Onion domed churches of Moscow

Here in Utah we have Easter Break really late this year. So I actually get to use all my Easter stuff in my classroom! Woo Hoo!  But I am longing for a break and some better weather. This year we made spring flowers, Easter chicks and Rechenka’s eggs in a basket. 




I love the story Rechenka’s Eggs by Patricia Polacco. It’s got the character Babushka,  an old Russian lady who crafts beautifully painted Easter eggs to go to market for a festival in Moscow. It show the onion domes of the Moscow capital city all in their splendorous colors in the book.

                                                                                 
                                                                                                                                                       It reminds me of when we went to visit Armenia to pick up Devin from his mission. We had to stop over in Moscow to catch a small commuter plane.(word to the wise, never fly Aeroflot Airlines…we had a fuel line break in mid flight and almost blew up right over Budapest! not fun) Our flight was  forced in an emergency landing in Budapest and we were finally able to get to Moscow in the middle of the night. So then the airport officials made us go to this creepy Moscow hotel with barbed wire around it. The grumpy looking Russian in the fur hat who taxied us to the hotel never spoke a word to us.
                                                                                                         

 I remember begging him to drive us up to to see the Kremlin thinking it should be just a short jog away. Silly me, I thought it would be like a fun little tourist side trip. Little did I know that they don’t even give day visas to tourists in Moscow! When we got to the hotel, they placed a guard at a little desk outside our door. Since we were Americans they did not trust us I guess. And the only thing on TV was this creepy song sung in a spooky voice all about “It’s Time For Us” and it still gives me Heeby Jeebies thinking about it. Yuck. I’m NOT a good traveler. And really, what’s up with the concrete boards for beds in those countries?

Here’s a close up of one of the eggs, and Andrew’s Spring poem…

Anyway, then I had made copies of some really decorated eggs we called ” Rechenka’s Eggs” and we have a contest to see who can make the most beautiful eggs to send to the Moscow market. The top 3 eggs win a prize. I don’t like to do this very often or the kids start asking “What do we get for doing this?” you know how old THAT gets. Mmmmhmmmm….

Spring Art

I typed up this poem to sing and put on the back of our Spring Chicks…

Then I brought in some plastic eggs for each table in a basket. It will be a center activity all next week. They look at the number on the outside of the egg. Inside they write all the addends (addition number sentences) and factors (multiplication number sentences) that would end in that number.  The kids will be creative I know!


Spring Acrostic Poem by Saige…..turned out sweet!


Then we talked about the season of Spring and read a book called It’s Spring by Linda Glaser. It has beautiful illustrations and it was a good springboard for a brainstorm on the board of spring things that start with the letters S-P-R-I-N-G. They are really good at brainstorms now, although somebody thought rhinoceros would be a good spring word…hehe.

Kate’s poem….very cute….

Then I had them write sloppy copies with all these wonderful S and P and R words on the board like sunshine, storms, pretty flowers, potted plants, rainbows and raincoats.

Easter Chick craft….Moby Chick



 

Easter Chicks made from traced hands….we added orange feathers to the tops!

 Then I edited their simple poems and then handed them this cute printed poetry form for the SPRING Acrostic.  Lastly I showed them how to put together the little spring chicky art project. We had a funny poem called Moby Chick we added on the back and read and sang together to the tune of Itsy Bitsy Spider.

I just couldn’t resist putting this little Easter “Chick” on my blog….it’s my granddaughter Josie! peep peep!

Easter Crafts and Easter Art

 Here’s how our finished bulletin board looks!  Spring is so bright and beautiful! I love it! And boy is it raining hard and thundering loud tonight! Tomorrow will be a snowstorm again. Snow one day and 30 degrees, Sun and 70 degrees the next, wind and rain and thunder with lightening the next! What the heck?! CRAZY weather! Can’t wait for SPRING BREAK!!!

Last night we babysat Marisa and Megan while Tiff and Gary went to see the Lakers kill the Jazz. John told them they had to bring him back a picture of Kobe Bryant. We are from Southern California so I think I will always be a Lakers fan, regardless of the celebrity lifestyle of some of the players. 



How can you resist this cuteness? I can’t.



