These fantastical decorating ideas for children’s rooms are sure to delight design fans both big and small

It’s really happening! We have been working to refinish our attic space for well over a year and the office is finally complete! It’s wild that after 7 years of living in this house, we’re unlocking all of this new functional space. Before this, we worked from the dining room table (this meant eat

Back in my college days, I lived in a cozy apartment with a roommate. We wanted some separation without sacrificing space, and that's when the idea of using Kallax as a room divider struck us. Check this out: A Kallax, like the one below, can do wonders: If you're anything like me, you might have

Math wouldn't be half as fun without games like these.

Try these fun and educational activities for kids. Make a volcano, a tornado, glitter jars (like snow globes), giant bubbles, dry ice bubbles, and more.

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So: Is a Window Above a Bed a Good Idea?

…in the beginning…. … d u r i n g …. …just finishing up…. – – – A quick “before & after” -or- before & SO FAR! – …

Yesterday in my math class our plans told us to put our students into small groups and have them invent or adjust a game to make it contain fractions. As I was walking around monitoring I heard one kiddo say "Fraction Hopscotch" That's all it took! From then on my mind went in overdrive trying to sketch a perfect layout on paper. I pulled out our STAAR (our state mandated test) resource page (page kids can rip out and use during test with helpful formulas/info). I looked closely at the hash marks and how each one was represented on the "inches" side of the paper. Then I grabbed a roll of painters tape and spent my ENTIRE conference period (45 minutes) putting down the tape and figuring it all out. Here is what I came up with: Isn't it AWESOME???!!!!???!!!!???!!???!!???!!???! The students stand on "ZERO" lightly roll a balled up piece of paper onto a fraction. Then they hop on the squares and SAY the name of each fraction. When they land on a double they have to name the equivalent fractions "One fourth is equal to two eighths" some of my students even say: "One fourth is equivalent to two-eighths" Which makes me OH SO HAPPY The tricky one is 1/2 because there are 3 squares. Our solution: first straddle it and say it then jump do a half turn in the air (that's how we roll in my room) land with both feet on one half and then name all three fractions that are equivalent THEN if you're really fancy you finish the hopscotch the second half of the way facing backwards. OR you can start it facing backwards and turn forwards at the 1/2 point. Either way. . .you have to turn. . .it's what the cool kids are doing ;) Enjoy :) *you can also just draw this out with chalk outside* By doing this students are practicing: Ordering fractions, equivalent fractions, reading a ruler, understanding hash mark lengths on a ruler, preparing to use resource page on state test, how to make math applicable in real FUN situations ;)

In need of engaging and educational worksheets to teach 3rd graders about soil? Look no further! Our soil worksheets offer the perfect opportunity to explore this fascinating subject in an interactive and informative way. With a variety of activities and exercises, your students will develop a solid understanding of soil composition, types, and importance in the ecosystem. Get ready to dive into the world beneath our feet with these captivating soil worksheets tailored specifically for 3rd graders.

Hi Friends! Happy Tuesday! Well I just got back a little bit ago from our monthly PTA meeting. My dear, sweet 2nd graders had their big ...

IF you are like me, you are looking for FUN, yet simple projects for the end of the school year!! I got this idea from this fabulous blog called The Lost Sock I found these great videos to show the students before they get started! Bubbles from baris parildar on Vimeo. First we talked about the properties of bubbles. I blew some bubbles for the kids to look at (with their hands in their laps...pure torture) but I really wanted them to use their eyes. What shape is the shiney? Where is the light source? For example a window will make a window shaped shiney! What color are the bubbles and why do they start as a clear liquid and then turn rainbowy? 1 First students traced as many different circle shaped objects I could fine!! 2 They added at least two shineys to each bubble 3 Then colored the bubbles using oil pastels, and making sure to leave at least part of the bubble black to make it look transparent So, first the students started drawing bubbles individually... Then, one student suggested that they put their papers together and connect their bubbles. Within a few minutes, I had an entire class on the floor connecting EVERY one of their papers to make a huge bubble mural! They were SO excited and I loved the conversations I heard as they ALL worked together as one giant group!! The end product was a masterpiece and the kids were SO excited!! Some classes drew bubbles together to form words. You can see the words " Pie is Good" at the top of this class' Art! The great thing about this project is that its fun for ALL ages! My four year old (below) drew her own bubble artwork (all by herself) and included herself blowing the bubbles in the bottom corner! She had fun searching for circles in the kitchen. There are Tabasco bottle circles, and salt shaker circles, coffee can lid circles, a soda can circle! So get out your oil pastels and go create some Bubble ART to kick off the SUMMER!!!! The great thing about bubbles is that they are inexpensive and fun no matter what age you are! My daughter got a bubble blower last summer that blew small bubbles inside large bubbles! We took this picture last August!

