Mom2Punkerdoo

Ideas for Inquiry With Artifacts

Are you looking for a creative way to build Inquiry into your classroom? This activity sparks lots of fun inquiry while building on inferencing skills, making connections, and focusing on different ways personal histories can be told.

I am pretty excited to share my new post over on Classroom Tested Resources this month. With a few days to go we are just finishing our Where We Are In Place And Time unit. This guided inquiry with artifacts was how we kicked off our exploration into the different ways people tell their personal histories. Hop on over and check it out and be sure to download this freebie if you decide it's a lesson you'd like to try!

Teacher Appreciation Giveaway and Sale

Teacher appreciation giveaway going on right now! Have your heard? Teachers Pay Teachers is having a teacher appreciation sale starting tomorrow? Guess what? To appreciate you even more I am giving away two $10 TPT gift cards! Enter my giveaway today. A winner will be randomly chosen and notified tomorrow morning. Be sure to remember to use the coupon code: celebrate when making your purchases!

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Show and Tell Tuesday: Fun Favorites

It's time for Show & Tell Tuesday with Stephanie from Forever in 5th Grade again! Check out my favorite bulletin board along with a few other of my current favorites.

This is one of my favorite boards in my classroom. I need to take a better picture for a more detailed post in the future, but I'll give you the basics now. Each petal of the flower lists student names. Each square icon indicates which center station the students need to go to. I rotate the flower with every rotation. Icons are attached with Velcro and there is simply a push pin in the middle of the flower!

Show and Tell Tuesday: The Little Things

On the blog today erasers, pencils and comfy shoes! I am linking up again with Stephanie from Forever in 5th Grade for a little Show & Tell Tuesday to share some little things that bring me great joy!

http://foreverinfifthgrade.blogspot.com/2016/01/show-tell-tuesday-first-ever.html

Are you looking for creative ways to encourage recycling and upcycling in your students? Check out this super fun upcycle activity that make a fun toy that will promote hours of entertainment! Recycled CD Spinners

These recycled CD spinners are so easy to make and super fun! They are great way to creatively reuse old CDs and marbles.

You Need:

One old CD
One marble
One bottle cap
Assorted Sharpies
A glue gun

Show and Tell Tuesday

On the blog today we've got shaving cream, laminating, doodling and pancakes! Sounds like fun doesn't it? I am linking up with Stephanie from Forever in 5th Grade for a little Show & Tell Tuesday.

The most fun way to clean classroom desks ever! Dollar store shaving cream! Lots of fun and leaves the desks clean and the room smelling great too!

I've been using shaving cream to clean desks forever! It never fails to be a fun filled afternoon that leaves the classroom not only looking, but also smelling clean. My students had tons of fun expressing their creativity for awhile before we had to wipe it all away. Tip: Get your shaving cream at the dollar store.

Creative Reuse: Snowflakes

Howdy y'all! So as you can see going back into the classroom after 16 years has seriously cut into my time to blog and create product. The good news is I've got lots of things to share if I can ever find the time post about it.

Are you looking for creative ways to encourage recycling and upcycling in your students? Check out this super fun upcycle activity using all those catalogs you get in the mail druing the holidays! Creative Reuse: Snowflakes

Here quick fun project I did with my students before the break that would be a fun one to do in January also. You can make some great use of of Christmas catalogs and wrapping paper too!

One of our units this fall focused on sharing the planet and we spent a lot of time discussing how our actions can shape the future. For 2nd graders much of the conversation revolved around recycling and reusing. Our current unit focused on creativity as a tool of expression and thus this project beautifully tied both units together!

All you need for this is a pile of old catalogs, some colorful junk mail or even used wrapping paper. I opted to use my gazillions of Christmas catalogs. I tore out the most colorful pages and then used my paper cutter to trim them square.

My inspiration for the idea came from this fantastic pin from the blog Michele Made Me.

I also used the printable from this pin to teach my students how to fold and cut properly. We did a practice round on white paper and I used these decorate my classroom door. Then, students went to town with my stack of catalog squares. Everyone made at least two. We glued them to white construction paper to make curtains for our cubbies for our Creativity Cafe....which I will hopefully find time to blog about soon!