Frog Facts

Well as many of you know we are going hopping mad in my classroom at the moment.  Hopping mad over frogs!  Today we finally finished our Frog Facts to join onto our frog glyphs.  I think they look frogtabulous and the kiddos have really enjoyed it.  Only one more week to go at school and then we are on September holidays, I am hoping I will be able to get going on developing some packets for my TpT store as it has been almost impossible near the end of this term.  Anyway this is just a short post to share some more pics of how our frogs turned out.

Here is one of my girls and a close up of the first of her frog facts

2 frogs hanging around with the boys!

Here they are hanging up in our room

Hope your week has ended well!

More Froggy Fun

I promised some more pics of the Froggy Fun we are having in our classroom...so here goes.  Let's begin with a Life Cycle I have had sitting in my study for at least a couple of years.  I was pretty excited to finally get it out, only I didn't realise how big it was.  When I saw the size I immediately knew I wanted to use it as a whole class puzzle on the white board.  Problem was it wasn't a magnetic puzzle, so time to start gluing!  I try not to buy magnets, I tend to recycle the magnets that you might get in the mail from businesses or old fridge calendars.  I usually end up collecting lots of business fridge magnets, then we end up moving and I don't have a use for them anymore, so they get recycled!  These magnets were actually from a magnetic board set I had picked up for the bargain price of $0.56 cents.  I am using it as an oral language prompt for my student with special needs and all the magnets were push out, pre cut.  Anyway I ended up with lots of left over magnetic strips.  So I cut them up and glued them onto the back of the puzzle!

Step 1.  You can see all the left over magnetic sheets near the front

Step 2 Cut and glue

Step 3 Put it together on the whiteboard!

We have been researching frog facts by using the 3, 2, 1 fact sheet from Teaching with Love and Laughter .  I found these just in time to support our quick on the run, mini frog unit.  (See my post here as to why I am doing a min unit 2 weeks before school finishes)  The children are still in the process of reading and recording their facts.....but we did make some frogs that we will be attaching our frog facts to.  Here is what they look like.

These are the pieces the students had (theirs were not cut out.)

This is my example or as I like to say....Here's one I prepared earlier.  He is glued onto our Frog book box.

Here are some of the students frogs, I particularly like the spotty one.

I should have some pics of our Frog Facts by the end of the week.  Next up we will be Comparing and Contrasting Frogs and Toads.  There will be pics for that as well!   

Tomorrow we are having our culminating whole school Mini Paralympics.  Should be fun!

  

Whiteboard crayons!! WoW

I wanted to share these amazing new( new to me!) whiteboard crayons that I found at Officeworks.  I don't know if anyone else out there has found these but I was like "Wow!  That is a fantastic idea!"  I use individual whiteboards almost daily in my classroom as well as laminated games and activities that may require students to write on them.  It is a constant battle to keep lids on markers and when you rub off whiteboard markers from the laminate it always leaves a mark or smear. I have used whiteboard spray, insect repellent, tea-tree oil and a mountain of other things to keep the laminate clean.  I go through packets and packets of whiteboard markers and I usually end up buying the cheapest ones I can find.
So you can imagine how excited I was!  I wouldn't say they are cheap, this packet of 8 cost roughly $8.00 (Australian) but since then I have found some a bit cheaper on  line.  I can imagine they will last a lot longer than whiteboard markers though.

Well when I got to school I immediately tried them out!  Here is how they look on a whiteboard.

They come with a wipe off mitt and a built in sharpener in the back of the box.  I found the colours to be bright and they were easily wiped off leaving no residue however, I think the sharpener is a bit inconvenient as I doubt I will keep the box just for the sharpener.

So after I tried the small whiteboard, I tried them on the large board but I wouldn't recommend using them on a larger board.  A whiteboard marker has a wider point and these crayons have a finer point making it difficult to see them from a distance.  Then I tried them on a plastic sleeve, no problems!  Then I tried them on a plastic cup that I use for our multiplication Tower of Power, ( I can't remember where I saw that idea...maybe Pinterest, however if it was you please let me know so I can credit you.)  no problems.  I like to be able to change the cups so I was using whiteboard markers instead of permanent markers- but every time the students re-stacked the cups the answer on the inside would wipe off.  The crayons did not!  Here's how they look on the cups.

