It's Summer Time & SALE

  It's officially the start of summer vacation! YIPEE! I am so excited and thrilled to finally have some quality family time and begin to enjoy our new house. The last month has flown by, but with all of the commuting back and forth to school each day I have been so exhausted and too tired to really work on projects around our house. Until today when the hubs, boys, and I built a grilling patio with flower bed.

  As I relish in the fact that I don't need to set my alarm in the mornings for awhile, I reflect on all of the amazing last days my classroom kiddos and I had together. Here is a look at all of our hard work to transform our classroom into Ancient Egypt for our Walking Museum. We used my Ancient Egypt: Nonfiction Close Reading & Writing Research Unit for all the activities below.

  I made each of my kiddos a bag with their name written in hieroglyphics on the outside. (The numbers in the corner are for me to know which bag belongs to which kiddo) Inside each bag was a baggie of homemade dough and two toothpicks.

  

   My kiddos practiced how to write their name in hieroglyphics for several minutes using the alphabet code from my unit.

  I then placed all of the hieroglyphic bags all around my room and had my kiddos look for their name. I seriously planned for this to take 10-15 minutes, but all my kiddos found their bags within minutes! They were all so excited to open their bag and "carve" their name in hieroglyphics to make their own tablet. 

  I baked these tablets in my oven at home before our Walking Museum opened for the whole school. Here is how they looked on the day of our museum opening. 

  All the kiddos that came into our room got to match several of our bags hanging to the hieroglyphic tablets below. I know it is hard to see in the pictures, but our room included interactive QR codes that my kiddos were so excited to include on all of their projects and crafts. The QR codes on the bags would reveal the kiddos name it belonged to and the QR code on the information chart, next to the sink, gave a link to a YouTube video on Ancient hieroglyphics. We also had a table set up with hieroglyphic alphabet charts and blank paper and sand for kiddos to practice writing their own names in hieroglyphics. This was a favorite interactive activity...even for our 5th graders!

  And after learning about kings of Egypt my kiddos turned their black and white picture into their own pharaoh oil pastel painting. 

   Here is how we took these oil pastel paintings and turned them into columns inside of our pyramid museum room. 

  Hanging from the ceilings is our oil pastel pictures held together by twine and left over cheesecloth from our mummy that we made. You can see each of my kiddos research reports on their tables. Each final draft was laminated and bound with QR codes attached to the front cover. When the kiddos from the school scanned these QR codes they would be able to hear my kiddos reading the research book. This took extra time to complete, but myself and my classroom kiddos were so excited with the end result!

  Here are a couple more pictures from our Ancient Egypt unit. 

 This is a mummy mold of one of my kiddos that we had so much fun making at home. I almost had my classroom kiddos convinced that my son was actually inside of it! Both those QR codes include links to YouTube videos about mummification and amulets placed in the linen wrappings during mummification. 

  Behind our mummy you can see several canopic jars some of my kiddos made which hold the organs during the mummification process. 

  Our last day of school was filled with laughter, awards, recess, games, recess, sugar, recess, and a few goodbye tears. As we said our last goodbyes and had a huge hug fest my kiddos each got a little end of the year gift on their way out the door. 

 Each sand bucket had a label that said,

"Thanks for filling my bucket this year!"

  I alternated the yellow and blue sand buckets around the room. Each bucket (Michaels for .49 each) had bubbles, a bookmark, a summer vacation Black Lagoon book, and a picture of all of our classroom kiddos holding a sign of what they want to be when they grow up. Here is a look at the end of year gifts at each table around our room. 

    I have placed my entire TPT store on sale as my end of the year gift to all of my teacher friends. You can grab my Ancient Egypt unit or stock up on activities for back to school for next year. Now its time to toast in the summer with the hubs!!!

A Little SPRING in Your Step!

I have to do it and start today's posting with this...

