A Passion for Pinterest

It's official, I am pinterest obsessed. If you haven't seen or heard of pinterest, well then, I'm pretty sure you might be living under a rock or you have successfully avoided the social network community! I check pinterest quite frequently and I follow some pinners who consistently post amazing teaching ideas. My last post was all about math tubs and I must admit some of those ideas came from pinterest. But that is the beautiful thing, I AM NOT RE-INVENTING THE WHEEL!! Nope the wheel has been brought to me! I also have found ideas that I sort of like and then tweaked them to my needs and likeness. The next step is for me to start posting some of my own ideas, because we all know they are just genius :)

One pin I stumbled on today made me want to get right to work and make it! It's a big book about the teacher. Included in the book are pictures from when the teacher was little, growing up and adult life. The book also had a page with fun facts about the teacher and, my favorite, a page dedicated to the teacher's favorite books! I am definitely going to make this book over the summer and share it with my kiddos next year.

Math Tubbing It

One of my goals this summer is to make games for math tubs that will be used during our math intervention time. So far I have made three games and have two of three laminated. I'm hoping to have enough games made so that I can rotate games within the tubs every 1-2 months. I also want them to go with the themes that we will be studying; 5 senses, dinosaurs, ladybugs/insects, gingerbread.

Here are the games/activities I have made so far...

1. Crayon counting and matching

• There are 20 "crayon boxes" with a number on it. There are also 20 laminated "crayons" with a given number of dot stickers. The kids will match the crayon to the crayon box, e.g. 5 dots to the number.

2. Apples up on top

• I have made a set of 10 laminated "apples." The goal will be to put the apples in order. I think I'm going to add their pictures at the beginning of the year, so that they can stack the apples on top of their own heads!

3. Bowling Fun

• I have 4 sets of bowling cards. Each card has 10 bowling pins in the triangle formation with a number on each pin. The kids will draw a bowling ball card, that also has a number, and they will put a marker on the pin if they have a match. This is sort of like BINGO, but with a bowling twist.

So, that's what I've got so far!

Another goal this summer is organizing my reading games. I laminated each folder and made sure that the cards inside were laminated too. Then, I put all of the folders that taught the same or similar skill together in a crate. I think this will really help me during my guided reading time! I can identify the skill I want to work on with my group and find a game quickly AND it will look sooooo good!!!