Secret Mission

 What do you all think of this?

I would love to know more!

I love that it's doing good for others (and not necessarily just other teachers) and hopefully it's becoming infectious at the school this teacher works at!

Valentine's Day Art Activities

Valentine's Day is one of those holidays that comes and then it goes without another mention... so do we really need to do an art activity just for that one day?  The answer is always YES!

Anyways, since it's almost Valentine's Day I figured it was the perfect time to round up some art activities that might just go with the theme of February 14th.

Here are some projects that I've done in the past:

Heart Art

Heart Trees

Paul Klee

... Psst... this Paul Klee one I likely got the idea from here

And here are some that I've found off of one my favourite blogs to get art ideas from (A Faithful Attempt)

Painted Paper Plate Sewing Craft

Mixed Media Candy Hearts

Mondrain Hearts

What are some of your favourite art activities to do with your students during Valentine's Day?

This Week At School

We aren't out of flu season yet so it was another busy week of work for this substitute teacher!

I started off the week in kindergarten where we did a lot of playing... they had Plus Plus blocks and so I made them a couple of dogs out of them (and they looked really good too... but alas I don't know photographic proof of the dogs).

The following day I was a special education resource teacher, which for a substitute teacher just means going around to a few different classrooms and offering my assistance to them.

I was at the colony!  I hadn't been there in a looong time and it was a lovely day (despite them taking all my preps away on me - I mean, come on, even subs deserve one prep a day!).  For lunch we had Vietnamese noodles - YUM!

Then I was at a classroom I had only been in once before.  I recalled the last time I was in that room it was pretty easy and once again we had a VERY easy morning.  We started off by reading and then later on in the morning there were a couple of kids that needed to present on their simple machines... otherwise I had preps!

I ended off my week in a grade 5/6 class that was lovely.  We talked about debates (specifically are kids sports to intense?) and had a period of reading (which they loved)!

How to Teach Your Students to Write Descriptively

I was in a grade 3 classroom a while ago and had the opportunity to co-teach a lesson with another teacher (which pretty much meant she led the lesson and I helped the students with it).  The aim of this particular lesson was to get students to write descriptively and here was how it went:

Prior to teaching the lesson to the students the teacher pulled me aside and told me that another teacher was going to come in all in a panic that a scary dog chased her through the school but wasn't going to describe the dog anymore than that.  

So this happened and she came busting through the classroom door and the students got all excited.  She told them about the dog and that the principal wanted them to make found posters for the dog so that they could find it's owner.  

All was going according to plan until one student freaked right out and dashed over to some counter height stools and climbed on top of them.  He was terrified of dogs (and it didn't help that the only describing words for this dog was that it was scary).  The rest of the class loved it but the one that was afraid I had to continually console him from off a tall table (that he tried sitting on multiple times) and their pictures all looked very different (which was the point of the exercise).  

At the end of the period the teacher confessed and told them that there was no dog and explained why it was hard to come up with an accurate poster for this found dog because we didn't actually know what the dog looked like!  

But alas, even with the confession the terrified student couldn't be convinced to leave the classroom.  So while the rest of the class went to music he stayed behind and read a book (at least he wasn't on top of the table anymore).  Eventually I convinced him to leave the classroom and walk with me to go pick up the class from music (and then it was the end of the day so he went home). 

So, have you ever had a lesson backfire in a pretty major way (even if it was just for one student)?

What are you doing to help encourage your students to add descriptions to their writing?

Here's another post I did about a project where students described a hero, here is what a grade 5 class did to describe hot chocolate and here is what I had my grade 8's do when describing how to make a sandwich.

Morning Check In

If you are looking for a new way to check in with your students and how they are doing (and maybe something a little less elementary from the zones of regulation stuff) a friend posted this online

Looks like this teacher has a few kids she could be checking in on today to hopefully help them have a better tomorrow.

Do you use a check in system in your classroom?  

What does it look like?

This Week At School

It was a busy week at school.  Temperatures dropped below -30 and the flu is still running rampart (I would say on average there are about 5 students missing per class that I've been in).

