Classroom Grocery Math

It's Saturday! Aren't you glad it's the weekend?  Yet, I am eager for Monday because we will be trying out our grocery corner. I stayed back after school on Friday to prepare it so my students will be in for a surprise on Monday. We have very limited classroom space so it had to be mounted on the back wall. I used my daughter's old Monopoly dollars and placed them into separately labelled Zip-lock bags at the base of the station. Real coins are on the right. I'll be making blank templates for my students to practice writing bills for the simple addition of money as well as for making change. I know that they will love the role-play part of it the most. 

Free New Year Goal-Setting Printables

Free New Year Goal-Setting Printables are here for you to help your students settle into the new year 2015. It also includes a craftivity which involves listing the positive traits that your students need to emulate this year. This can also be modified into a bulletin board display showing everyone's desired traits. There's also a section for students to keep track of their goals and reflect on their progress as they try different methods of achieving their goals for the new year 2015. This file updates each year and it is free! So get your free copy here from my TpT Store! Happy new year!

Free Fonts on TpT

As teachers, lets face it. We gotta love fonts. I love trying out new fonts - don't you? They say that music can make you happy... I agree but fonts make a lot of teachers happy. When a font perfectly matches the feeling of the text you type, it's a sight to behold. Please excuse my ramblings, fonts are one of my little obsessions. It started way back when I was a studying graphic design. But I promise you that once you start using new fonts, you'll get addicted...

TpT has a lot of fonts that are true type fonts. This means that they work like the ones that are already in your PC. See my top picks of free fonts at the bottom of this post. By the way, I finally tried my hand at making my very first font. I call it 'Nyla Chubby Cheeks'. It is free so please try it out and I really hope you like it!

My top five free-font recommendations from just a few of my favourite TpT sellers:

1, Friday I'm In Love - Free Friday Font From the Pond

2. {Free Font} Vacation Doodle Font{Creative Clips Fonts}

3. FREE FONTS {For Commercial Use!} LL Scribbles and LL Elementary Dots by Lovin Lit

4. FREE FONT - Have a Heart - personal classroom use

5. CKfonts {Set 2} Free Fonts for Teachers! (20 Fonts for Personal & Classroom Use)

Click here to search for more!

Cyber Sale Tips!

It's Cyber Monday (and Tuesday) Sale! Everything at Nyla's Crafty Teaching is on sale and be sure to use the promo code TPTCYBER at checkout!

Here are two new items:

                                         

          *Free Animals to Habitats Sorting Mats           *Food Web Building Kit

Enjoy the savings!

* * * * * * * * *Sale Tips: * * * * * * * * *

I know that you are excited about the Cyber Sale, so I drafted up these tips below to help you out... 

* Browse your favorite stores early so that your wish-list will be a no-brainer when you're ready to shop.

* Leave feedback on what you already bought to get extra credits that you can use for the sale.

* Check your TpT mailbox for the latest news from your favorite shops.

* Visit the TpT fan page on Facebook for important announcements from TpT.

* Use the TpT search tool to find resources you need; narrow your search by grade, resource type, and price.

* Read all product descriptions carefully, view the previews, and you can also read the ratings to get a clear idea of what you are buying.

* Do your shopping at off-peak hours (early in the morning or very late at night) to avoid site congestion.

* Do not forget to enter the promo-code upon cash-out!

(The last one probably made you laugh but trust me, it happens.)

      * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Remember, it's Mon Dec 1st-2nd and the promocode is: TPTCYBER...     By the way, I would love for you to check out the latest additions to Nyla's Crafty Teaching! 

And thank you for being a fan and for taking the time out to read this :)

Classroom Project - Making Shoebox Habitats

Last week, my class did their science project about habitats. Each group had to make a habitat using both natural and man-made objects. Each habitat was scaled down to fit in a shoebox. They used twigs and plant shoots to make trees and branches, stones for rocks, and tiny grass blades for vegetation. Students living close to the beach brought sand and tiny shells. For the man-made materials, they used play dough, North American animals, aquatic animals, rainforest animals, safari animals, farm animals, and river animals. I can't even begin to tell you how much fun this was for my students. I let each group take turns to go out in the school garden to collect natural materials for their habitats. 

 

This group used two shades of brown play-dough for the muddy wetland. The lighter brown is the water. The twigs represent mangrove trees. 

This group made the sea water, fishes, starfish, and seashells (I think) with play dough. The sand came from a dark-sand beach.

One group found a flowering plant with tiny orange seeds that resembled miniature pumpkins. They included it in their farm habitat (see this picture above). Thy also included tiny white flowers in the garden.

 After they were all finished, I set up a display area for the rest of the student body to view my students' work. My students were also present to explain to the visitors about their habitats and to answer the other kids' questions. Later on, they also had to answer my questions as I interviewed each group about their project and group member participation. I wish I took more pictures but my camera battery was dying (sigh!).  I let them take their habitats home. They had to develop their own roster systems for determining who gets to take it home for certain days.

To precede this activity, I let them practice sorting animals according to their respective habitats. You can download your free sorting mats here. You will also need plastic animals (or you can use small pictures of animals instead).

How to Make a Food Web - A Complete Guide

I made a food web building kit which sequentially builds the creation of food webs from food chains. It is a 10 page illustrated step by step tutorial with food chain-making worksheets and answer keys. It also has activity sets for making a safari food web, forest food web, garden food web, wetland food web, ocean food web, and Arctic food web.

Many students do not understand food webs and they tend to have a few misconceptions about them. They may write each organism more than once because in their minds, there are two things that an organism cannot do:
1. An organism cannot eat an be eaten at the same time. (False)
2. An organism cannot be eaten then live to eat another because it is dead. (False)

Therefore, these students may think that they have to draw a replacement organism to replace the ‘dead’ one.

To prevent this, it is necessary to first, to get them to see that each organism in the food chain or food web, represents all the other organisms of its kind in the habitat.

It has arrows and poster labels for each food web habitat.