   Yup! It's HUMP DAY! This was last week during my kiddos Spring break. My break is this week and it has been nothing near a break. Monday was our first official day out of our home of five years. I have mentioned before that we are having a new home built, but its not quite ready yet. Just a couple more weeks. In the mean time we are "vacationing" in my families town home. It has been so much fun for my kiddos the last couple of days. This morning though it was like driving with the Walking Dead in the backseat. Our new home is 45 minutes south from our old place and my families town home is an additional 20 minutes from there. So I had a couple of sleeping boys on the way to school and on the way home. Only 6 more weeks I keep telling them. Although, my eldest is trying to justify just staying home and homeschooling my youngest. I can just see them now swimming in the pool all day, making forts around the house, and eating as much junk food as they can find. Not so fast little kiddos...only 6 more weeks!
   I spent my day today at Barnes and Noble working on some Spring activities for the classroom and getting reacquainted with Starbucks. 5 hours and four drinks later (OMG how did that happen?) I have finally finished my Spring Math & Literacy centers and just in time to pick the kiddos up from school. Is it bad that I felt like I spent the day at the spa? The over-sized leather chair, soft music, no tattling or boogers, classroom antics, and overabundance of Starbucks put me into a Zen state of mind. Here is a look at some of the Math centers in my Spring pack.

 Skip Count by 2's

 Skip Count by 5's

 Skip Count by 10's

A Fraction of Rain

 Time for Tweets

 Springtime Measurements

 Bumblebee Fact Families

 Springtime Graphing 

 Buggy Odd & Even

    Here is my little bug testing out the activity hot off the presses before my classroom kiddos get to play next Monday. He was very impressed with himself that we could sort them all...even the 3 digit numbers!

   You can put a little "SPRING" in your step by picking these 9 Math centers and 6 Literacy centers from my TPT store by clicking on the image below. And because my mind is racing from my caffeine high I have a literacy center FREEBIE for you. "It's Raining Plurals" is just one of the activities you will find in my Spring pack. P.S. My April Common Core Aligned Math Journal is ready for your printing too. See what a little caffeine can help me accomplish??? It puts a little  huge SPRING in my step!

Dash Spelling & Compare and Contrast Unit

   This will be a quick post tonight. I think I am finally getting over the lingering sickness that I have had over a month now thanks to a weekend of sleeping. So I am trying to get all the rest I can get at this point before things get crazy with our big move next month. Here are a couple pictures of what my kiddos have been up to the last couple of days.
   We celebrated our schools first Leader in Me Parent Night by writing what we wanted to be when we grow up. The kiddos really had to think about Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind to plan how they would prepare for their future career. Here is what they all looked like hung-up in our hall.

   Today we worked on spelling multi-syllable words using dash spelling and vowel tag. Because our schedule was changed, because of state assessments and it was snowing, we turned our spelling lesson into a craftivity to get through the 45 minute block at the end of the day that usually occupies our specials time.Here are our little Lucky Spelling Leprechauns. 

   I wanted to give you all a preview to one of my favorite activities that my kiddos will be completing the following two weeks. We will be comparing and contrasting character traits, themes, settings,and so much more with the classic stories of Jumanji and Zathura. You can get a copy of this unit in my TPT store by clicking on the image below. 

A Little Luck for the Kiddos

   This will be a quick post as I am going to have my pictures do the talking for me. This sinus infection (going on three weeks and counting...BOO!) is making my brain squeal so my pillow is a callin'. I took some pictures of our St. Patrick's themes around our classroom today. Here is a quick peek at our writing center...

 (the shamrocks are from the Dollar Tree with story starter prompts written on them)

 (mini gold pots from Michael's with pictures glued to the bottom. Kiddos take a pot and write a story based on the picture on the bottom)

 (St. Patrick's themed "fancy" paper)

 Our Math Centers

 Our Literacy Centers

You can get both these Math and Literacy centers bundled together in my store by clicking on the image below. 

    On a side note, here is a look at our classroom door ready for our Leader in Me Parent Night this upcoming Thursday. Each grade level was responsible for representing one of the 7 Habits on their doors. Our habit was "Think Win, Win." My teammates and I each took one part of the habit. Those are my kiddos inside of the "win"!