Rounding Fun

I've been meaning to post my "rounding hill" I created for my kids this year. Having the collaborative class, I try to make as many concepts "visual" for my students as possible! I am a big fan of the "rounding hill" and decided I'd take it one step further this year. Now, my students know I'm not an artist, but I was pleased with how my little car turned out! Well, at least they recognized it was a car, and maybe that's what I was proud of! :)


I LOVE having my kids use dry erase markers....I feel like it saves so much on paper, so yes, this is in a page protector so my kids can write on it then erase. That way, instead of making 20 copies of a worksheet, I can make 7. (We also have a copy limit, so it helps that as well!). Granted, I do buy several boxes of page protectors (after awhile, they get smudgy, and I need to replace them, or I decide to keep the pages in the protector for the following year). My hundreds charts, for example, stay in a page protector all year long so my kids can mark them up as needed!

Anyway, here it is in action:

Sorry for the reflection....but you get the idea. The hardest thing for my kiddos, of course, is to determine what tens to put in each box, but most have really caught on to the concept this year quickly (I only have 4 that are really struggling still!), and I'd LOVE to say it's due to my mats. :) 


Okay...and as one reader pointed out, yes I know that 63 rounds to 60....not sure why I put the arrow to the other side other than doing it too quick :)  My brain's not always so "fresh" after school when I usually do these posts!

I hand-drew them, but it didn't take that long to whip out 7 of them, and they now join the ranks of my "math helpers" with the hundreds charts, number lines, counting manipulatives, and base 10 blocks! I know it's an old idea that's been out there for awhile, but my kids (especially my boys) caught on more to the car concept than a ball rolling down the hill that I've used in the past. Isn't it funny how we seem to change our approach each year to concepts?

I also have two rounding games available on my TpT store as well....one with a cute fish/octopus theme, the other with a basketball theme....be sure to check them out! :)

Teachers Helping Teachers

Kreative in Kinder has started a link-up with how we can help the teachers whose schools were devastated in the recent tornadoes. Please be sure to head over to her blog and post a comment if you'd like to help out! How to help out? Opening up your TpT/Teacher's Notebooks stores to these teachers, sending them resources, having your children write letters of support...anything you can think of!

I know when our school system suffered the earthquake (which destroyed one elementary and our only high school) last August, the outpouring was amazing! I'd love to have my students pass this love on!

Please be sure to click on the heart and link up!

More Finds at the Dollar Tree!

Okay, so I am totally addicted to the Dollar Tree! Since I was taking my daughter to the doctor, and we were a bit early, I popped in today and grabbed a few things. Some are Pinterest inspired ideas (puzzle), but others are me standing in front of the display, going hmmm.....I know there's SOMETHING cute I can do with this! :)

So, I thought I'd share! The shamrocks are getting harder to find, but I'm sure other places (Michael's, Ben Franklin, Walmart, etc.) might also have some. The puzzles they seem to always carry, and I LOVE the deal on these eggs! These are the small eggs (I think there were 18 or 24 in a package). I also grabbed a few more Easter things, but haven't "done them up" yet. I promise to post when I do!

I'm also posting the worksheet I'm accompanying with the shamrocks to be used as one of my math centers on Friday the 16th! At some point, I will put it on Google Docs and share, but haven't had good luck lately with that (it tells me it can't share at the time). Either that, or I'll post on my TpT store (it's done in Publisher so I need to wait to get to school, convert it to PDF, and upload it!). Or, you can just click on the picture and open it up in Microsoft Photo Viewer and print from there!

Place Value (3 digit) Shamrocks

A Pinterest-Inspired Idea: Using puzzles to match up homophones

Rounding Eggs (students match the colors and round the numbers to the nearest 10)

I hope you're able to become "inspired"......I seem to be going a little nutty lately with creating centers (my husband's like...again???), but I've decided that if I get it, I need to make it either that night or the next day (I have too many things sitting around and then seem to create them last minute!).

Currently (March), Awards, and An Unexpected Snow Day!

Well, I woke up to a 2 hour delay, then a school closing for something that was forecast to "not be a significant accumulation." In true Virginia fashion, though, it stopped around 12:30 and the temperature is now rising (supposed to be close to 50!).

So, I've been spending my day working on centers and fighting our satellite internet connection. I'm about to upload two rounding centers to my TpT store....very cute (I'll include images below), but first, here is this month's Currently from Farley over at Oh' Boy 4th Grade!

