Giveaway Time Again! Yay!
GIVEAWAY DETAILS:

Prize: $100 Teachers Pay Teachers Gift Card
Giveaway Organized by: Kelly Malloy (An Apple for the Teacher)
Co-hosts: An Apple for the Teacher, TheBeezyTeacher, Lockwood’s Little Learners, Star Kids by Naomi, The Froggy Factory, The Homeschool Style-Katie Ring, Walk with Me a Second, Ms. K, Jackie Crews, 180 Days of Reading, Mrs. Wennings Clasroom, Mickey’s Place, Angelica’s Resources, Simone, Heart 2 Heart Teaching, Teach Me T, The First Grade Lunchbox, and It’s a Teacher Thing.
Rules: Use the Rafflecopter to enter. The giveaway ends 8/13/22 and is open worldwide.
a Rafflecopter giveawayAre you a Teacher Blogger or Teachers pay Teachers seller who wants to participate in giveaways like these to grow your store and social media? Click here to find out how you can join our totally awesome group of bloggers!
Giveaway Time!
Are you ready to start thinking about preparing your lessons for next year? Wouldn’t a $100 TPT gift card help? Look no further. Register to win here!
Prize: $100 Teachers Pay Teachers Gift Card
GIVEAWAY DETAILS:
Giveaway Organized by: Kelly Malloy (An Apple for the Teacher)
Co-hosts: An Apple for the Teacher, TheBeezyTeacher, Lockwood’s Little Learners, Star Kids by Naomi, Little Learning Corner, The Froggy Factory, Ms. K, Jackie Crews, 180 Days of Reading, Mrs. Wennings Clasroom, Mickey’s Place, Angelica’s Resources, Simone, A Teacher and her Cat, and The Homeschool Style-Katie Ring.
Prize: $100 Teachers Pay Teachers Gift Card
GIVEAWAY DETAILS:
Giveaway Organized by: Kelly Malloy (An Apple for the Teacher)
Co-hosts: An Apple for the Teacher, TheBeezyTeacher, Lockwood’s Little Learners, Star Kids by Naomi, Little Learning Corner, The Froggy Factory, Ms. K, Jackie Crews, 180 Days of Reading, Mrs. Wennings Clasroom, Mickey’s Place, Angelica’s Resources, Simone, A Teacher and her Cat, and The Homeschool Style-Katie Ring.
Rules: Use the Rafflecopter to enter. The giveaway ends 7/13/22 and is open worldwide.
Are you a Teacher Blogger or Teachers pay Teachers seller who wants to participate in giveaways like these to grow your store and social media? Click here to find out how you can join our totally awesome group of bloggers!

Entertain Your Children Outside with a Mystery!
I’ve posted before here about The Golden Angle, the mysterious 137.5 degree angle that appears in nature and, and my students’ explorations with finding it outside here and here. Recently, I was showing someone about the Golden Angle and how amazing it was in nature. This prompted me to see if I could find it in other places besides an oak tree leaf and grass. Well guess what?! I did. Taking time for a tiny nature walk collection in my yard yielded some more amazement!
With most leaves, I found that lining one side of my angletron tool up to the stem allowed the other side to hit the first vein in the leaf.
Fig tree leaf immediately below:


Shrub leaves below:

Notice how the branches separate at the 137.5 degree angle below.

Nut grass, as my mom calls it, is below. I’ve notices the regular lawn grass grows this way, too when it goes to seed.

I love intriguing math mysteries, and I hope you enjoy them, too.
Not long after I started plucking leaves out of my yard, I noticed a mathy friend of mine posted something on social media about the number 137. Strangley enough, this number is a really big deal to physicists and called the fine-structure constant! Who knew?!
I Want to Be Kind
I rarely leave kindergarten without a story to tell about the events that happened while I was there. The story I am about to relate is probably my favorite one from the whole year.
I taught my normal lesson, and at some point during the time, I needed children to pull out a glue stick. It rarely fails that at least one child is without a glue stick when I ask them to pull one out. When one child let me know he didn’t have a glue stick another child readily volunteered his. I spoke to the one who lent the glue stick and said, “Thank you Johnny for being kind.” Immediately after this tears erupted from close by. Why the tears, you ask? The tears were accompanied by these words. ” I wanted to be kind…I wanted to be kind.”
I love the rawness of kindergarten–raw emotion. There is no holding back as with adults or grown up children. In fact, I think most adult behaviors could be explained with a trip to kindergarten.
In all honesty, don’t we all want to be recognized for being kind? In many cases, we as adults aren’t kind because it helps someone or because it is the right thing to do. We do it because in our pride we selfishly want accolades for our kindness.
Make Kids Cheer About Trash!
This was probably one of the best projects we did this year. My students made amazing U.S. landmarks from recycled items. Part of the challenge was to include a circuit that lit up. Students accomplished this with Christmas lights. Even if they didn’t bring their project to completion, all students gained more understanding of the landmark they studied and where it was located on a map. In the current educational world where social studies time is lacking, I am grateful for their learning. See some of their work below.



Does Your School Have a Social Studies Crisis?
Does your school have a social studies crisis? Or your district? I really don’t think it is just my school. I believe it is a mindset in education. Teach children to read for the whole day, and squeeze in an hour of math. If you have time maybe you can throw in science and social studies once a week for 30 minutes.
This is typical and explains why when I walked into a room, no one could tell me the capitol of their state. Disheartened, I left the room. After some thought, I decided to do a geography bee with all the intermediate grades. Round 1 was to name every state. VERY few could do this. This showed me that many of our students don’t even. know the very state they should call home. Do your students know their states? If not, Super Teacher Worksheets is a great place to stop for these resources! I used their numbered map below for my round 1 and gave students other maps to study for preparation….but hey…maybe your students know ALL of their states.