Or this little face? Happy go lucky Megan 2 1/2



Marisa Belle with Great Grandma Merlene…Marisa is curious about everything!



Snow Days….we had a lot of them!!!



Josie Erin 9 months has been crawling and just got 2 new teeth!



Marisa helping grandma decorate for Easter….Bruce….not helping…..

Marisa and Megan came over to my classroom with their McDonalds Happy Meals. All of a sudden I hear these little feet clomping in a run up to greet me. Megan’s little round and rosy face was so excited as she ran to get a hug from me. Is there anything more precious in this whole freaking world than that? I don’t know if there is.  What a delight a 2 1/2 year old is.  She is so good natured too. She says thank you to anything you give her, and she says sorry if anything goes wrong between Marisa and her. 

Let’s eat! Hug a snowman…love this!

So I had made little chicks in my classroom to put on our bulletin board outside with a giant Easter basket. Next week we will fill the basket with Rechenka’s eggs. But I had the cut outs for one more chickie. So I told Marisa to sit down and eat and we would put one together for her.

My little Easter Chicky…Josie age 9 months…

Marisa liked the chickie craft

So we traced her hands and I cut them out. We put the little orange beak on and added wiggly eyes. She was just so into it and it is exciting for me to see all she has learned from her preschool experiences. Tiff said, “Mom it would be so fun if she could be in your class”. That would be fun! But she lives clear across town, it would be way too hard. Tiff says she sits transfixed in primary on Sunday. I’m sure she will be the perfect little student for any teacher. 

My bulletin board….we’ll add some pretty eggs to it next week….

Then we went over to Roberts and picked out yarn. Tiff is going to teach me to knit an afghan. I picked out a gray blue wool. I love the Pottery Barn cable style knitted afghans, but I don’t want to spend $100 bucks on one. And I think it would be fun to knit one myself. The challenge is going to be finding a pattern that is easy enough that looks good. 

Tiff crochets really well, but I want a tight, cabled look to it, most likely knitting. She bought some giant needles and a cream wool with specks in it. That would looks so pretty draped over a leather couch.  I told her she should knit me one just like it for the Bear Lake cabin. We’ve got brown leather couches there.

I set up the puppet theatre and John taught the girls how to use the puppets



It was totally Marisa’s thing….she loves drama!



Then we went home and Tiff left for the Jazz game. Marisa wanted to watch Felix the Cat. That was always my favorite cartoon when I was a kid. But John was remarking how they portrayed different Asian cultures in the cartoon wouldn’t fly at all in today’s politically correct climate!  I had to agree. Then Marisa started playing this game with us. She noticed that the ottoman has a top that comes off to store stuff inside. She went and found something to hide. Then she said, “Grandpa guess what is inside”. Kids all love their dads and grandpa’s best. Why is that?  So she gives these cute clues. “It is something you wear on your foot before you put your shoes on!” So cute!  John guessed “a frog!” and Marisa would giggle. Then we’d go on to guess about 10 ridiculous things before one of us finally got it right. She loved it. We love her. What a doll!  Grandkids are the best.

Megan liked watching the puppeting more than doing it…

Grandpa and the oldest of his girls….Marisa Belle



Two cute girls in Easter dresses.  Love those little polka dots!



I love them all to pieces. Who knew it would be THIS much fun?

Well I heard a week ago from my college-student son, Devin,  that Mark Zuckerberg was coming to BYU for a forum to speak to the students. And when I heard that I had to of course invite myself to the party. He had been invited by Senator Orin Hatch of Utah. So Hatch ended up being the moderator and the two of them sat up on a raised platform stage in the Marriott Center sitting on 2 comfortable looking high back chairs. They just talked for an hour and it was great!



Mark Zuckerberg with Orin Hatch at the BYU Forum…I don’t know how I got this great shot!?!

 The Facebook founder was funny, interesting, engaging and not a bit awkward. The movie done about him doesn’t seem to ring true. He seems very passionate about Education, philanthropy and giving back to the students in college. He had some great advice for them. He told them to find something they are passionate about and follow it. He is still very passionate about Facebook and growing it into something the whole world can use to stay connected.



My husband John….looks like he’s on drugs! Or else has a bad photographer?

