Guest Blogger: Tanja from Journey of a Substitute Teacher!

It is day 2 of my absence. Have you noticed? I'll pretend you have.
Today we are superlucky again.

Tanja from Journey of a Substitute Teacher is guest blogging for me and she is going to show you how to do something that I know you want to do. 

I want to do it.I've seen these flower pens everywhere. We even had a bunch on our conference room table, but I think somebody took them. Or anyway, they're gone. I can't imagine someone sneaking out with a bunch of flower pens. 
-What's that you've got there?-What's what?-That bunch of flowers.-Oh. These are mine. I carry them around sometimes. To make me happy.-Oh. 
That's actually the benefit to these pens. They are super hard to steal. It's almost as good as when you go to the restroom at a gas station and they give you a key with an entire hanger attached to it. Or a tire. Or a hobbit. Except these are pretty.
Anyway, here's the low-down on how to make some pretty pens. And stay tuned, because there's even a freebie. Tanja knows how to be an awesome guest.

Hi all, this Tanja (Ms. T) from Journey of a Substitute Teacher! I'm so glad to be guest blogging for Chrissy!

While she's off having fun, I'm here to share a project that is fun, cheap, and easy. It's flower pens! I first saw one of these at one of the schools I sub for. Too many people were stealing  not returning pens and so they created flower pens which are unique.

My favorite pin of these pens is this one:

Courtesy: Simply This and That via Julie on Pinterest.

The sign says "Thank you for helping me 'bloom and grow' this year." Obviously for teacher appreciation, but you could make a variety of tags to go with the pens if they are for a gift. I love that they are in a watering can!

Materials needed:

• Pens
• Floral tape
• Hot glue gun
• Plastic flowers

I had scissors for the tape just in case. I ended up using them for the pens a lot.

First decapitate, I mean remove the flower from its stem.

Pop off the top of the pen(this was the hardest part of the whole process for me) and hot glue the flower into the top.

Wrap the pen with the floral tape.

Stick the cap back on. Or you don't have to, but I want the pens to last a bit. 

And the final product..a beautiful bouquet in a vase, finished off with a ribbon!

You could put the pens in vases, water cans, flower pots, etc. I already have a few requests by friends to make these!

And since I'm guest blogging, I brought along a freebie! Labels to go with the pens :) Labels say mom, teacher, and "Out of the bunch, I picked the best one" for generic :)

Frames courtesy: The 3AM Teacher

Frames courtesy: Mel Stampz

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Guest blogger: Heather from Peacocks & Penguins!

So I'm out, people. I'm on my way to sail the ocean blue. And I like you guys, but, I'm on vacay.

However, we are lucky enough to have a lovely guest blogger lined up for today with a very special, sparkly post! 

Heather from Peacocks and Penguins!

It's true. 

Raise your hand if this photo...

gets your heart a-thumpin'.

I think about glitter. A lot. A. Lot. I really, really, realllllly like it. It makes me do a little happy dance inside. It makes me smile. It makes me think glittericious thoughts..  

I'm not the only one. 

So what is it with our fascination with glitter and sprinkling/spreading/pasting/throwing it on everything? Look at some things that are better with glitter...

Bottles are better...

Clothespins are better...

Pumpkins are better...

Bombs are better...

Toilet seats are better...

In doing a little research for this blog I went onto Pinterest and searched Glitter. Did you know that people have entire boards dedicated to glitter?

There are websites that are solely dedicated to glitter.

Why do we love it so much?

Here are my theories about why we can't do without the littlest sparkles known to man.

#1. It is colorful.

Even when glitter is black, white or silver it projects a colorfulness that cannot be denied. The teensiest rainbows wink as each speck refracts the light.

#2. It is messy.

It sticks to everything. Those of us that dabble in glitter know that no project is complete without glitter in your hair, on your nose, on your table/chair/floor. We take it for a ride and it garnishes our carpets, clothes, beds, children, dogs and maybe even cats. Glitter's non-sticky stickyness is a natural property that we can't seem to not delight in.

#3. It sparkles.