By the way...a disclaimer...how hard is it to find adjectives that begin with "Y"???? I had to look them up because I was thinking yucky, yummy, and young didn't exactly describe me! Oh, here's the disclaimer: "Yeasty: full of restless energy or creativity" NOT what you might be thinking! :)

Okay, on to my "it's s'now school!" work! Hee hee

We are focusing on rounding this week and after pulling out my old centers (which the kids love by the way, but they're getting worn out!) I decided to make two new ones to post on TpT as well as use in my room!

I think they turned out really cute! Last (but definitely not least!), I wanted to pass on the "Lovely Blog Award" Thanks again to Emily at Second Grade Silliness for awarding me this! The rules are as follows: pass on to five more bloggers who you feel deserve the award! :)

So, here are my five.........

Enriching Kinders

Learning With a Happy Heart

Wild About Second Grade
Chickadee Jubilee
Second Grade Rocks

Thanks for sticking with me on this longer than normal post! I figure it was better to put it all in one than to do 3 separate posts! I'm hoping that I'll get some more done today and post tomorrow!).

Oh, and one last piece of good news! I have my first follower at my store! Yippee! :) Yep, doesn't take much to get me excited :)

Is It Really Sunday Night????

Okay, where did the weekend go? Granted, I spent Saturday with a friend for an early birthday present, so it left me Sunday to work on school work, but here I am, eying the time, knowing I have to get the kids ready for bed.....sigh, sigh, sigh. I'm also eying the stack I still have left to do!

Ah well. I wanted to share a few highlights of my weekend (professionally speaking!). First, I SOLD MY FIRST ITEM ON MY TEACHERS PAY TEACHER STORE!!!!!! Can I get a "woo hoo"??? Still no followers :( but I'm still excited about my first sale!

Second, Emily from Second Grade Silliness awarded me the "Lovely Blog" award. Very cool! Thanks so much, Emily! I will be passing it on soon! I am posting my awards on my sidebar proudly! :) Still figuring out how to make a "blog button" but right now, Google is fussing at the school's version of Firefox, telling it that it's outdated, etc. At some point I'll have to figure out how to make it part of my profile, so I can replace the "flying books" (which is cool, but this is more personal!).

I've posted a couple new things in my TpT store for free. At some point, will also "zip up" my units for each book in our Harcourt series and put them on there to share! Also working on making my rounding centers a little more "computer friendly", so I can share those as well. My "to do" list keeps growing!

Hope everyone had a great weekend! Just think....only 12 more days to get ready for St. Patrick's Day! :)

What a Seusstastical Day! :)

My school does things up BIG, especially when it comes to reading! We started out the day with an assembly, which the Cat in the Hat revealed that he would be playing tricks during the day because he thought this was a great place to stay! Students came dressed as their favorite characters, and we did Seuss activities all day long! We did both math and literacy centers with a Seuss theme (thank you to all the people who posted freebies on their blogs!!!), and during our reading time, we were surprised by the CAT who sprayed water on us! At 2:00, there was an announcement that to get rid of the cat, we all had to go to the hallway and if we were reading, we'd scare him away! Enjoy the photos of our day below! :)




My "cast of characters" (aka class)


My team (I'm holding a different book since I didn't have my "Daisy Head Maisy" one! :)

Feeling a Little Seussy?

I don't know about your school, but when it comes to reading, we do things up BIG! Between an assembly, students dressing up as their favorite Seuss characters, and a hallway decorating contest, last year, the Grinch STOLE our school! He changed it into "Grinchville Elementary" and kidnapped our principal! Students had to be "caught reading" to scare the Grinch off! When the Grinch came to our room, we were in the middle of math, but my kids quickly grabbed a book to read him away! :)

To continue our tradition this year.....we are focusing on The Lorax, so the hallway decorating had to be at least 50% recycled material! It's been amazing what has been happening the past few days, and I've included a few pictures. Many of my students are excited about dressing up tomorrow and I think I'm going to have a room full of "things" as well as fish, Daisy Heads, cats, etc. We're kicking off with an assembly as well as a day of fun activities! We'll be doing math-themed Seuss centers as well as literacy centers later in the day.


I had to share what my kids did for our hallway. I LOVE the story of Yertle the Turtle, so we made turtles from egg cartons and stacked them up! Check out some of the second grade hallway below. As other grade levels finish, I'll post more pictures later! (You should see the cute truffula trees out of recycled materials the Kindergarten classes made!).