 The students had been invited to submit questions to the BYU Facebook page and they chose 40 of the best ones.  The first one asked was the question my son Devin had submitted; “What’s more important in business;  management, marketing or a good idea?” And the Zuckster said, “Neither of these. The most important thing in business is the people you hire.”  I thought that was a great answer, and then he went on to introduce 3 people from the audience of BYU grads that he had brought along with him as hirees. He said each one was a great addition to the team and was very talented. A nice touch.



The Zuckster…on the big screen above

 He talked about how you shouldn’t wait to be placed in a leadership role at your job, you should make roles for yourself, just become the leader in whatever area we choose. He told us how he had started at Harvard as a Psychology major AND a computer science double major. Facebook seems like such a logical melding of the two.  He says that he never intended Facebook to become a business or to make money. He just wanted a way to stay connected with the people he cared about in his life. And he recognized that this is true for all of us. He has a girlfriend in San Francisco in medical school. He really opened up to the students! Very cool.



Devin and Brendan taking camera shots of him….Caitlin was sitting a row up with her boss who also invited herself! hehe We are all so rude. But hey, it’s open to the public!



Here he is on stage hoodie and Adidas tennis shoes…That part is true….he loves hoodies!

I remember a year and a half ago sitting around with my kids talking about Facebook and how fast it had grown to 250 million users. We were all blown away by that. Then a short year later it had doubled its users to 500 million!!! I told my computer geek sons to get busy writing an app for Facebook!!  Well, when Zuckerberg said they are now moving toward a billion users worldwide the whole place cheered. He promised he would never sell any body’s private info and that he is very careful and concerned that they keep privacy a very strong issue for Facebook. He said the things you have heard to the contrary are not true.

They cheered for him over and over.  Especially when Hatch said that he had heard about Mark donating $100 million to a school district in New Jersey. And Hatch told him what a wonderful school BYU was. Everybody laughed and cheered.  And Zuckerberg was flustered for a second, and then he said, OK, I’ll remember that!  And I bet he will. 



We got there an hour early thinking it would be super packed…..it was but not till 10 minutes before…





He asked a few questions back at Hatch about Government taxes on business…Hatch says he think government should get outta the way of business….that garnered another cheer from the audience….

 The cutest thing happened at the end. These 7 student body presidents from all the Utah colleges surrounding BYU came up on the stage with a school hoodie. One by one they shook Mark’s hand and passed him the hoodies. He had this huge pillowy stack piled up to his ears. And he turned to the audience and hugged them all like a little, beloved Teddy Bear! So cute. Everybody laughed and cheered for him again. It turns out it was the first college invitation to speak he has ever accepted. This was a first for him. What a great event.



Me at the BYU Museum of Art…Carl Block exhibit…I think this was an alter piece. I wonder if we saw some of his paintings in Italy?





I loved this exhibit the best. It was called “Words”and it is made up of a gazillion books piled high in this cube shape….



Then we spent the rest of the day eating lunch with Devin and his wife Caitlin and cousin Brendan at Kneaders. Afterwards we went to the Yogurt Shop. Super fun. I think I mixed up 8 flavors. But my favorite was mango. We were the oldest people in the restaurant! Boo to that!  Later we had a reservation at the Carl Block exhibit at the BYU Museum of Art. We had a really great day even in all the rain.  Life is good. 

As I sit here watching snow lightly falling on this “Start of Spring” day I am deciding which of the 4 seasons is my favorite. I grew up in Southern California near the beach, so you would probably think I’m a summer beach girl. Well, I must admit I LOVE laying on a beach, man made OR real, anytime, anywhere, but it’s not my favorite season.  I also LOVE seeing the tops of the tulip bulbs just starting to peek out of the snow covered dirt in the yards. I love the first signs of Spring too. And I can hardly wait for some warmer weather to happen. But although I love Spring and the holiday of Easter so much, and Spring Breaks from school I’m a real big fan of, it is only my 2nd  favorite season.

Tulip Gardens are so beautiful in the Spring!

I love the Fall season the very best. I love Halloween and Thanksgiving holidays, pumpkin patches and apple orchards, and back to school stuff. And it’s also when my birthday happens, go figure. But Easter Egg hunts in the flower garden and Tulips Festivals at Thanksgiving Point come in a very close 2nd.  I will have a 4 year old, a 2 1/2 year old and a 9 month old grand daughter this year so the  Egg Hunt will be lots of good fun. They will love to color eggs with me too. I can’t wait!




