Free Daily Digital Clip Art

For amazing digital clip art view the products of Jessica Weible.  She has daily free downloads that are just adorable!
http://jwillustrations.com/daily-freebie.html
You can also visit her Etsy Store...
https://www.etsy.com/shop/JWIllustrations

The apple images you see in our Two Sassy Apples logo or part of her collection.

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New TPT Product - Nonfiction Animal Projects

Just finished another Teachers Pay Teachers product.  My students started using it last week and it was amazing how they started to work through the stages of this project independently.  They loved the QR codes to lead them through "How to Draw" and "Real Live Videos" of their animals.  This set is ready to print and start using!

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Floors App

Floors by Pixel press is a great app for the iPad and iPod.  This app encourages problem solving, criticial thinking, creativety, coding and computer science skills.  
My students are eager and excited when they have the opportunity to work on their design. This app has several options and students works well with both beginning and advanced student coders.  Learn more about it by watching my app review: Floors App Review

Download Floors now on the app store.  

Thank you to Pixel Press for part of the informational video included.

http://techieturtleteacher.blogspot.com/2015/02/tech-tip-tuesday-twitter-tip.html

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Literacy Bake Sale

Our school does an annual Children’s Literature Bake Sale in conjunction with March is Reading month.  Parents and students bake items to showcase their favorite book.  The excitement this event draws is contagious!  We usually do it two or three days.  It is so amazing to see the creativity that goes into this event.  The profits are used to go back into literacy materials for our school.

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Hairy Harry and Hairy Harriet

This a great way to get Spring rolling...students love this project every step of the way!  Grass seed, potting soil, and some nylons and you are on your way to an engaging science and writing activity.             

For more information and directions on how to accomplish this amazing project see my set on teachers pay teachers at:  

Hairy How To

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Live TV in your classroom...your students are the stars!!

The iPad works great to broadcast a science experiment being done at the sink.  One student films using the camera app and then you can project the iPad onto the interactive board for all to see using Apple TV! 

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Non-fiction Animal Projects

We are in the midst of creating our Nonfiction Animal books in Second Grade. The students first step was to go shopping and to look through books and pick their top three animals they wanted to research.  I then put students in groups of 4 or 5 and assigned their animal.  The students are rolling along.  They are so engaged and checking off their pages.  We are using this packet (don't worry about the label of 1st grade...this can be tailored to other grades too...) as a starter Non-fiction Writing Packet. Our librarian has supplied my students with boxes of books for each animal.  I also searched TPT and found nonfiction articles on each animal.  
Even more exciting we have taken this project to the next level by adding QR codes (QR codes for:  live webcams, specific animal facts, videos, etc.) for the student to independently work through the stages of this project and become an expert on their animal.  


We launched this project by showing student samples from last year and unveiling the entire project. 

We created a group checklist and then we meet each day and revisit at least one element of the project. We created QR codes that link to a youtube video that shows a "How to Draw" video of each of the individual animals.

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Indoor Recess

Have you had a lot of indoor recesses this winter?  Here is a great way to give your students a chance to burn off some energy.  We love doing these with our students too!!  Keep kids focused + motivated. No special equipment or setup. All you need is a computer and a screen the whole class can see. Go noodle is very organized and motivating.  

We also love the Wii dance videos you can find on youtube like Despicable Me, One Direction, Who Let the Dogs Out and What Does the Fox Say?  You can use these videos as incentives and it ends up rewarding you too!

Go Noodle

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President's Day

Today we did a quick experiment using pennies .  We talked about the fact that Abraham Lincoln is on the penny.  I posed the question “Why are some pennies darker and some shiny?”  The students suggested lots of ideas.  I then asked how they thought we could try to clean the pennies.  We set up stations around the room using the suggested ways:  water, soap and water, water and salt, and I suggested the magic recipe of vinegar and salt  I found on this great site: Experiment Directions at mom2poshlildivas

I love to use Nook Kids when I want a book instantly!!! It’s a free app and then you purchase the books. I decided to read this book during our Read Aloud with Accountable Talk Time.

We also used the free printable packet found at this link: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Presidents-Day-PowerPoint-Presentation-FREE-1093793 along with our Scholastic News.  Oh... and I had a student who brought in an awesome CD with Presidential Songs!!

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Scholastic Storia School Edition

How exciting!  I was able to obtain a free school edition of Scholastic Storia for the rest of the school year.  I rolled this out today with 2nd graders.  At first it was a challenge, as when I created my class account I entered both first and last names not knowing that this was how usernames where going to generated.  I quickly changed that to first names only.  We worked as a class getting loggod on for the first time.  Students explored the site.  They quickly found that they could highlight text, look up words they didn’t know, have the option of having the text read to them and could quix there understanding of what they read.  How awesome is that for me as a teacher!  I have full access to reports with all the data on what they are doing and reading.  We have just started an informational text/research unit in reading and writing.  I created reading groups and assigned students specific books that i wanted them to read.  Now they can read these books as they have time.  The best part is that this is web based.  Students can go anywhere they have internet from any device and continue their reading!  Just gotta say LOVE IT! Find out more at http://www.scholastic.com/  

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