Tangrams

I love tangram patterns/puzzles. I still remember my fifth grade teacher showing the class how to create different shapes and figures using the seven pieces (or less). We had to use tangrams to create pictures of important elements in a book of our choosing. Then we had to give an oral presentation and show our tangram creations! I must say that I rocked the assignment. I can't remember what book I was working with but I do remember I made a clock, a bird, a boy, a man, and some kind of setting. 
Kinda crazy what a student remembers and continues to love even when they've grown up.


We had fun playing with tangrams today. Here are some of the sites we explored:


http://tangrams.ca/inner/pdftans.htm (had trouble making our pieces fit the printables)

http://www.museumofplay.org/flash-games/tangrams/ (again, trouble w/printables) 

http://www.logicville.com/tangram.htm (recreate images on the computer)
http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/topic_t_3.html (make your own or recreate on the computer)


I think the computer is the way to go for now. I need to either find or make some patterns for the tangram puzzles we have from Dollar Tree. They were neat to work w/today and I still ♥ good old fashion tangrams!

New finds & stuff I forgot about

While I was going teacher shopping clothes shopping for Am I found these:

Super cute wall hooks at JoAnn!

 At first I resisted, then I saw coordinating fabric and I was done! Not to mention the hooks were 50% off and I had 40% off coupons for the rest...oh and 15% off my entire purchase too. Love it!

Also on my shopping adventure I found a few things at Dollar Tree and while putting everything away I found an old bag that I had yet to put away. Can you tell I love my new crayon fabric?

Click any of the pictures to enlarge view :)

Left: parts of speech file game, science file game


Right: 3 matching games

Center: 3 puzzles

Left: a selection of wipe off clocks and an apple bell


Right: 3 pointers & 2 sets of desk tags


  

Center: colored #/math tiles

 Left: branches of government handouts


Right: map/states handouts

Center: cells handouts

The clocks and the handouts are new to me (at Dollar Tree) and I must say they look like excellent $1 resources! The clocks are wipe off and there are 24 colored pages in each handout packet. The person that decided to sell colored printouts that are blank is awesome-they must know how much colored ink costs too.


This weekend I'll be working on a few projects so hopefully I'll have something to share by the middle of next week. 

Pretend School (Week 4)

We worked on quite a bit this week. Al has been crazy-great at correctly identifying colors and shapes!!! I mean minus the gum in her hair today while we were out and about she's been on a roll! Am did a lot more computer assignments and is really getting better at using the computer and adding to the teens w/out her fingers. When she read to me tonight I could really tell that she's improved so much in these last 4 weeks of our pretend school. My babies are just growing up!

They love puzzles!

Thank you ice water and patience!

School starts in about two weeks and I'm not ready to stop our pretend school fun!

Temperature Log

I made something like this when I worked w/second grade last year. It went right along w/our morning work.  

On the front they have to "dress" themselves for the weather conditions

Inside they write the temperature for the day and fill in the thermometer

Click here to get your temp log :)

Zoo Exploration Cards

With cute fonts from dafont.com and images from jaxzoo.org and wikipedia.org I made some cards for my girls to take to the zoo. Guess we'll head over there this week so we can test the cards out.

The cards are customized for our local zoo (in Florida).
Click on the picture for an enlarged view.

Pretend School (Week 3)

This week is going pretty good. We haven't been doing a lot of our normal activities but there has been quite a few field trips that have been...full of exploration. We went to the zoo earlier in the week...always a good time. I've got to think of a "learning" activity to do the next time we go to the zoo-a scavenger hunt may be in order!

We wrestled alligators and swam w/the stingrays!

Activities & Ideas

I put together a few ideas (purposes) for the new activities we've added to our pretend school. Everything is pretty general to me...I'll be thinking of how to make these items fit better for older children and in a classroom setting. If anyone has any ideas-please share because I would love to hear them!!

I'm going to go ahead and warn that there is a glare on the pics-yeah,sorry about those! 

Pretend School (Week 2)

We had a great second week of pretend school. The 4th celebrations kept us busy early in the week and we have family in this weekend. The kids did get to use the new activities and they loved them.

Am used the colored alphabet sticks to spell

We explored Georgia this week

Al did great matching the pom-pom to the colored pins

Am spelled until she ran out of letters w/the alphabet beads

Al liked the color sorting so much she did it again w/beads

I would post pictures of them stamping but Al's pic yesterday explained it all. I must get better at taking more pictures of our pretend school adventures!

Al & the blue ink pad

So I guess I better work on stamp usage w/my youngest.

On her eyebrows, cheeks, and hands...Smurfette in training?

Less than $20

Dollar Tree finds...some items were marked down too!!

dry erase travel board, composition notebook w/lines, 2 bingo markers, wipe off numbers, clothespins, 2 ink pads, dominoes, pony beads, colored sticks, pom poms

Michaels finds...these were in the clearance sections.

multiplication/division bingo, addition/subtraction bingo, rhyming dominoes, knight stickers, coaster stickers, pirate stickers, finger puppets

Jo-Ann had 40% off coupons (I used on each item) and 15% off entire purchase coupons too.

word tiles, wooden sticks, oragami, alphabet beads

My entire shopping trip was less than $20-I just love a good deal! Now for each item's purpose. Some items will be used as is; the rest I have already turned into activities and will post them later.

Link up!

Linky parties are super-as I am finding out. I filled in a freebie from Go Fourth! With Mrs. Owens so I could link up with herTop 10 Things To Know About You (me) Linky Party! To get your own Top 10 freebie visit Rachel's blog Go Fourth! With Mrs. Owens: Linky Party and Freebie Alert!

Matrix-codes,codes,codes

So I just realized I was typing a few codes in the wrong way!!!! Oh my! I really do feel like I'm looking at the Matrix with all of the coding that I'm attempting these days. I guess I'm just grateful for those who post codes-without all of you, I would be...bland. I'd go back and correct all of my errors but I think I'll work on another project instead! Hahaha, did I mention I'm a newbie blogger?

Some organizers

I used 5 Nouns with my second graders and I used 5 Apostrophes with my third/fourth graders. I like list and use (more use/application) activities and both of these served as good assessments. 

5 Nouns

5 Apostrophes

 

I know there are a lot of variations of Word Box (uses a word in multiple ways in a window pane form). This is a basic box.

Word Box

Board Mania

My brother's lady (love her) asked for some bulletin boards for her new office. She wanted something for pictures and another for documents. Since she shares an office w/her mentor we made two sets. We made a night of it and here are the results:

the pink is the bulletin board and the purple w/navy ribbon will hold pictures

the purple is the bulletin board and the pink w/green ribbon will hold pictures

Pretend School ❦

Our first day of pretend school was great! We even made a fun lunch although it didn't last long enough to take a picture (always a good sign with two growing girls). 

Stamping activities

Guess I'm having a productive blogging night...

Fran at Kindergarten Crayons posted some activities to use with alphabet (and number) stamps so I thought I would get started on a few of my own stamping activities.

StampNSpell shapes focuses on the spelling of the shape's name being stamped around the actual shape.

StampNSpell colors focuses on the spelling of the color's name being stamped in the matching ink color (BROWN in brown ink).

I think I'm going to try some kind of graphing/cubed paper for the shape activity-maybe it'll be easier to stamp when there is a space for each letter. Hmm...have to work on it.

Hope someone can use these.