Blog - Lessons With Laughter

Word Clouds and last day of my giveaway!

March 18, 2012

Hope everyone had a wonderful St. Patty’s Day yesterday!

On Friday we had our St. Patrick’s Day celebration,

complete with leprechaun traps

(he got away)

green glitter (of course!)

leprechaun read-alouds

and lots of yummy green food!

We also talked about all the words we knew and learned that we associated with St. Patrick’s Day.

Each student made a list of their favorite words and then we used them to make these fabulous word clouds using tagxedo!

Tagxedo is super easy to use and you can make word clouds in all different shapes and color schemes!

On Monday they are going to be uploading the pictures to their blogs so that they can all see each others’ wonderful creations and post quality comments about them!

Also, today is the last day of my GIVEAWAY!!!

If you have not entered yet, make sure you head on over and check it out!

And I will leave you with some pictures from our fun St. Patty’s day celebration!

Little note that the leprechaun left our class!

Streamers, gold candy, and coins everywhere!

(and it was quite a mess!)

Sorry it’s dark the lights were off!

Shamrock BINGO freebie & Linky Party!

March 15, 2012

Before the St. Patty’s Day week comes to an end, I wanted to share with you the fun game we played in math yesterday! We had our chapter math test coming up and I wanted to have a fun way for my kiddos to review for the test, so I created… Shamrock Bingo!

I gave my kids the answers to the problems they were going to be solving and they wrote each answer in a different blank. I told them to mix the answers around and that their Bingo card should look different from everyone else’s.

Then I gave them the question and they had to solve the problem and then find the answer on their Bingo card! They used their white boards to solve the problems. If the answer wasn’t on their Bingo card then that meant that they got the wrong answer and they needed to go back and check their work. Then, after most of the kids had finished, I had them check their answers with their team to make sure they had all gotten the correct answer before we moved on to the next question! If someone at their team was struggling, then they could help them out! I love seeing them using great teamwork!

Head on over to my TPT store to download my Shamrock Bingo game for FREE!

Paper Plate Weaving & Facebook

March 13, 2012

Hope you all had a wonderful Monday! I wanted to share some pictures of our weavings that my students did a few weeks ago when we were finishing up our study on Native Americans. One of the best teachers I know and my amazing mentor, LeAnn, showed me this fun weaving project that she does with her students every year.

While learning about the different California Native American tribes, students discovered that many tribes used weaving to make all kinds of items, from baskets to blankets and rugs. Although they saw pictures of the final products that were created, they did not realize the process required for weaving. This was a fun way for them to learn and understand how weaving is actually done!

To get the plates ready, I first cut out an odd number of small slits around the outside of the plate. Of course I completely forgot to take pictures along the way, but if you are interested in seeing the process from the beginning let me know and I will recreate it and take pictures for you! But here are pictures of some of their wonderful weavings!

Also, I wanted to send a HUGE thank you to Stacy at Mrs. Johnson’s First Grade! She had a special St. Patty’s Day giveaway and I was one of the lucky winners! That is the first thing I have won from a blog and I was super excited! She gave me a $20 Amazon Gift Card AND her St. Patrick’s Math Center Games! Of course I headed over to Amazon right away and my shipment is being processed as I type! So thank you SO MUCH Stacy for having such a fabulous giveaway!

And last, but not least, I just created a Facebook page fan page for my blog!

Woo hoo!

Head on over here if you would like to follow it!

Thanks so much! I really appreciate all of you for following my blog and giving me so much inspiration from your wonderful posts as well! And I am planning to have the first giveaway of my own when I reach 100 followers! Keep yours eyes out for it!

Book Recommendation Tree

March 10, 2012

Happy Saturday!

I hope you all are having a fabulous weekend!

I wanted to share our book recommendation tree because my kiddos LOVE it!

It is bright and colorful (just like the rest of my room!) and the kids are constantly using it to write down book recommendations for their peers and to look at what new books have been recommended!

My AMAZING friend Amanda is the one who gave me the inspiration for this project. We taught together last year, but then our school closed down and we are now working at different schools. Lame! I miss her so much, but we still get together all the time to catch up and share new ideas!

Here is the book recommendation tree she made for her classroom, with super cute scrapbook paper and animal die cuts!

To make mine I bought a clay pot from Michaels, and painted the bottom of it with chalkboard paint and the top rim with acrylic paint.

Then I used a branch that Amanda gave me and spray painted it with glitter spray paint.

After the pot was dry, I filled it with clear, flat marbles (is there another name for those?).

These are the tags that I used for the tree. I printed them out, glued them back-to-back, and then laminated them. I love, love, LOVE Erin Bradley’s designs! They are adorable and super colorful! She has lots of other tags that you could use as well if you wanted to do something similar.

The kids write on the tags with dry erase markers and then just use a wet wipe to clean it off when they want to write a new book recommendation!

Here are some more pics of our lovely tree:

Class shirts & Top 10

March 9, 2012

Have you seen these classroom self-portrait t-shirts before?

I think they are the neatest things EVER and am so excited to be doing one for my class this year! Whitney Daniels Designs makes them and the process is easy-peasy.

Here’s a picture of what the t-shirt design looks like from their website:

You just have your kids draw a picture of themselves on an index card,

send home the parent order form they have prepared for you, collect the money (only $7/shirt!) and then send in your order!

Here are my kiddos’ self-portraits! I am so excited to send the order off this weekend!

