Adventures in Teaching

Spectrum Readers: Nature's Helpers

2013-02-28T19:57:00.003-08:00

This was a cute book to read to the students and is great since it will match with our upcoming science unit! It had lots of colorful pictures that the students liked and seemed durable which is extremely important when the books are left to a group of 5 year olds! Here are a few pictures so you can see what the inside is all about.

You can find more here!

AND a video here!

I participate in the Brand Ambassador Program for Carson-Dellosa and I received this

product for free to try and review.

Common core and making sure the kids know why the heck we do what we do!

2013-02-28T19:34:00.002-08:00

My next goodie to work with from Carson Dellosa was perfect with all our upcoming changes. For us we will be switching over to the common core next year for Language Arts and already switched over for Math this year. So a big box of all the standards nicely laid out and with kid friendly language on the opposite side was perfect for checking out. I have wanted to start posting these in my room for awhile but just lacked the time to type it all out. These were nice because they were a pretty heavy duty material instead of printing something out that I would have to laminate. We also frequently talk about WHY we are learning and how we progress and grow as learners. I would love to eventually scatter them throughout the room but for now I kept it simple and put them with our daily schedule so they could see there was a reason for all those crazy things their teacher makes them do!

You can find this product here!

Also a little video here.

I participate in the Brand Ambassador Program for Carson-Dellosa and I received this

product for free to try and review.

A bulletin board and game in one

2013-02-28T19:08:00.001-08:00

I was sent my brand ambassador assignment and I was extra happy because bulletin boards take time and that is something we don't have a lot of as teachers. It also gives me and my fiance time to come up with puns which I feel is a requirement as a teacher. The goofier the better. I lucked out because this set had SO SO many pieces to it that I figured I could easily come up with something else to do with them!

So first is the bulletin board which is the original intentions for the product. I lucked out and also was sent the border that is with it. What you cannot see is that the border also happens to be reversible and yellow on the other side. Feel free to click on the pictures they should open up to a much larger size to get a good idea of the border and of the frogs.

We also came up with a variety of other sayings:

Funny books croak me up/ Hop or Spring into a good book , or spring ect ect/ Leap into literacy/ Toadally awesome students/ Croak open a book

Last year when I did one I had Spring into new life which goes with our science unit in the spring and Easter since I teach at a Catholic School.

Now on to the leftover materials! I had TONS of frogs leftover and a larger frog which I felt I had to do something with. So a game/ center was made! We have been working on reading cvc words and word families so our lovely and amazingly helpful Administrative Assistant laminated my new Carson Dellosa set for me. I then wrote with wet erase markers words on the back and cut out some lilypads and a center was born! I am sure you could play this in a variety of ways but the large frog is the mom or home and they collect the baby frogs as they hop along the lilypads and read the words.

Either way as I was setting it up the students were excited and I was happy with my new materials for the classroom. It had bright colors and could be used as a great theme for spring. I would recommend this product for grades pre-k up to third grade.

Here is a link if you are interested in checking it out for your classroom!

You can also check out a quick commercial video here.

I participate in the Brand Ambassador Program for Carson-Dellosa and I received this

product for free to try and review.

Summer Bridge Activities K-1 Review

2012-07-24T18:52:00.002-07:00

Hello! Back again!

This time I am checking out the Summer Bridge Activities Series from Carson Dellosa! The publisher is Rainbow Bridge Publishing. This one was perfect for me to review because as a teacher it is nice to be able to recommend something to the parents so the students don't end up with the dreaded summer slide.

What it includes:

An online component!
A summer reading list!
Activities across ALL of the curriculum! It even had fitness goals!
Flash cards, stickers, and a certificate of completion!
Then most importantly lots of engaging, visually pleasing pages for the student to complete!

One thing that I really LOVE about this is the fact that it does have hands on activities and not just worksheets. Sure worksheets are important and lots of research has shown the importance of drill and practice but IT IS SUMMER! This breaks up monotony and helps those students that need to get up and out of their seat and move to learn. This helps it mimic a real classroom instead of just a series of homework sheets. I would definitely recommend this to parents of students in my classroom.

I participate in the Brand Ambassador Program for Carson-Dellosa and I

received this workbook set for free to try and review.

Carson-Dellosa Learning Spot Lessons

2012-03-05T18:57:00.002-08:00

I recently acquired Learning Spot Lessons to try in our classroom and on our white board. The lessons we have had time to try out so far that match our current curriculum are the addition and word family units. These work perfectly to reinforce lessons and the students seem to enjoy hands-on portion with each unit. I like that they can do these as part of a center activity while I can work one-on-one with another student. The units come with additional ideas and worksheets. I participate in the Brand Ambassador Program for Carson-Dellosa and I received Learning Spot Lesson product for free to try and review.

If you want to check out the Learning Spot Lessons click the link below for a free unit worth $14.99!

www.CDLearningSpot.com/BA

Welcome to the new blog!

2011-01-09T08:16:00.000-08:00

Here you can find updates on what we are doing in class, books I have found useful in teaching, and some of this years adventures of what has worked and what has not!