That's one of my favorite lines from the Lorax and I loved getting all into it with my kids at home when reading the book to them. It also s...

This super easy and affordable board and batten tutorial will give any space in your home immediate character and charm!

Whether you're designing a tiny studio or an open concept home, room dividers make the space more functional and cozy.

Lekker creatief bezig zijn en tegelijkertijd een fijn en praktisch meubelstuk ontwerpen voor je eigen huis; winter, here we come! Een boekenkast sla je gemakkelijk op de kop in het kringloopcircuit of bij de grote blauw met gele meubelgigant. Zelf een boekenkast maken is echter veel leuker om te doen en bovendien heb je daarmee […]

So, I posted recently that my sixth graders were writing a mystery that was going to take place in the library. I took two of the best mysteries that were submitted and combined them! Here's how our mystery looked: The Problem: Mrs. Svarda got to school on Monday morning and saw the mess. At first she was just mad that all of the books were out, then she saw that all the books were missing their endings. She picked up a book and noticed that the barcode was missing, too. She looked around and found that several books were missing their endings and barcodes. The scanners were also missing so no one could check out books! Then Mrs. Svarda was scared and mad. Who could've done such a thing? What happened here? How could this happen? She needed help. Starbelly Sneetch Alibi: It was 5:00 and I heard a knock on my door. It was Fox in Socks. He came in and I turned off my music and put away my IPod. We played at my house until we got bored. We decided it would be fun to go to the movies. We texted Hop On Pop and Yertle the Turtle to see if they wanted to come, too. Everyone came to the movie except Hop on Pop. After the movie we couldn't think of what to do so we walked around. We thought we might stop by the library to visit Hop On Pop. It started to rain as we walked so we stopped at Fox in Sock's house to pick up some blankets to keep dry on our walk. Hop On Pop Alibi: It was 5:00 and I was looking at my clock when the doorbell rang. It was Yertle the Turtle. He had brought me some homemade bread. He asked if I wanted to go to the mall. My mom said, "No. I had to work on my homework at the library." Yertle the Turtle got a text right after that asking if we wanted to go and see the Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie. Bummer. I really wanted to see a movie and hated that I had to go to the library instead. Yertle the Turtle left to meet everyone for the movie. I headed to the library with my homework. My animal report was due on Monday and mom said I couldn't do anything fun until I was finished with the report. The fun thing was that everyone came by the library after the movie and told me all about it. They had a great time. At 8:00, everyone had to head home. I had about thirty minutes left of homework, so I told them I'd have to stay around just a bit longer... Yertle the Turtle Alibi: It was 4:00 and I was cooking some homemade bread. When it was done I wanted to have some fun so I took some bread over to my friend Hop On Pop. I asked if he wanted to go to the mall, but then I got a text from Fox in Socks and Starbelly Sneetch asking if I wanted to go to the new Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie. My mom said I could go to the movie, but his mom said he had to do homework. He tried not to show it, but boy, was he mad. I had to leave Hop On Pop to make it to the movie on time. I told him if we had time, we'd stop by the library after the movie to hang out with him. Fox in Socks' Alibi: I was sitting in my room when my mom came in and said when I finished my chores I could play. I decided to go over to Starbelly Sneetch's house to play. We thought it would be fun to go to see a movie and texted our friends to see if they could come, too. When the movie was over we went by my house to get some blankets because it was raining and we didn't want to get wet. Then, we headed to the library to visit Hop On Pop because he was doing homework there. At the library, I looked for the Diary of a Wimpy Kid book. I really liked the movie so I thought I would like the book. What the students do: When the students entered the library, they each grabbed a clipboard with a pencil, ingredients of a mystery checklist, alibis, map of the crime scene, and suspect list attached to it. They also grabbed a highlighter. I had the problem and alibis typed up on my SMART board including pictures of the characters. I read the problem and each alibi to the students. We walked through the ingredients of a mystery and checked off all of the mystery elements that our mystery had on the list. Then, I separated the students into two groups. One team surveyed the crime scene and drew the map of the evidence in the crime scene first. The second team worked in teams to read through the alibis and highlight evidence they found in the text that made them believe a character or characters might be guilty. After ten minutes, the teams swapped stations. We returned together as a group to discuss all of the evidence the students had found in the crime scene as well as the alibis that led them to believe that specific characters could be guilty of the crime. We completed the suspect list together. Students work in teams to highlight evidence in the alibis. Students sketched the crime scene. We taped off the crime scene with caution tape. The crime scene included Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, barcodes with fur on them (from characters), endings ripped out of the end of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books (these were really just copies I ripped), a blanket, movie ticketes (3), and a book about bumblebees (this was the book Hop On Pop was using to do his research for homework). I found the copies for the ingredients of a mystery checklist and suspect list from Beth Newingham's Scholastic post about the mystery unit she teaches in her classroom. The Solution The students really thought like detectives in this lesson! I did catch a few of them off guard with my red herrings, though. The fuzz on the barcodes made some of them immediately suspect Fox in Socks and the Starbelly Sneetch. One of the kids said, "This is the best lesson we've had in the library all year!" So, you can make whoever you want responsible for the crime. I decided that Hop On Pop was guilty. He was mad that he did not get to go to the movie with his friends. He was working on his report about bumblebees (since bears love honey) and had to stay later than his friends in the library to finish up. All of the other characters visited the library to visit Hop On Pop and they did not say anything about something being wrong in the library. Hop On Pop tore the endings out of the books when his friends left. To excite the kids about checking out mysteries in our library, we created a mystery display. All of the books were sealed in brown paper bags with the barcodes on the outside so we could check the books out without opening the bags. Each bag had a different mystery inside. This was a fun way for our students to try reading something new in the library and practice their detective skills we learned in our lesson together! Mystery books in mystery bags!