What did I do this week while at school?

I learned a new way for measuring the surface area of a triangular prism.  He told me multiple times that this isn't a standard way of solving for it but it works so I'll do my best to explain it to you...

First, base x height to determine the surface areas of the 2 triangles (no need to divide by 2 since there are 2 of them).

Then, figure out the perimeter of one of the triangles (so you'll be adding up all 3 sides)

Then, multiple the perimeter of the triangle by the distance between the 2 triangles.

Finally, add what you got in the last step with your surface areas of the triangles from the first step and voila!... you should have the surface area of the triangular prism.

I was also in an art classroom this week and I found this...

Bob Ross Painting?

Now I can't say for certain or anything but... do we think this teacher may have done a Bob Ross painting?

Scaredy Squirrel Project

A while ago I was in an early years classroom that was doing a project on Scaredy Squirrel

First, I'm assuming they read some Scaredy Squirrel books.  According to my research there are currently 8 Scaredy Squirrel books out there.  They likely read at least a couple of them to come up with such an extensive list of what he was all afraid of!

Then, I'm assuming they made a list of everything Scaredy Squirrel was afraid of (looks like they came up with 26 things)

Next, they made a map.  Below is the teachers example (or maybe the one they did together).  Above is the criteria they needed to include in their maps.  

Finally, they had to do a little bit of writing as to why they thought this new BFF would be perfect for Scaredy Squirrel.

Personally, I loved the idea!

And, in case you are wondering "what are some possibilities for Scaredy Squirrels BFF?" well here is a short list that I saw kids writing about

1)  Mrs Scaredy Squirrel (everyone needs a companion?)

2)  A Couch (perfect for watching tv and now he won't have to sit on the floor!)

3) Ice Cream (yummy!)

4) A doughnut (no sharp corners!)

I looked and I looked for where this teacher might have gotten this project from but couldn't find it.  BUT, if you Google "Scaredy Squirrel Class Project" lots of ideas do come up!

What else could be Scaredy Squirrels new BFF?

How to Spell "Their"

I think we all need a copy of this to put in our classrooms (elementary through high school)

This Week At School

Well, it was the first week back at school after Christmas break!  Luckily (for myself as a healthy substitute teacher), the cold and flu has been hitting the city I live in hard and so I managed to book 3 days this week (all because I was originally booked for a half day at a school and then other teachers snapped me up for the remainder of the week).

We didn't do anything too terribly exciting this first week back at school, except, one day I was a home ec teacher and we made sugar biscuits.  Let me tell you, some of those kitchens were a doughy mess and I'm very impressed at how well they got cleaned afterwards!

I'm not expecting January to be too difficult of a month to fill up with work (with the frigid temperatures and the flu going around)... it should all keep me quite busy!

What If I Had Animal Teeth Art Activity

When one of the teachers that I go in for regularly asks me to plan an art lesson I normally do not hesitate to do so (dare I say it's my favourite subject?). Anyways, that's what happened when I was going to be in a grade 3/4 classroom a little while ago. To find an art project I went to my favourite blog for art ideas which is A Faithful Attempt and found this lesson:

If I had Animal Teeth 

I'm a sucker for an art project that also involves writing (you can see how I've incorporated poetry into my art classes here and here) and I felt that I was given enough time in the morning for the class to use their iPads to do some research on animal teeth with a partner and then write about those animal teeth. 

I gave them about an hour to do the research and the writing part of this activity (I also gave them the sentence starter "If I could have animal teeth I would want ______ because _____________" and encouraged them to come up with at least 3 reasons as to why they would want that particular animals teeth and one fact about that animals teeth. Since they had the iPads now and might not later in the day I also had them do some rough sketches of their animal teeth so that they wouldn't forget what they look like. If they finished early they could read/write/draw (which was just something that the teacher had in the lesson plan a couple of times throughout the day).

Later on we did the actual art project.

Before I got to school that day I had cut out templates of the mouth and tongue just in case students couldn't figure out how to draw them (I did give them the option to use my template which would look similar to the example of to make their own).