Hellll-oh! Did you ever stop and think about the sparkly attribute of glitter? It takes very little light to make glitter shine. It takes just the barest hint of light for it to cast off sparkles. I believe that we all wish we could shine like that; just the barest of attention and we come to life. The subtlest acknowledgement and we shimmer. The brightest of declarations and we blind.

Use glitter as your medicine. 

Find your happy place in a bottle of Martha Stewart "Golden Beryl".

Toss a handful in the air and let it follow your footsteps. 

When in doubt

Nagging II

So I've loved everyones' nagging suggestions. It seems like teachers have perfected the art of nagging nicely. It's the difference between saying,

"Don't forget to exchange your swim trunks."and "Hunny, I know you've been busy, but have you had a chance to swing by Sam's and exchange your trunks? If not, we can go after work today."
But the second one just takes soooooo long. So it only happens sometimes. I tend to offer a disclaimer. "Hunny, I don't actually think you're going to remember to exchange your swim trunks, and then we'll have to eat the 15.00 I spent, plus whatever billions of dollars it will cost us to buy a pair on the ship, so I'm going to nag you about it daily until you exchange them and I don't care if it makes you mad."**
**actual transcript of conversation with my hunny**
He'll be all right.
Anyway, I just wanted to brief you on the upcoming weeks. Because I'm gonna be out of the loop (yay no phones) I've arranged for some lovely guest bloggers to post on the days that I'm away! I'm so excited because there is such a variety of posts coming up - more varied than one person would do!
Stay tuned in the upcoming weeks to read posts from these great guests:
Heather from Peacocks and Penguins
Tanja from Journey of a Substitute Teacher
Natalie from Teachery Tidbits
Krista from The Second Grade Superkids
Casey from Second Grade Math Maniac
Jackie from Third Grade's a Charm
Simone from Busy as a Honey Bee

Also, don't forget to enter my Scientific Method Posters & Word Wall Giveaway at Teacher's Notebook! Why not? It's free!

Or buy them now at TPT or Teacher's Notebook!

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Nagging.

So I've been running around like a nutjob trying to get a few things squared away for this cruise. I've become a nagger. As in,

"Hun, did you exchange your swim trunks for the right size?"
"Hun, did you find some shoes to wear on the beach?"
"Hun, what else do you need for this trip?"
"Hun, did you get your birth certificate?"
"Hun, ___fill in blank with mundane task that he hasn't done yet______"

I think if I preface it with 'hun', it's not nagging. It's gentle prodding. It's just being nice so he doesn't have to walk naked and barefoot in the hot sand.

I did set up a giveaway, though. Something to last you until I come back :)


Head over to Teacher's Notebook to enter my Scientific Method giveaway.
You can win my scientific method pack of 11 posters & 11 word wall words for your classroom!Don't want to gamble today? Just grab them at TPT or Teacher's Notebook.

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Hi! Have you met TED?

My hunny loves HIMYM. Loooooves it. So I've picked up a fe Barneyisms, even though I don't watch it as much as hunnybun. And at the risk of being a Barney,

Hi! Haaaave you met TED?

I'm sorry if that was misleading. I'm not here today to introduce you to a charming, bashful dork who will declare that he loves you on the first date.

Not that Ted. 

This TED is actually better. He knows a lot, and he's never boring. This TED is TED: Ideas worth spreading. I'm not sure why it's called TED. I don't know what TED stands for. For all I know, TED is a guy who thought it would be a good idea to put up a bunch of videos about interesting stuff. It's probably not, though.

Ayway, TED seems to be an awesome site full of things you want to know about. It's a compilation of videos: "riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world." And they totally are. 

They're great little talks about a variety of subjects. What's great is that they're only about fifteen minutes long, so you can learn one little thing. They're not all about education, but a lot of them are educationally relevant, or they can change what you think about people, which is what we do in education: help people grow. So check it out, watch a few, and see what can help you in your own educational path!

These are a few of the talks I've already watched that I found interesting:

Can you tell I dig Ken Robinson?