Whew. I can't believe we've been in school for over a month now. Crazy! Getting the hang of things at school and in my graduate courses has zapped most of my time, and I haven't been creating things for my classroom as much as finding so many WONDERFUL resources in blogland. So I thought I'd let you see just what we've been doing. I co-teach in a 5th grade math class so far we have: Reviewed multiplication and division One "trick" to help students remember division is Dad, Mother, Sister, Brother (DMSB) which stands for Divide, Multiply, Subtract, Bring Down.) Just putting DMSB seems to help most students. We've tried to get divisibility rules sink in. Some have, others not so much, but they are a bit abstract. Here is a great foldable that we made, click the picture to be taken to the blogpost the idea came from. The kiddos used it as a resource throughout the week quite often. I also found this poem, from What the Teacher Wants that I love for divisibility as well! To view it click here! Right now we are covering square roots and square numbers. Fun stuff. I also co-teach in a 5th grade reading class. The first month or so, we did a novel study for the book, Because of Winn Dixie. Although, I owned this book, I had never read it nor had I seen the movie... it was a good a read. Throughout the novel we incorporated many activities from this TPT packet from Dots-N-Spots. One activity in the packet is to create your own candy. I really need to take a picture of one of my student's candy creations. He is on the spectrum and so creative. On his own, without prompting he did an advertisement for "Greatful Gobblers" that tastes like Thanksgiving dinner down to the pumpkin pie. I was so proud! Now that Winn Dixie is over, we've decided to switch things up. This group is full of struggling readers so we are trying something new this year. The general education teacher is starting a new novel study on Dear Mr. Henshaw while I am doing the Read Naturally program. I'm not sure if anyone out there is using it or not, but several classes in our school do, and it works well. Each student is in a leveled reading group, they start the week with a cold read, end the week with a hot read, doing various activities throughout the week. What I like about this program so far, is the repetition of reading the same passage, the use of informational texts, the ability to cover strategies (such as finding the main idea) that these kids so desperately need. In my 4th/5th math pullout class, we've tried to cover a few major topics. We started with place value. If you have not checked out Math Coach's Corner, please do so now. Donna is a math coach who hits the nail on the head: moving from concrete examples, to representational, to abstract. Love, love, love her activities. This was a great freebie that really helped my kiddos with learning how to read large numbers and think about the value of different digits. The choice board can be altered (I with held a couple of cards) to differentiate more. This blog post talks about common misconceptions with 8 place value challenges for free. Love her idea for cupping your hands to read large numbers. Reading large numbers really boils down to reading three numbers and the commas correct name. So simple, and worked wonders!! She also had a couple of great, FREE, resources to show students the patterns within numbers, and shows how the commas are read. See the blog post here. We also played one of her FREE games with 4 great recording/worksheets, called Go Catch. Similar to Go Fish, students were trying to get all 4 cards that show their number as seen below. Click the picture to be taken to her blog post. We also reviewed time. One student requests this game on a weekly basis, and we covered time right off the bat. This game, called "Time Flies" was created by What the Teacher Wants. What I liked best, was that they didn't have the hands of the clock drawn on, so I could differentiate the times for the various groups working. Great freebie! Click the picture to see for yourself. We've reviewed addition and subtraction with regrouping/borrowing. Now we are starting to get into multiplication and measurement. With multiplication, my mentor teacher suggested using songs. Not sure where she found them, but we are currently learning our multiples of 3 from 3 to 36 to the tune of Dashing through the Snow. We also did a foldable with various strategies as seen here. Today's lesson with perimeter included an activity in the hallway that really solidified the concept without having to just do a bunch of worksheets. I even remembered to take a picture before taking away all of the tape! We also sang a song about perimeter found here. My final co-teaching class of the day is writing...we've covered several skills and I'm tired of typing/super hungry so I won't post as many of my finds for this category. This Non-Fiction writing project turned into a two-day project, but worked out great. Rather than using a file-folder as shown in this blog post, we created a foldable with 8 sections for students to work with. We've also explored, nouns (common vs. proper, singular and plural), what makes a sentence a sentence, conjunctions, just to name a few. As well as a couple of writing project. Hope this post helps to inspire some lesson ideas. I love incorporating the wonderful ideas I find on blog posts as well as those found via Pinterest! Happy Planning! -Mrs. Whitehair Oh, just saw this! Amy at the Resource(ful) room is having her 1,000 followers giveaway! If you've never been to her blog, you should check it out! She has so many wonderful ideas (and a pretty awesome give away right now!) http://theresourseroom.blogspot.com/2012/09/1000-follower-giveaway.html Best of luck and have fun exploring!

