Apple Blossoms: A little of this, a little of that...and a Freebie!

Howdy, folks!

It's been so crazy busy...I feel like my head is in a whirlwind! Always something to do as you fellow teachers know!

Just wanted to share a little of what's been going on this past week...and there's a Freebie, too!

On Tuesday, we had our 100th Day of School celebration! Man, there are SOOOO many incredible ideas out there...wish I could do them all! And, as luck would have it, our 100th Day fell on a shortened day due to professional development. There are pros and cons to that as you might imagine.

I had to try to do some normal teaching among the fun and excitement. Ha!

I'm sorry I don't have many photos and I KICK myself for not doing so. But I can tell you what we did...here's where you use your visualization skills, right?

I did make a "car wash" type of door entry/exit (I have 2 doors) from butcher yellow butcher paper...worked very nicely, I must say. Those Exacto knives are a teacher's best friend, I tell ya! When they entered, (oh all the (oohhhhs! and ahhhhs!) they walked through one that said they saw "Welcome to your 100th Day of School! Whenever we left the room, they walked through one that said "You are 100 Days Smarter!"

We began making our 100th Day crowns (crown printable courtesy of thevirtualvine.com ). They colored, cut and pasted them onto decorated sentence strips. I staple them in the back once they are finished.

Later we wrote about of what we would like 100 and what we would do with that. Also, what can we eat 100 of and what we can not :) I used a printable from the cute 100 Days of School Celebration Packet at http://kindertrips.blogspot.com/

We then attacked the famous fruit loop necklaces. I had them group 10 of each color using a 100s chart to help. I didn't have as much time as I'd wanted, although many of the kiddos finished on time. As yummy and fun as the kids have, I think this will be my last year with fruit loop necklaces. One year I used the Oriental Trading Company's 100th Day necklace and it was much for fun and easy all around. Cuter, too, I think. But we still had fun!

At the end of the day, I presented them with a certificate from the above mentioned Kindertrips packet, congratulating them for being 100 days smarter! Woo-hoo!

We made it!

On Thursday, we had an oh so lovely rainy day..FUN! I used these indoor recesses to do the Roll to 100 (or Race to 100) with the kiddos. I may not be doing it right but I did a modified one since it was the first time where each player rolled the die and colored the number of dots shown on the hundreds chart. They really enjoyed it! If they finished and there was time, I challenged them a little more. At the end, they had to roll the exact number of squares left to win. They were all ohhh-ing and ahhh-ing at that little trick!

And FINALLY...my activity that comes with a freebie!

In light of all the Superbowl hub-bub, I created a worksheet that has the kiddos demonstrate their knowledge of place value. We'd spent about a week on it so far (and doing it with the calendar every day REALLY helps frontload them and get them practicing/thinking/etc...I will never change that!). I'm quite proud of it myself :)

The students chose a number (with my monitoring, of course) to write on the football helmet. They had to model the number with 10s and 1s manipulatives. They then colored, cut, and glued the appropriate 10s and 1s and wrote out the number in an addition sentence - expanded notation form. Yep, I want them to learn that term :)