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That's a good question

So I've been in a sciency mood lately. I guess it makes sense. I've spent many days pondering some very sciency questions.

• How much cookie dough can I eat and still fit into my swimsuit?
• Where is my swimsuit?
• Can I afford a new swimsuit?
• Why do I have such a headache?
• Is it because I'm addicted to coffee now?
• Why haven't I made any coffee today?
• How long will it take for my headache to go away once I've had this entire, enormous mug of coffee?
• How many episode Bridezillas can I watch before I become a selfish, hateful bridezilla myself?
• How many more episodes of Bridezillas do I actually want to watch? 
• What else can I watch, now that I've decided to stop watching Bridezillas?

I know some of those questions aren't exactly testable, and some don't include variables (although the cookie dough - swimsuit question includes some variable pound gainage) but I still feel very scientific.

I guess that's why I put together this Scientific Method poster & word wall pack. Cause I'm so sciency.

Aren't these little science guys supercute? 

You can get them at TPT or Teacher's Notebook.

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What's the Matter? Matter!

Do you like my horribly cheesy joke? Oh well. It doesn't really matter.
MATTER! Get it?!



Hahahahahahaha!
But what does matter is I have spent a week working on this new pack and I'm super excited about using it in the classroom next year. Physical Science always seems so difficult for my kids to understand. I think it's because it's all so abstract - tiny particles they can't see doing things that they don't understand to make states of matter that they don't care about. A lot of factors are playing into this, I guess.
This is also one of our first major science units, and kids are still getting into the swing of being in a new grade level and learning things at a different level, so they have always seemed to have a hard time with it.
To improve their understanding, I try to do as much hands-on stuff as I can to get them to 'see' what's happening. 
I heart foldables, by the way. And it seems that the one I hear the most is the flapbook. They're just so useful. So I want to make this one next year with the kids to represent the different properties of matter and then have them hunt through magazines to find pictures to illustrate them.

I've made this foldable several years in a row to help students organize information about solids, liquids, and gases. We used punched-out circles from a hole punch to represent the molecules. 

One of my favorite investigations to do is the Density Lava Lamps investigation. Students use basic household materials to make a 'lava lamp' that actually demonstrates the property of density. Superfun.

Grab it at TPT or Teacher's Notebook!

And grab my two-page freebie from TPT! Properties of Solids, Liquids, and Gases chart & Sorting Properties of Matter!

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I Heart TomieDePaola *Freebie!

Yay for me: this is an actual post about school stuff. You may get some value out of this post.
However, I am definitely noting that my Lord of the Rings post received the most comments, so maybe you're not interested in school. Maybe you're more interested in Legolas and Aragorn, because they're hotty hot hot.
I blogged a while back about Tomie DePaola and how I use his books to help my students write personal narratives. It involved a lot of reverse mapping, a lot of character relationships, and a lot of great stories! This year, at the end of third grade, I wanted to read a novel as a shared reading to prepare kids for the experiences they'd have in fourth grade.
I chose, as a culminating text to our Tomie DePaola unit, 26 Fairmount Avenue. 26 Fairmount Avenue is about Tomie's family and their excitement leading up to their new home. It includes the characters my kids had grown to love in the other DePaola books because it is a memoir of his youth. 
I know this book isn't a challenging book for third graders. However, I had such a mixed group of kids that I wanted even my most struggling students to be able to go back into the text to find evidence for their responses. To that end, I chose a book that was independently readable for the majority of my students. I also knew that their interest in the text and Tomie DePaola would help them read.
A few of my students had read this book last year. At first, I was dismayed. I know it's a second grade book, really, but I was worried they wouldn't get much out of a reread. My fears were unfounded. On the first day, as we predicted, one of my students says, "Yeah, I read this book last year, but there's one thing I don't know. Why is it called 26 Fairmount Avenue?"
Ummm.... cause that's the address of the house.The house that is being built throughout the whole book.The house that they finally move into in the last chapter.
So I figured that they would get a lot out of it, because they didn't really get it in the first place!
We did a ton of stuff with this book. We (and I'm so sorry because I didn't take pictures of this - bad teacher bad teacher) sequenced the events of the book on cards and glued them onto a sentence strip. Then the kids illustrated the events.
We also spent some time with vocabulary and comprehension. My kids really struggle with answering specific questions that require inferencing and sequencing, so I wrote a set of questions for each chapter. We also worked a lot with context clues to infer the meanings of new words. The vocabulary of this book isn't very complicated, but there are words scattered throughout the text that are unknown to my kids.
Then we made these: Open Mind Portraits.