Aren’t my little munchkins cute?
They are all decked out and ready to find a little leprechaun or a pot of gold! So the day after St. Patrick’s day I dragged out all my Easter and Spring decor and decided we need a little Easter now! I always start at the kitchen table and work my way around the house.It always takes a few days to finish. And it always puts me in a good mood to see the mercury cracked-glass eggs, the wire baskets my kids have used for years, the pastel linens and candles and the florals and ceramic bunnies.



Easter Table Decor….I got some cute new placemats this year….Thanks Kohls…

Last year this same time of year I was feeling rather melancholy and “blue”. It was the week of my Son Danny’s birthday, and I was missing him a lot and feeling sorry for myself. So I took a “mental health” day off of work just to go do something for myself …maybe to commune with nature or something. I’ve always felt joy in the presence of some beauty of nature. I stumbled upon the Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving Point in Lehi, Utah. I had never seen so much natural beauty concentrated into one little square acre of garden. It does something physical to your senses. It almost makes you cry it is so breathtaking! And it did take my breath away. So yeah, this season I do love a lot.

Thanksgiving Point’s Tulip Festival….coming April 15th

Our PTA at my school is ultra fabulous. They are freakishly fabulous. They go past the mark in almost every way. They don’t just go the extra mile, they go the extra MARATHON MILE! They did one of their fabulous things this past fall. It was Red Ribbon Week. That’s code for “Say NO to Drugs” week. We all do things with the color red to remind us to be committed to living our lives drug free. So the PTA went out and bought 1 red tulip bulb for each child in our school to plant in October. That’s like 600 plus bulbs!  What a great idea right?

Red Ribbon Week ….we planted tulip bulbs!



 Well, as I was one of the last people leaving the school yesterday, I looked down as it started to lightly pitter patter with rain around me. I saw those flower boxes across the front of the school just teaming with the tips of green tulip bulbs just trying to break through the soil about an inch, getting ready to burst forth with bright red beauty. A little wave of delight washed over me. I remembered the tulip fields at Thanksgiving Point last year brightening my countenance and my grieving soul.. How excited those kids are gonna be to see the little part they played in what is going to be a remarkable display of nature at its best. I can hardly wait myself!

I love tulips with pretty pottery….and garden decor…

So I’m getting into Spring as you can tell. My husband hates toting all my Easter “junk” (he calls it junk but I don’t think he really appreciates little wooden bunnies 😀)back and forth up and down from the basement storage room. But he’s a pretty good sport. He’s been busy making the basement into his “man cave” with a big screen, a blasting stereo (complete with 70s disco music) and 4 workout machines; the elliptical (my definition of modern day torture vehicle), the treadmill, the life cycle, and some kind of weird rowing machine. 



Kitchen counter…Marisa helped me stack all the mirror ball eggs….she loves Easter!


So anyway, he got all this 70s music like Saturday Night Fever and Donna Summer stuff, and compiled it onto this CD and we’ve been dancing and biking and rowing ourselves into a “disco fever!” It’s been funny how all the girls in our family now want a copy of John’s cool CD and he’s made a copy for Tiff, Wendy and Caitlin. Wendy has done the whole thing and says it is brutal. I have gotten to like, 15 minutes of it before I poop out completely. The object is to keep exercising to the beat, no matter how fast it gets! Wazoo it gets hard! Boogie Oogie Oogie! And I’ve lost 6 pounds already! There may be something to this sweating to the oldies!’

Easter Decorations.    Easter Baskets for everybody!

So while I’ve been decorating the house this week, my daughter and her husband are leaving to go out of town and asked us to babysit….guess who…..NOT the cute grandbabies, oh NO!….THE DOG!  I have grand dogs… They have this beautiful, huge, golden retriever named Gunner. He is really such a good dog, but he is so dang HUGE!

