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So, um, I took a little bloggy vacation and finally joined the ranks on Instagram!
My friend really encouraged me to take part in "Teacher Talk Tuesday" (#teachertalktuesday) on Instagram so I created an account. You can find me as "adventuresinsecondgrade". Please feel free to follow me! Right now, I have the pics that were on my phone from our last day of school with Field Day and our Minute to Win It games!
So, other than that, I have to admit, I haven't been very productive, other than trolling thru Pinterest, telling myself that it counts as my "1 teacher thing/day" I promised myself this summer! ;) That, and helping out a friend in her classroom pack it up and start getting it organized! She's already created a theme AND colors for next year! Whew! Made me start thinking of my own theme...something with meerkats, but not quite sure WHAT...safari? zoo? Hmm...thinking on that one. (Add another thing to the list!).
A big part of my to-do list was to clean up some of my end of year unit activities and share them!
In second grade in Virginia, we study ancient China and Egypt. It's fun, especially since several years ago I earned a Playmobil grant and have many of the Egyptian line in my classroom for students to create with!
One thing I created for my kiddos this year was an activity booklet on both cultures. After my success with the paper bag books during our Famous Americans unit, I wanted an "active" book for them to contribute to as well as help me check that they were comprehending!
So....after many fights with the copier, I finally managed to have the booklets in order so that you can copy them double-sided. When I say fights, I mean.....after doing a set of Egyptian ones BACKWARDS I told my kids it was okay, because in the Arab world they read stories right to left, not left to right, so we were okay.
They liked that idea so well most of them decided to write their names backwards on their book! Ha ha! They are ALL too familiar of my fights with the copier (and that sometimes, the copier wins!).
So, without further ado, here's a peek at my books! I'm pretty proud of them! All clipart was from public domain or Microsoft. I created them in Publisher but locked 'em into PDFs so I couldn't mess them up anymore! :) Click {here} to see them closer in TpT and {here} for Teacher's Notebook for Egypt and {TpT} and {TN} for China.
So, I hope you'll check them out and tell me what you think! My goal is to blog at least once/week (if not more) about what I'm doing to get ready for next year and *hopefully* share a few freebies! :)
We had a fun-filled week with finishing our Egypt studies as well as creating gifts for Mother's Day! It was a bit tricky since we had our field trip on Thursday, and I was to be out Friday, so everything had to be done Monday-Wednesday. It was tough, but we managed to fit it all in!
On Monday, we created mummies. These were created from doll pins (craft store, like Michaels), gauze, markers, and (if not self-sticking gauze), a little tape.
As you can see, students put a lot of thought into their mummies!
So, then, we moved on to a different sort of mummy...our own! I have to admit, they're all Pinterest-inspired and are on my "Mother's Day" Pinterest board, if you're interested in checking them out!
Students created flowers from pipe cleaners....I fudged a bit on this. Number one, I could NOT get my flower to look like the one in the picture on my board....I mean, I'm not very crafty, but this was a LOT harder than I thought it would be! So, I gave my kids simple directions on how to wrap the stem around the 6 pipe cleaners, then told them to get creative. I was sooo glad I did this -- what they did was AMAZING!!
I also used cardstock/scrapbook paper for students to write 8 things they loved about their mothers, and we combined them with a ring. They completed two sheets about their mom, then they decorated a bag. I put a sample in below.
The kids were VERY excited to take these home on Wednesday, and I'm sure some moms got some GREAT surprises! It was very sweet to read how much my kiddos love their real "mummies"!
Hope you have a great Mother's Day for all the moms/aunts/grandmas/....and heck, TEACHERS, because as my kids told me "Shouldn't we make YOU something for Mother's Day, Mrs. Youel?" Yep, I have 18 more kids, I realized, because aren't we really moms as well as teachers???
I'm linking up with Farley of Oh Boy 4th Grade for May's Currently.
We are continuing our ancient civilization studies with Egypt. The students were VERY excited we were moving on to mummies, pyramids and hippos.....as in, watch out when you sail along the Nile for the hippos and crocodiles! :)
Several years ago, I won a Playmobil grant and earned the Egypt collection. After "traveling" to Egypt through Google Earth (visit my wiki learning pages to download that journey!), viewing 2 pop up books (Tomb Hunters and Ancient Egypt), and watching a Brain Pop Jr. video on Egypt, students had a pretty good grasp on what the geography and area were like.
The kids had a BLAST recreating what it would have looked like, and we created our desert out of brown bulletin board paper and the Nile from the blue (complete with student drawings of hippos and crocodiles!). Had to share...turned out too cute!
If you ever have a great idea using Playmobil products, please look into their grant! You create a lesson plan and they usually select 6 winners each year. I believe this year is over, but keep it in mind for next year. There is more information on their website under "education" I believe.