I have a couple of artists in my classroom this year!

On the inside, students completed the statements about what is in Tomie's brain: 

I love..., I am happy when..., I wish..., and I don't like...

I have a couple of artists in my classroom this year!

Of course, I cram in eighteen thousand things at the end of the year. I just run around saying, "They're not ready! They're not ready!" and I do as many things as I can to 'prepare them' lol. Anyway, this is one thing I didn't have time for boo. It's a craftivity for students to write inside of. 

You can grab it all at TPT or Teacher's Notebook! 

Grab this freebie from TPT:Character Relationships Map

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Ocean Theme Giveaway

Just a quickie-
Click to enter my giveaway at Teacher's Notebook 3 lucky winners will win my Ocean & Beach Themed Classroom Pack!

And check out my other items at my TN Store!
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Books books books

I'm a reader. I love to read novels, mostly (not the biggest nonfiction reader, except for blogs, I guess!) and I can't imagine my life without a love of reading. It can be hard for me to find books I love. For example, 50 Shades of Grey? Really? I'm sorry, but I picked up the book in Barnes & Noble after so many people recommended it. I thought it might be something.
I read the back. And I threw up in my mouth a little.
Anastasia Steele? Seriously?! Grey Whatevertheheck his first name is?! Can't do it, people. Too barfy for me. A friend of mine bought it and said that she can't handle it, either. She let me read a page. I read the words 'inner goddess' and was thankful I didn't spend the $$ at Barnes & Noble. I wish I could read that stuff. But it's just not possible. (I bet this is gonna tick somebody off lol. Sorry in advance.)Related idea, yet unrelated:
I love to read novels with my kids. I wish I could spend more time on it, but it can take soooo long to read a novel if you spend any time talking about it and working with it. I can usually only fit in about two a year in fourth grade. In third, the kids' stamina didn't really lend itself, so I was only able to do one. We had to spend a lot of time working with shorter texts.
26 Fairmount AvenueI put together a pretty nifty novel unit, but I still need to try one thing before I can post it to TPT.
It's important for me to do these as shared readings. I want students to have copies of the books and be able to go back and find evidence to support their responses to text. In order to get enough copies, I buy them when they're a dollar at Scholastic! I'm not sure if you do Book Orders (I thought everybody did, but I showed it to my sister-in-law and she said no one at her school knew of them!!) 
Scholastic Book Orders are the bestest. Of course, it's a great way for your kids to get books at a reasonable price, but one of the best things is that for every dollar parents spend, you get a bonus point! You can get bonus bonus points at different brackets, and for specials and stuff, too.
So that's how I get my book sets. I either buy them when they're a dollar, or I use my bonus points to get them. (I also use bonus points to buy the kids a gift book at Christmas) You can go here to sign in to Scholastic Book Clubs online!
These are books I love to read with kids in the fourth grade:
Frindle

Nick is a little boy with big ideas. One day, after learning from his teacher where words come from, he decides to call a pen a 'frindle' and it takes off.

Because of Winn-DixieOpal lives with her father. She finds a dog and her relationship with the dog helps her belong in her small town.
Walk Two MoonsSal searches for her mother who left her and her father. The story unfolds a little at a time.
Love That DogProse style. Jack doesn't want to write poetry, but Ms. Sugarberry convinces him through reading great poets.
Esperanza RisingEsperanza's rich family loses everything and become migrant workers. Beautiful story.
These are the books I've used the most with kids. Which books do you love love love to read with your kids?
Also, check out my new Good Readers Strategies poster pack at TPT and TN

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