We've definitely been feeling a little frazzled here between the hot and humid weather, a sick toddler, and several days cooped up in the house. Luckily, kicking off our dinosaur week is proving to be a great distraction. Dinosaur books are something I've been collecting for a while now, so we officially kicked off the week by reading several different dinosaur books. Later this week we'll be creating a dinosaur bone excavation, and while I had planned on creating the bones, I realized it would be much more fun to get Big Brother involved. Homemade Dinosaur Bones These homemade dinosaur bones were easy to make and are proving to have more than one way to use them. First I made up a batch of basic salt dough. Mix 2 cups flour, 1 cup salt, 1 cup water and stir until almost fully mixed. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth. Before we got to work we reread Bones, Bones, Dinosaur Bones by Byron Barton. With bold, colorful illustrations and simple descriptions the book tells how scientists find, dig, move, and reassemble dinosaur bones. We also looked through a handful of other books for a few ideas of what dinosaur bones might look like. We did not plan on creating bones with a specific dinosaur in mind (although with older kids this would be a really fun challenge.) Instead we worked on creating the pieces we were interested in. Even Daddy got involved on this project and worked on creating a few pieces. Our pieces ranged from claws and teeth, to backbones, and more. Big Brother even got excited about creating some dinosaur eggs. We filled one large cookie tray with bones and another small one. We then baked the pieces in a 250 degree fahrenheit oven for about 3 hours. When they were done baking we let them cool on the pan. We then carefully collected them into a container. I intended that we would set the bones aside to use later in the week, but Big Brother had other ideas. He quickly took the box and started using the bones as building materials. He worked to create different dinosaur skeletons for quite a while. Inventive and unique building play!