Table Decorations…little Megan grabs gobs of these jelly beans and stuffs them all in her mouth….:D

But my fat little dog still think HE is the alpha dog at our house. But he is not the Alpha dog anymore. When Gunner is around it’s kind of comical to watch him cautiously sniff around the bigger dog. He is so curious but kind of a scaredy cat at the same time. He’s even scared to eat his food, or a little doggie treat around Gunner. He waits till Gunner is out of eye shot or something. What’s up with that Scaredy Cat?


Well he wasn’t too shy to bite the face off bunny boy! Notice he’s missing an eye? Dogs can be so cruel…



Marisa and I hung all the eggs on the little tree…she loved it!

So when I got home from work there big old Gunner was. And I gave him a big old hug and was fluffing up his fur with a little bit of scratching and my husband says, “Oh, No…. you better watch out, Bruce is gonna get so jealous!” And just then Bruce comes jumping up wildly on me like “hey man, don’t pet that big guy, pay no attention to HIM,  I’m the kingpin around here!” OMGosh I’m thinking, I have a JEALOUS DOG! How did that happen? hmmm

Easter ceramics and Spring Decor…

Then John says, “watch this” and he calls Gunner over. Instantly Bruce jumps up and runs over and jumps on Gunner like, get outta the way, he’s MY DAD! It was really funny. Poor Brucie! He’s so small next to Gunner, he better get used to eatin the scraps this weekend. Gunner’s the Alpha dog at our house this weekend and he knows it!

Guess which one is the big bad Alpha dog? Brucie’s the little piggie in the background….

I love the little  egg plates I found at DI for 50 cents each!

So anyway, I’m grand-dog babysitting this weekend. Last weekend was much more fun babysitting Megan and Marisa at our cabin and listening to the hilarious things they argue about at 21/2 and 3 1/2. They actually had an argument on who likes mom better and who likes dad better. They both fought over dad. It’s always like that, isn’t it? Mom does all the work, dad gets all the glory. hehe. Megan is always excited to see my new decorations. She plays with my little, tiny, ceramic figurines like they are action figures. So I made them up their own little kiddie table with unbreakable decorations.


Kid’s Easter Table Decorations…they love eating at their little table….


Anyway, I’m planning a really beautified front and back garden this year. I’ve decided that will be my summer focus. I always have 3 months off in the summer from work, so I pick a “job” to do around the house. I’d like to plant new stuff, and add some stonework or stamped concrete, and put in a jacuzzi. They are $700 bucks off at Costco this week. I’ve almost worn John down. hehehe. We had one in California and it was one of the best purchases we’ve ever made. When the kids were little and we couldn’t go “out for a date” after putting them all in bed, we’d just head out back and sit in the jacuzzi and talk and drink strawberry-banana smoothies and raspberry lemonades. It was better than a date. And the kids loved it too.

Showing 1 area where the earth moved and left a gaping crack.

Last week there was a terrible earthquake in Japan. The earthquake was an 8.9 on the Richter scale. I have lived in California most of my life up until 12 years ago when we moved so I was used to earthquakes. But the worst one I ever remember was when I was 30 years old. It was my birthday and we were woken up by the swaying of the house and the noise of the glass doors crashing together. We all jumped from our beds screaming and ran to the appointed place; our doorways of our house, supposedly the safest places to hide because they would be strongest during a quake.

Cars and airplanes literally littering the place.

My brother in law Steve was staying with us at the time as his wife was sick in the hospital with cancer and we were helping watch their 2 little kids so he could spend time with her in the hospital. And I remember my husband was on a business tripso it was embarrassing running out in my nightgown and steve in his pajama pants and here we were with all these little kids between us in these 2 doorways. But we all survived with nothing worse than a bunch of books knocked off the shelves and our brick block wall fence in the backyard got a big crack in it and some bricks fell off from the top of the fence. Not a big deal. I think that quake was a 6 on the scale.

Homes displaced and on fire.

One shot of the tsunami that engulfed the areas.

I cannot even imagine a quake as big as the one in Japan was, 8.9. That would actually shake your bones.  We used to go with our kids to the Los Angeles Museum of Science and Industry. There was an earthquake exhibit in there where you went into a simulated “house” and then you stepped up on a pedestal inside the house where an earthquake was ready to happen. I Remember standing there waiting for like 10 seconds with all my kids and then suddenly you would hear all this rumbling and the whole room would shake like heck. It was a 7.5 if I remember right. It was super scary.

