing them with bare hands to release them.. I, of course, had to wear gloves.. LOL
Anyways here are the last pictures of our friends :)

 


I also wanted to introduce our new friend Froggy! The students gave it that name so I, of course, had to label his home with his name :) Froggy is still a tadpole...
Sadly, I will not be able to see him grow, but I'll try to see if my sub could take pictures of it so I can keep you guys posted!



I wanted to share with you my NEW FREEBIE,  Wild End of the Year Awards FREE SAMPLE packet. This is a preview of what my complete packet looks like. Since I have a jungle theme this year, I created a jungle theme award for the end of this year. Some of them do not look much of a jungle theme, but I tried my best to use as many as I could so it can match my theme :)
This freebie comes with an option to edit the names and the date; I'm still working on my complete packet so all the certificates can be editable. I should have the packet done by the end of the week, so stay tuned! :)
Here is a peek of what my freebie looks like:

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/FREE-SAMPLE-Wild-End-of-Year-Awards-1223684
 To take you to my TPT so you can download this FREE sample, click on the image.


Here is a preview of what comes with my COMPLETE award packet. There are about 16 different awards, ALL come in a B/W version and most come in a different style for a boy or a girl. If you would like to check it out click on the picture below :)

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Wild-End-of-Year-Awards-Editable-1223627


If you are looking for something not too jungly (yes, I think I just made that up.. not sure if it's actual word), I have another End of the year Awards packet from last year.
The awards also come in a b/w version, but this packet  is NOT editable. So if you don't have any problem writing names by hand, this packet is super cute! :)

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/FREE-AWARDS-IN-PREVIEW-End-of-Year-Awards-685907

If you click on the preview section of this product, it will give you 3 FREE awards as well :)

Well ladies and gentlemen, this is all for today. I am officially on maternity leave, so anytime now our baby should be on her way!!! I will be all over the place making sure everything is done before she comes, but I promise I will be blogging very soon with other activities that I have been holding onto... 

Before I go, I just wanted to share with you all a picture from our maternity session; my friend did an AWESOME job and we are sooo pleased and blessed to have these unforgettable pictures! They are ALL so cute, but I can't really upload them all, so I'll leave you with one :)
We can't wait to meet our little "Pollita"!!


Classroom Freebies Manic Monday

Sunday, April 13, 2014

More mealworms, I mean Beetles!!! 2D and 3D activity and a Plant Adaptation Freebie!

Hello everyone!!!
Overwhelmed  mom/teacher reporting over here!!! :/ I am entering into my 36 weeks of pregnancy and I have to admit that I have mixed feelings about it!!! I am so eager to get to know and see my little girl, but I wouldn't mind if she could stay where she is so I can protect her and keep feeling her kicks and hiccups! :) I've been warned about this feeling... but it didn't mean this was going to be easy... :(
Not to add more depression to this post, but we are SOOOOO close to our STAAR test week that I am so nervous for my kiddos. They have been working so hard and had showed me so much dedication and improvement, but I can't stop feeling nervous for them!!!

Anyhow, enough of that! Let me show how our friends are doing!!! I have more pictures of our pupae and now beetles!!
As soon as I walked into my classroom and went to check our friends, and this is the one I found (purple circle). Apparently he had already turned into a beetle over the weekend because he was already getting the darken color. The other friends had already the legs turned darker, that meant they were ready to turned into a beetle as well :)

On this picture, you can see more of the pupae that had already the legs turned a little bit darker... some others are still on their "resting" stage...


Sadly, we were not able to see any pupae in action... but we were able to see the first stage of the beetle. That means, the beetle is out but with a white/cream color (blue circle)

Another friend who is out of the pupa! 

By the end of the week, we had more friends! but they all liked to be under the oats!! Only two (purple circle) were brave enough to come out! Maybe it's because beetles are nocturnal and they were all trying to sleep while we were having class!! ;)

On the other hand, I wanted to share with you what we did in Math. Like I mentioned in previous posts, we have been reviewing reviewing and more reviewing for the STAAR. So this week, we have been reviewing on 2D and 3D geometry figures. For the 3D figures we used marshmallows and toothpicks. The children really enjoyed making these figures :) This activity was great for me to review with those that are still confusing the pyramids with prisms... As I was walking around I could see what they were mixing up (that's why I let them choose which 3D figure to create) and I would pull them aside to go over the figures.
Here are some pictures:





Last but not least, in Science we have been talking for the past week and half about plant adaptations. We have done a couple foldables and looked at several slides to learned about different plants in different environments.
Here are some pictures of the foldables we have made in class...

We started our study of plant adaptations by looking at the structure of a plant and what the job is for each part of it.

 



 After this, then we moved on to look into different types of plants and their environment. So we did a lot of writing for each window. However, I had placed only the info on my free product. So in that way, you get to choose what your students write inside :)



If you would like a copy of these foldables/flipbooks, Click on HERE to take you to my TPT and you can grab it for FREE!! :)

That's it for today :) I hope you can use these ideas in your classroom. Please feel free to leave any comment below and if you get to download this product, please let me know what you think with your feedback :)

Thank you all for stopping by and have a restful Sunday! :)

Classroom Freebies Manic Monday

Sunday, April 6, 2014

Update on Mealworms, Easter Unit,and a Freebie!!

Hello everyone!! :)
I am sorry I did not post last week, I was in Houston doing my maternity picture session! I'll tell you all about it at the end of this post :)

These are some pictures of our mealworms that have already turned into pupae! We did not get to see the action, but we sure could see the skin out and those white-alien looking friends! My students are so excited about them that the first thing they do when they come in is to observe them!

These are the skin that we found all around them. I pull them out so students could see them better.

The pupae are all over but I circled some of them so you could have a better view of it :)

This mealworm had just turned into a pupa, it really does look like a white alien!
you could still see the skin near by...


I also wanted to share with ya'll my Chick Craftivity freebie. I created this little friend last year in second grade. We read books and different facts about chicken. Then, my students took notes and wrote about different things they have learned about the life cycle of a chicken. As a said, this was created for second grade; However, this would be perfect for any project you do in your classroom!
If you would like to read more about it click HERE to take you to my last year post :)
Here are some pictures, if you would like to download it, click on Chick Craftivity to take you to my TPT store.


I also wanted to share with ya'll my Easter unit! It's mainly for second grade, but there are some activities that can be use for 1st graders and 3rd graders :)
This unit contains 7 centers (ELA/SLA and Math):
For ELA/SLA
Fact and opinion, A sequence activity for the book "There was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Chick", Regular Vs. Irregular Past verbs, ABC order activitty.
For Math
Fractions
2-Digit addition/subtraction with/without regrouping
Time

I have this unit in English and Spanish.. Click on the picture to take you to my TPT store.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Easter-Unit-factopinionsequence-ABC-regirregular-past-verbs-MATH-612881

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Unidad-de-Pascua-factopinsecuencia-Alfabetico-verbos-pasapres-MATEMA-628444


Lastly, I wanted to share a picture with you that I took with my very good friend while taking our maternity pictures! She is AMAZING!!! We had a great time catching up (we have not seen each other for more than a year) and posing for this session! I generally have no problem smiling at the camera, but this time wasn't as easy as I thought! I loved that we got to share this time together... the funniest part is that she's also pregnant!!

She works in the Houston area so if you would like to see her facebook page, click HERE

Well friends, this is it for today, I hope this post has been useful and entertaining :)
Have a great week!!! I'll be posting more things next week!Stay tuned!! :)

Mommy and Me Creations