Look What I Made

I really wanted a chalkboard in my outdoor living area. I found the frame at an antique mall for $5 and got a piece of plywood cut to size at the lumber store. I had leftover chalkboard paint and spray paint from previous projects.
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Once painted all I had to do was put it together.
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We broke it in last Saturday putting the menu for the party on it.
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My daughter is the artist in the family so I always have her do the writing and decorating. I just love it!
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Best,
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Charlie Cook’s Favorite Book by Julia Donaldson - Teaching Ideas




Reading level: 2.2
Theme/subject: reading 
Genre: rhyming, humorous 
 
I normally list all the reading skills and strategies that work well with a book, but Charlie Cook’s Favorite Book is a different kind of story. This is a circular story that takes Charlie and the reader into one book after another. 
 
The story starts with Charlie Cook reading a book that has a character in his book reading a book. The character in that book is also reading a book and then that character is also reading a book. This goes on and on until it ends with the last character reading a book about Charlie Cook.
What I love about this book is that it has the titles of each of the books with a little summary of what that book is about. With this information you can use this book to look at genre. 
 
After reading the story go back and take a closer look at each of the titles and what each story is about. Use this to discuss the different genre attributes and see if your students can name a genre for each.
The other activity you can do with this story is work on sequencing. It might also be fun to have your students write their own circular story. 

They would have to plan the different characters and what book those characters would be reading as well as what all those stories would be about. This would be quite a task, one that would require some planning and patience,  but just think of the synthesizing that would be happening as they organize, compose, compile and write this story.

Enjoy!


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Want to get to know me a little better?


I finally have a minute to join The Teaching Tribune’s Monday Meet Up.

But because I missed the previous weeks, I am including them in this post as well.

Here is my letter to myself from when I started this lil’ ole blog.
Dear me 
 But because I have to have the last word, I wrote a response to the pessimistic me.
Dear pessimistic me

The next meet up was learning a little about me. Not sure if you will notice but I am a little frustrated with my district right now.
About me
And finally here are three things I know you didn’t know about me.
Meet me
Thanks for taking the time to linger here a bit. Enjoy your week!
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Life…

Since June 4th my family has celebrated so many momentous events which have been pretty bittersweet not having my mom here to celebrate with us.
June 4th was my oldest daughter’s graduated from city college. In just 2 years she got her Associates degree in English Literature. She is transferring to state this fall.
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June 7th was my dad’s birthday. A tough celebration without mom.
image-1June 8th my youngest daughter made reservations for all of us, including dad to get pedicures. This was dad’s first ever pedicure. He was very reluctant but is now completly sold. He wants to now go in every 3 months to get his toes all cleaned up :)
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June 12th my baby graduated from High School.
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June 13, 14, 15 my baby had her last ever ballet recital (she is now too old to take classes at her dance studio). A tough weekend, my mom was her biggest fan.
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June 15th we celebrated Father’s Day.
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And finally we had Madison’s (my baby) graduation party. Madison’s government teacher came (who is in the picture) and Madison was over the moon that he came. This teacher is one who we all strive to be, the one that makes the difference, the one students will remember and give thanks to for the rest of their lives. After talking to him at the party it was obvious they had a mutual respect for each other and he learned as much from Madison as she did from him, it was just awesome!
photo-1 And finally today, I am sitting and relaxing (well trying to at least) watching the USA play…what a game!
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I am hoping life will now slow down a bit and I can get myself back into a routine for blogging, creating, and reviewing. I need to pull out my blogging binder, dust it off and organize myself, my thoughts, and all the linky parties going on this summer.
See you soon!
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Five for Friday

For a bit of randomness I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for the Five for Friday link up.
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I have an intervention group for math content and we have been working on rounding. So many of them could not remember how to do this so I came up with a really great hands on practice for them. I will be posting about it in a bit.
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I got this fun metal wire picture holder and I jazzed it up with ribbon to give it some life and color and so I have more places to tuck pictures. This will hang in my bedroom.
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Do you notice their paws? Isn’t that just so cute! My girls and I were laying on the bed talking and the doggies joined us. They put their paws like that, not us : ) 

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Have you seen this game? The only game I have on my phone is solitaire, not because I play it but because I think it came on the phone. Don’t get me wrong, I love games but I use my phone for so many other things I don’t want to get sucked into games. Anyway, my daughter loaded this game on my phone, and sure enough I am hooked. I have to limit myself to only 2 games so I can do other things, you know, like blog stalk, Pinterest peruse, and Facebook, Instagram and Twitter post –so much to do and so little time to do it!! Well if you haven’t seen this game, and you like games check out 2048. 

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My 19 year old daughter just got her AA degree. She finished in just 2 years. She is transferring to the state university for her Bachelors and then on to bigger and better for her masters and PhD. She is wanting to teach English at the college level…a life long student    : ) We are so proud of her!!

That’s it for this week, enjoy your weekend!!
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Open House–Ocean Theme

So Open House was May 22nd. My friend and I go all out for Open House, we seem to get these crazy ideas that we can create anything with PVC pipe and butcher paper. 
This year our idea was to create a submarine to go with the ocean theme. The kids had so much fun creating, making and writing about their invertebrates.
 Little by little their room was transformed and they were just ecstatic with the results.
 We had only 1 student from her class not come to Open House and about 50% of the kinders come through ohhing and ahhing about what next year is going to be like. 
It was great. 

Below is a photo dump of the room.

The Submarine
This is how everyone entered the room. The blue circles are the windows with little water color fish the kids created and all the gadgets- the knobs, buttons and gauges were also created by the kids.
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We stacked the classroom tables and chairs to make the underwater rocks.
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The kids had a take home project. We sent home white butcher paper for them to make their bodies. We put them all over the room. This was the hallway display.
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We had some of the kids swimming in the waves.
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And here are a few of them swimming.
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I took this picture from atop the ladder I was using to hang everything. You can see the swimmers looking down on the rocks.
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We have these students sitting in the touch or tide pools.
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Here are a few close ups of some of the things the kids made.
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And finally a few random shots.
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Well that’s it for this year. I wonder what crazy idea we will have next year…Again, sorry for the photo dump but there was just too much to share :)
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