This is one of my kiddos practicing her 11 x tables before doing the Tower of Power.

I am sure that they would even write well on the plastic plate whiteboards that Clutter Free Classroom posted about.  You can see that post here.

I would love to hear from anyone else who has used these in the classroom and what your thoughts are  about them.  I am loving the fact that I won't have to chase kiddos up for leaving the lid off the marker.  My only worry is that they will snap like normal crayons, but so far so good.  

Enter this Giveaway!

One of my favourite bloggers is having a giveaway for reaching over 350 followers!

Shanyn at Coffee, Kids and Compulsive lists is having a fantabulous give away and I know there are many of my favourite bloggers that have offered items for this giveaway. 

Head on over, check it out and enter!

A Little Green Visitor

I am going to preface this post by telling you it will be a long tale.
Today was one of those days that I LOOOVVE as a teacher.  I had my day planned out, knew what we were going to do, when we were going to do it...all in place.....until a student from another class showed me a little green hitch hiker her brother had found in a box of bananas at the shop he works at.
My eyes popped open, I smelled the fresh breeze of my home State Queensland, the sugar cane, the mangoes, the tropical rain (oh wait it was raining).  I heard the cluck of geckos hunting moths at night and lastly the laughing croak of the little green tree frog sitting in a small container, looking back at me as he hurriedly tried to burrow under the leaves.  Just like me he was away from his home, probably wishing for the warm sunshine, clearly not liking the cold weather, a visitor in a strange land...and I was NOT going to let this opportunity pass me by!

To understand this I have to go back about a week, when a conversation about swimming turned to frogs. (I'm sure you all know how that happens.)  One little girl said to me she had never seen a frog in real life!  "What!" I said, how could this be?  I guess I take frogs for granted, having spent much of my life in the tropics of Australia where frogs are quite prolific. Currently I live in inland rural Australia and now that I think of it I haven't seen a frog here either.  Don't get me wrong I'm sure they are there, just not so obvious as the fabulously  fluorescent green tree frog.

As you can imagine my planned, predictable day went out the window!  I stole  borrowed the little hitch hiker and showed my little girl her first real life frog!  She was very happy as was the rest of the class, we even learnt the Auslan sign for frog (we already knew green and tree).  There was much discussion about what kind of frog it was, where it came from etc etc. From this we did a KWL chart, we made a list of adjectives to describe our frog, we found an information book and a story book about green tree frogs (Thank you Steve Parrish!) we made mind maps to show what we had learnt about green tree frogs.  In the afternoon we did an internet search to find answers to some of our questions about green tree frogs.

So I wanted to share a few pics of our mind maps that we did on the run today as well as some pics of my little green friend!

He's looking at me!  See his white belly, I'm not sure if he is a white lipped tree frog or a regular green tree frog

This is when he got camera shy.

Please don't ask why they put celery and a snowpea in there.  They eat insects.

Here are some of the Mind Maps the students did after we read some books

I like that some of them drew pictures to show the tadpoles or the adult frog

I forgot to take photos of the KWL chart and Froggy adjectives.  Well I guess we will be investigating frogs for the next couple of weeks so do not despair more pics will follow!  Don't you love being spontaneous!  I am off to dig up all my froggy activities out of my dumping ground  office and will be sharing froggy blogs for the next couple of weeks at least!

New Teacher Blog Tuesday

I am very proud to be part of Dana's New Teacher Blog Tuesday.  I think it is a super way to help new bloggers get their profiles out there.  Anyway head over to Dana's blog Fun in 1st Grade to check it out!

I hope you enjoy getting to know me.

Giveaway

A humongous giveaway is happening at Tonya's Treats for Teachers.  She has reached 500 followers and is giving away a bonanza of prizes.  Go on over and CHECK IT OUT!