Massive earthquake and tsunami destruction



Water whirl pooling and destroying.

 So I can just imagine how terrifying it has been for these people in the pacific islands who have had tsunamis and fires, scares with the nuclear power plants, and missing loved ones. The whole thing is just an awful, dreadful nightmare for them. I have been seeing many pictures of destruction that are coming over the wires and it is simply incredible. Everyone goes through terrible traumas in life once in awhile. But this is one that I actually feel so guilty because I’m so glad I am not living through it.  Not only would it be horrid to deal with the loss of your home and neighborhoods, cars and belongings but then maybe somebody in your family is suddenly missing to top it all off. And where do you go? What do you do for food and water, by now I’m sure it has run out even though they are a very prepared nation.



Part of the airport left destroyed.

 I was thinking about my family and how we have had 72 hour kits for like the last 25 years. At one point when I got into them and redid all the cup-o-soups and granola bars and fruit snacks, I noticed that my youngest son’s had a tiny little diaper in his. That tell show old he was when I first put the kits together! Now they are all married and out of our home. I’m sure there is still something in those kits that wouldn’t be appropriate. But thinking about a crisis of this
magnitude those 72 hour kits would be a drop in the bucket of what would be needed to survive what difficulties they are facing over there in some of the worst areas of all.  I hope and pray that they are comforted by their families, by being together as communities, and by their faith and anything else that helps them along the way. God bless them all.



Happy Mardi Gras!



We are starting our study of mapping and the 7 continents and 4 oceans of the world.  As part of this study we look at some areas of the 4 corners of the United States.  I like to teach the kids something about each continent, but something about the North, South, East and West of our country too. Nothing speaks about the South like Louisiana. And one of their holidays they are most known for is Mardi Gras.




Now I think it is a crazy New Orleans holiday too, but I think it is fun to use it as a cultural springboard to discuss the new term “King Cake”  and craft a mask and maybe write a story about a boy or girl who found the little plastic baby inside their own King Cake.

King Cake….who’s gonna find the baby inside?

In our study of the South, we will mention that  Louisiana is where Hurricane Katrina happened in 2006. And how lots of Americans went to help out where they were needed when people had their homes flooded. We will talk about what a hurricane is  and compared and contrasted Tornados versus  Huricanes in bad weather.  Steve Spangler the Science Guy has a cool 2 liter bottle tornado demo. It is on his website.  The link is HERE

Cute story about a Hurricane…

Tornado lessons are fun with visual aids….

http://www.prometheanplanet.com/en/Resources/Item/35975/ This website has a great math powerpoint using terms from Mardi Gras for standard measurement questions. We have computer  too so it will be fun to get on there and play it.  I like that kids in my class will become exposed to all thestandard units of measurement even though it is not required core anymore.

 We will make our own 12 inch “kings  feet” to go with the book I read called “How Big is a Foot” about a king who needs to figure out now to measure a new bed for his wife and they use his “feet” as a measurement tool. We then add them together to make 3 feet into a yard. Then we will hang the decorated  “feet” and “yards” from strings in the ceiling for our Mardi Gras decorations. The KING’S FEET  story kind of goes along with the “King Cake” too. There’s a method to my madness….hehe….

Elementary grade Measurement Lessons are easy with this book….



King’s Cake

 Here’s a picture of our “feet” and “yards” all decorated up and hanging from the ceiling. We did this activity in table groups of 3. It was lots of fun and I think it helps them learn the vocabulary for standard units of measurement….inches, feet, yards…..


We used these 12 foam “feet” I bought at a Teacher Math Seminar a few years back…..

 



They traced them, used rulers to put 12 inches on each one….




We added toes to each one of course…..



Here’s our “King’s Feet” and Yardsticks all hangin around the room….



This is a King Cake….ours were invidividual cinnamon rolls from Rhodes Rolls frosted and sugared with the baby bear hidden inside..

 
 The student with the baby inside their king cake gets an extra set of  Mardi Gras beads.  I just used a baby bear pick I had leftover from a baby shower I hosted last year. So funny to see the winner scream when they got the baby!

