I watched this the other day and found myself laughing so hard!  I don’t know if a prerequisite is you need to have a cat or just love their attitude!

Dear Diary…

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What a natural – Earth Day and Arbor Day (no pun intended)!  This year the Arbor Day Foundation will plant trees in the national forests from donations for you.  Commemorate a child’s birth with a tree in one of America’s national forests!

They also have on their website lots of ideas for activities with children and nature! Check it out!

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I found this in Parent and Child Magazine and thought others would enjoy using it too! Sorry I couldn’t find it online to link to.

Parent and Child Magazine - Sketchpad (119.9 KiB)

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So I came up with this activity that they had to listen to each other, carefully.  When my students arrived to school, instead of goofing around and sharing their holiday, I asked each to have a sit and fill in the following Top Ten Super Cool Things I Did Over the Holiday sheet.  It was amazing how quiet it became as they thought about their week off.

Now for the game.  The first person finished, was the first to share their Top Ten!  Everyone else needed to listen.  then they drew a Popsicle stick to determine who had to tell one thing that they had shared.  Once everyone heard the goal, they got serious!  They put their papers down and looked at the person speaking.  They saw that paying attention mattered and looking at the speaker made it easier to tie the words to the person. I was pleasantly surprised to see all of them enjoying the game.

Next time we are going to work on having eye contact with who they are talking to and responding with comments or questions for the other person.  Being comfortable speaking to others and helping them comfortable is a skill they will use for the rest of their lives.

Top Ten Things I Did Over the School Break! (191.9 KiB)

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Spring Fun! Fun color version. (878.3 KiB)

Simple way to reinforce addition and subtraction facts while enjoying the season!

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Mother's Day coloring sheet (299.1 KiB)

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Let's Give our Home...a hug! (637.4 KiB)

Earth Day Network that has lots of activities to do with students in grades K – 8.

We will be watching “The Lorax” and planting a tree.  What are you going to do for Earth Day?

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Cat Film Festival

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One that  I knew about but hadn’t worked out how to make it work for my young students is Edmodo. If you aren’t aware of it, here is a brief summary.  Edmodo requires no email addresses for your students, it’s free and it allows  you to have conversations with your students and they can talk with you.  You can upload assignments and take surveys. It even has a tracking tool that pulls data from other sites to make it more efficient for you.

Twitter was a big surprise to me.  I am on Twitter but I never saw the application for my classroom but after listening to Erin Klein (@kleinerin) I had a whole new understanding of the possibilities.

A fairly new app for the i pad and, soon for computers, is Haiku Deck.  A very user friendly presentation tool.  Easier than PowerPoint and only allows 2 lines of text.  Great for anyone but especially young students that writing is new for them.  I think older students will find the it limiting but many put too much text on their presentations so being concise would be great.

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