After drawing gestures sketches of our classmates, we picked our favorite to turn into a sculpture. The artist Alberto Giacometti influenced us. We added shadows to give them more dimension

Are you ready to transform your attic from a dusty storage space to a dreamy retreat? Often overlooked, the attic holds untapped potential to become the most

Being on Spring Break sure does have its upsides doesn't it?! One being the fact I am able to sit down and finally blog...AKA relax on my own terms. I have a Lifetime movie playing in the background called The Grim Sleeper. Did you get to watch it? What can I say? I'm obsessed with watching their newest 2 hour TV movies. Reading my book here and there when I want, going to the bathroom whenever I want, and snacking on whatever I want is definitely the bee's knees. It makes me look forward to summer break that much more! As we all know (it's what nightmares are made of)...it's that time of the season. Testing is just around the corner and the pressure is on! With trying to fit everything on our district benchmark testing and the state test in to such a tiny time frame, it is that much more important I push that rigor and multiple opportunities for practice with my students. So, bring on differentiation! By first having my students complete a multi-level exit ticket (which ended up becoming more like a post test) I was able to figure out which levels of area and perimeter each student met in or what they needed more practice in. As a gifted-cluster teacher, I try to do as many tiered differentiation lessons as possible. In this case, it means I have 9 gifted learners while the rest of my students are mainstreamed. It can get pretty hard when I don't have as much time as I want to plan them out, but each year I end up with more and more. Below you can see part of a screen shot of the flipchart I had up on our ActivBoard during the day's lesson. Every time we tackle a tiered lesson, I go over the Owl's assignment first so those students can get straight to work on their extension. But I need my other students to sit and take it in because if they complete their activity and show mastery, they are able to move on. That's why I love tiered lessons!! Extension/Tier 3 Group **Always works solo/independently** My group of about 6-7 Owls worked in the library on their own and had quite a time with their activity. They were doing so well I only had to check on them a couple different times to make sure they were measuring the area and perimeter correctly, since this was something we didn't do with irregular polygons as a whole class (we only had to use grid paper). Extra Practice/Tier 2 Group **Always works with 1-2 other students** My Eagles were able to gather in the back of our classroom on the strip of tile we have in order to practice identifying the perimeter and area using square units. I found this idea for regular polygons on Pinterest, but needed to use it for the irregular aspect. Many of my students were having trouble with larger figures where they had to count and solve for the formulas when there were upwards of 20 or so square units and multiple "irregular" corners. By making it a bit more hands on for them and on a smaller (although larger...LOLOLOL) scale, that group of kids grasped on to the application of the formulas we had already discovered and practiced a lot easier. Please ignore our dirty floor...the kids tend to bring in everything off our wet grassy field when they come in in the morning. Sigh. Reteach/Tier 1 Group **Always works with the teacher and/or small group** For this group of kids, it was a bit tricky. Each set of students needed additional reteaching and practice with a different aspect of perimeter and area (i.e. area of triangles and parallelograms versus perimeter of squares and rectangles or even irregular polygons) I decided to have them make flashcards for each formula, since many of the students in this group kept getting them mixed up between the different figures themselves or area versus perimeter. Then, we went from there with some extra practice on identifying perimeter and area using those formulas. My students crave tiered lessons because they truly appreciate being able to have the chance to not only move on if they are ready, instead of sitting through another reteach lesson, but they appreciate being able to jump to the next level when they are done working with me during the reteach. Everything is very fluid and depending on the tiered lesson, kids are not always in the same group to start with. I use exit tickets every time to determine which group students will be in. Sometimes, I even find I have to reteach as a whole class. All students are a lot more invested in the outcome of their learning and they enjoy some of the hands on and project-based opportunities to show their learning. Sure, the planning can take a bit more time than regular lessons...but in the end, it is soooooooo worth it! This summer, I plan on trying to put as many of my tiered lessons and choice/extension menus in my TPT store. But if you would like to check one of them out now, I have had my Plot Elements Choice Menu pack up HERE for a couple months (all based on Bloom's Taxonomy). It is starting to sell like hotcakes and that makes me so excited to know other students are able to partake in choices and extensions to show their learning! Yay!

I'm so excited to share with you our powder bathroom floor today! We've been working on laying a cute little pattern in penny rounds over the last ...