Little King Cakes…. This was before I baked them…then we ate them before I took a pic

Here are our yummy “little” King Cakes. I used Rhodes frozen cinnamon rolls and let them rise. They were perfectly big for all the kids to eat. I hid a little “baby bear” pick inside one of them for the “mardi gras baby”.  It was a lot of fun. When they were cooled I frosted them with icing and green sugar.

Mini “KING CAKES” for First Graders..I only had green sugar….mmmmmm!

J found the little baby bear inside his cinnamon roll. So he got the extra cinnamon roll and a “Celebrate” crown to wear all day. It was a fun snack for the day.


After our daily seatwork the kids did masks instead of centers





They turned out very festive looking!



 And here are our masks……don’t they look cool? I passed out feathers, sequins and cardboard metallic mosaic tiles for the masks.  The kids colored them with markers, cut them out and cut out the eye holes, and then just did their own thing for a center. For the noisemakers I put macaroni into paper plates and stapled them on the back of this circular design I made on cardstock and had copied. The masks and noisemakers turned out pretty festive.  

I did my own mask design but I found a free design from Skiptomylou.org and the link is HERE She did a pretty cute one that is downloadable and printable. Just embellish however you want to for “bling”.  We used feathers, pom poms, sequins, etc.

Noisemakers out of paper plates and macaroni stapled to the back of the jester.

And the “feet” and “yards” hanging all over go right along with our measurement unit we are doing in math.
I think when kids do an art activity and they’ve read a story about “feet” and “yards” they will have that unit of measurement pretty much in memory. Art, music and stories, are all such good ways to internalize vocabulary you want the students to remember.  Happy Mardi Gras!

February was Dental Health Month and in my classroom I usually do a small, 3 day unit on keeping our teeth healthy. I had so many cavities as a kid that it is my personal mission to help other kids by teaching them how important it is to brush morning and night, and to not eat too much candy and soda pop. 

These hippos turn out cute…notice the 20 baby teeth and the “tusks”



 So I kind of combine it with a nutrition lesson and we talk about things that are healthy to eat all the time, and things you can have as a special treat once in awhile.  We start off like usual, reading a few books on the subject. Here are a few of my favorites. We also get the Weekly Reader or Scholastic News and it usually has a February Dental Health issue to read. We read one of those every day. Some have just animal teeth. We put up some vocabulary words like primary teeth, molars, dental floss, cavity, 32 Adult teeth, etc. and put the definitions in the pocket chart to play with for the week. Then we do a few fun worksheets to fill in the blanks and some math to find the hidden messages. We sing some songs too.

The Tooth FairyTells All
Make Way for Tooth Decay
The Tusk Fairy
The Lost Tooth Club
Tooth Trouble

This little tooth fairy box I made using the tutorial on Martha Stewart’s website LINK HERE

For the tooth fairy box in the picture above I just made the Martha Stewart design a lot smaller. It is easy to do. Kids can even make it, although it takes too much time. It’s a good parent project though. And the kids would love to take their teeth home in it when they fall out at school. 🙂

Class bulletin board…The kids listed facts they learned on the “tooth”

This gray Hippo  has a big mouth full of 20 baby teeth. His 4 tusks are made of marshmallows. We put a Shel Silverstein poem on “How to Make a Hippo Sandwich” on the back as well as hippopotamus jokes. That’s always fun reading jokes to each other…. I always combine art with shared reading. Shared reading can be songs or poems or jokes, that type of thing….just to practice READING together as a class!

he haw the kids laughed at most of these…some they didn’t get I think !?

We glued this poem on the back of our Hippo Art…

Another of my favorite arts is watercoloring on a Tooth Fairy blackline.  We add glitter to her wand and wings,  then cut her out when she has dried. We back her with pastel butcher paper in yellow, pink, light blue and lavender. Then we write her letters asking questions.  It’s always a hit.

These will go in our portfolios….

WRITING:

Brainstorm as a class what you’d like to ask the Tooth Fairy. My students have usually lost at least one tooth so they know what it’s all about. We then write letters to the fairy and go through the whole writing process, editing and rewriting on “Tooth Fairy” paper. We are going to see if she writes us back…do YOU think she will? We are leaving the letters on top of our desks for the whole weekend….we will see….