LOVE the cute picture one of my girls drew for me.

She even added my freckles!

And can you guess how I was wearing my hair when she drew the picture?

Multiplication Memory

March 5, 2012

Some of my kiddos have been struggling this year to memorize their multiplication facts, so I am always looking out for fun ways for them to practice. I came across a wonderful post by Michelle from Apples and ABCs about Shamrock Tally Marks and was determined to find a way to use her cute idea to come up with a game for my 4th graders! First, I made a trip to the Dollar Tree… usually when I go there I end up leaving disappointed because I read about so many wonderful things that other teachers find there, and then I go and can’t find ANY of the wonderful things they blogged about! Took me a while to find these fun, glittery shamrocks, but I was sooo excited when I did!

I used the shamrocks to make a multiplication memory game. I used gold glitter glue that I got from Joanne’s to write down some of the multiplication facts (I stuck to 7’s, 8’s, & 9’s in the game pictured) that they are struggling with on the dark green shamrocks, and the answers on the light green shamrocks.

When they play the game they will have the shamrocks all turned over so the numbers aren’t showing, and then the rest of the game works like regular memory, where they have to try to match up the multiplication facts and their answers! Whoever has the most at the end of the game wins!

I can’t wait to use these in my classroom this week… I know my kiddos are going to love it!

Freedom Quilt and a Freebie!!!

February 29, 2012

Wow, double “free” in my post title tonight!!

First of all, I am SUPER excited because I uploaded my first item EVER to TPT tonight! Wooo hoo! I had been wanting to make a desk fairy note forever, and then I found these adorable St. Patty’s Day monster graphics by the amazing KPM Doodles and decided to make a desk monster note instead! I know my boys will probably like this more than a fairy. So here it is…. my first freebie!

Click here to go to my TPT store to download the freebie!

If you use it, please leave me a note and let me know!

I would really appreciate it!

Next up… our class freedom quilt!

After reading many wonderful books about the Underground Railroad, including Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt by Deborah Hopkinson, I put my students with partners to work on making a square for our classroom freedom quilt. In the story, Clara learns how to sew and makes a quilt with a secret map sewn in from scraps of fabric to show slaves what to look for on the path to freedom.

Students worked with their partner to create a quilt square from scraps of construction paper that they ripped up. Their squares included symbols and pictures that provided information for the slaves on the Underground Railroad. Then the students had to write what they depicted in their quilt square. Here is the final product!

This lesson was inspired by a lesson that Dr. Nan McDonald did during a reading conference I attended this summer. Dr. McDonald is a huge advocate for integrating the arts into classroom lessons and is so inspirational! Here is her book that includes that lesson along with many other fabulous lessons!

Hope you had a great day!

Blogging about Dr. Seuss

February 27, 2012

So after reading all the exciting Dr. Seuss happenings that are going to be going on this week in many wonderful bloggers’ classrooms, I was inspired to let my kids get in on the Dr. Seuss blogging action!

So I logged into our class blog (kidblog.org) and posted this tonight:

One of my favorite Dr. Seuss books is none other than The Lorax!

Another reason I LOVE Dr. Seuss is he is a genius with words.

Really.

I love so many of his quotes that it was hard to pick out only a few (ok, 8) but these are my favorites that I wanted to share with my kiddos…

Also tomorrow we will be talking about writing quality comments. Some of my kiddos have already posted their first book reviews to our blog, so next step is teaching them how to comment on each others’ posts! I am going to be using a WONDERFUL video that Mrs. Yollis created with her 3rd grade class. You can check it out here:

http://yollisclassblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/learning-how-to-comment.html

Hope you all have a spectacular Dr. Seuss Week!

Black History Month & My Book Obsession

February 22, 2012

I am absolutely, positively, obsessed with children’s books! It’s great for my classroom library, but not so great on my wallet… but I just can’t get enough of them! It’s literally a joke in my classroom… many of our Mondays begin with a discussion about where I went over the weekend, and the kids all know immediately that I will be talking about some great new books I picked up for them at the bookstore! They even know the name of my favorite bookstore, (and no, it’s not B&N)!

We have been reading lots of great books the past few weeks for Black History Month, and the kids have been so interested in learning about slavery and the Civil Rights Movement that I just HAD to go see what other books I could find on the topics! After a trip to the bookstore this evening (not my favorite… it was already closed for the evening), I came home with this bunch:

And here are some of the other great books that we have been reading this month:

AND I just ordered this one online and should be getting it in the mail this week!

What are you doing for Black History Month? Any good book recommendations I should add to my list?

My Teacher Bag

February 18, 2012

The Clutter-Free Classroom is having a “Let’s see your teacher bag linky party!” I love, love, LOVE my teacher bag! I got it on an after-Christmas trip to the outlet mall and was obsessed with the pink interior! I told my hubby I HAD to have the bag, since it was pink! He didn’t quite understand why I wanted a bag that I mainly liked the inside of, but that’s ok because it’s now my bag and I love it!

AND as a bonus, I have been able to keep it much neater than my old teacher bag! I love the motivation that comes with getting new things! Here’s a peek inside:

My three FAVORITE books that I carry around with me everyday! Love them!

Notebook from one of my kiddos and notepad for all my random notes and to do lists

My Erin Condren teacher planner and life planner!!! These are AMAZING and make my planning so much more organized and colorful! AND right now the life planners & gift labels are 40% off!