But, before starting the art project we went over some expectations.

The nice thing about using A Faithful Attempt's blog is that she always posts lots of student examples! So before starting any project that I get the idea from off her site I always show kids all the examples. While I'm showing them the examples we do a bit of critiquing and talk about what we liked (and did not like) about them. Based off of what we come up with I create a list of expectations for their art. For this particular project we decided that it needed to fill up the page, that the person had to be a fairly accurate representation of them (I told them their teacher should be able to come back the following day and decide who's is who's just based off of how it looks, and the animal teeth also need to be an accurate representation of the animal they chose (which is why we sketched the teeth earlier when they were doing their research).

Then I explained the process of creating the head (start with the head shape, sketch and cut out the mouth, tongue, teeth, and hair, glue everything together, and then draw on some eyes and a nose). Once that's all done they chose another colour of consruction paper and glued their head on to it.

And voila! They were done!

Here are some examples of what my grade 3/4 class came up with:

I just had them leave their writing in their writing books and left it as an option for the teacher to add later if he wanted (although we really didn't leave space for any writing with how we put them up).

Thanks A Faithful Attempt for the great art activity!

Unintentional Foot Massages

Here's a post from way back...  I took it down a couple of years ago because it was getting all kinds of weird attention so I revised it and I'm hoping that now we can all just appreciate it for what it is... a story about the time some students were

I'm subbing in a kindergarten class the kids are alright (nothing amazing but not the worst I've seen either) and we are all sitting on the carpet for attendance, calendar time, maybe a story and a song too. On this particular day (like many other warm days here in the great white north, I've decided to wear flip flops.

So the kids are all sitting on the carpet and I'm sitting in the chair telling them that it's June and it's a Thursday and the weather is hot or something along those lines when a student puts up his hand

"I really like your toes" says little Billy who then begins to touch my toe nails which were likely painted a lovely shade of pink (questionable but he isn't running around the room screaming so I allow it and continue talking).

The next kid clearly sees that I'm allowing little Billy to touch my toe nails and dares to take it one step further. She is clearly thinking "oh yeah Billy, you only get to touch her nail I'm going to touch her foot!"

Next hand goes up and little Becky asks "may I give you a foot massage?"

It was the strangest thing. For the entire day they would not let me stand for anything in excess of 15 minutes because then it was cutting into someone's foot massaging time.

Their hands were tiny and they didn't do a great job but after a 4 hour mediocre foot massage your feet still feel amazing.

Sidenote: this wasn't the first time this happened. Once I was subbing in a grade 3 class when the class assured me they normally massage their teachers feet while she reads them a story. I was wearing runners this day but they just attempted to massage my feet through my shoes. Odd.

And, just to be clear, as a teacher I would never request my students to do this... I'll just go pay for a pedicure and have a professional do it.

This Week OFF From School

It's been a busy couple of weeks off from school but I had a very Merry Christmas and a happy New Year (and we also celebrated my husbands birthday in there as well).

We had a total of 5 family Christmas' (both with immediate and close family members).  A LOT of food was consumed within that 2 week period of time!

I went skating (twice) at a local duck pond.

I got together with friends for lunch.

I spent some Christmas money at Ikea

I put together Christmas presents

I baked my husband a birthday cake (and I didn't think to take a picture of it!)

I started my annual Christmas puzzle (which this year just so happens to be Christmas-y!)

this was it after the first 2 days

I opened a lot of gifts!

Gifts in this picture:

- some new coffee syrups

-  the sideboard from Ikea (which I bought with giftcards I had been saving)

-  2 white shelves from JYSK

-  a power bar that is nearly impossible to see hiding behind the coffee maker

a basket for our livingroom to put all our blankets and extra pillows in (can you believe that this Christmas I acquired 4 new throw blankets?!?!  I'd say I'm set for life now!

What I didn't get to on this break...

Taking down the Christmas decorations and tree (but something tells me I might still have time to do this next week before things get too busy with work).