Letters to the Tooth Fairy…very nosy indeed!  hehe

When we came in on Monday…We got fairy letters back!

Well, after we wrote letters asking the tooth fairy questions we left them out on our desks all weekend. And guess what? She came and visited over the weekend sometime.

I think this was Em’s  fairy…very cute!

Allie did such a great job! I loved her painting!

And she left little letters in tiny envelopes to the kids. She was so sweet to answer all their questions! It was totally cute seeing the kids all excited to have a tooth fairy letter!

We graphed how many teeth we had lost, and then flossed our own teeth

Some had lost 8 teeth and some had lost NONE!

FLOSSING

That red thing is a big set of wind up clacking teeth, floss and a giant toothbrush.

Past years I have found individual flossers at the dollar store with like 30 in a package for a buck. Then I use 2 white pillowcases and have 2 kids put them over their heads. Then I use a rope to go between them as they stand very close together representing 2 teeth. It is funny for the kids, they all want to take a turn being a tooth. Or you can do the same thing with white styrofoam egg cartons. Using the bumpy backs as teeth the students use white yarn to go between the egg holders to”floss”.  Then I pass out individual floss to practice.  After lunch they can see what kinds of “materials” they floss from their teeth. Mmmm.  

We read the Dental Health Weekly Readers and Scholastic News all week!

If kids want they can add to my Lost Tooth stories when they lose a tooth in class.

A math game, make equations using 3 number cards…use the teeth for counters

I made the counters from 1 piece of 99 cent foam…it was easy.



Another game…See how many of each number you roll…by graphing it!

 For Center 3 You can use little erasers from Oriental Trading to graph.   They are only 3.99 for 24 and that would last for years for game counters or graphing counters. See them HERE.This year I ran out of money so I just went to Michaels and got some white foam for 99 cents and simply drew teeth shapes one night while watching TV. I might also try dry lima beans with little faces on them next time. 🙂 The fun part was when they had a pretty good sized graph I’d wander over to that center and ask… “Now tell me about your graph using math words like, equal, greater than, less than, least, most, how many more, how many less.” They are getting pretty good at describing the class graph. We try to change it every week.



I think my one sheet of foam made like 60 little teeth counters/graphers…



Here is a finished graph by Trace and J. and they descibed it to me perfectly.

CLASS GRAPH – HOW MANY TEETH HAVE YOU LOST?
 I always have my GRAPHING pocket chart up so it would be a fun to graph their favorite toothpaste flavor and see which one is the class pick. In the past I have cut out the front of boxes of toothpaste with their colorful labels to put in the pocket chart. But this year we have graphed how many teeth we each have lost. 
  

A “Just for Fun” center…Tooth Tic Tac Toe

The girls really got into the game….

Center 2 – The fun Tick Tack Toe game  can be found HERE at About.com.  It was made by Beverly Hernandez. It’s very cute. I changed the counters to some cute tooth stickers I had in 4 colors that I liked better. I backed them with cardstock and had the game and counters laminated.

Center 1 – It’s a math game where you roll a dice and count out the marshmallows to place on 32 round circles in a mouth.  I found it at A to Z Teacher Stuff in a fun unit called “Let’s Talk Teeth”.  The link is HERE and Susan Payne is the author. There are lots of fun poems and chants also on this cute unit website. There is a cute poem entitled “The Tooth Fairy Came Last Night” I am attaching to the backs of our tooth fairy art projects. It will be fun for the kids to read and fill in the blanks with coin money.

These eggs pretty yucky when you pull them out of the coke & juice!

Center 5 –  Looking at the experimental hard boiled eggs we put into Coke, Grape Juice and one in plain water. If you do this a day in advance like we did,  it is a fun center for kids to see how food “stains” our teeth and for them  to try to “brush” away the stains.  You could also use some permanent marker on white bathroom tiles. I also have my red, plastic, clacking teeth they can practice brushing with my giant toothbrush. That is always fun.  

The kids are trying to brush the stains off with toothpaste…it was hard…they said.



Each Center has several books on teeth for fast finishers to read while they wait for me to ring the bell. This is always a fun week in school.   

And isn’t it cute how excited they get to have their pictures taken? They are super cute in 1st grade.