A St. Patty’s Day Giveaway!
For several reasons I teamed up with Growing Grade by Grade and Reading and Writing Redhead to host a giveaway!
- I reached 700 Facebook likes! Hooray!
- It’s St. Patrick’s Day and Pi Day all in one work week!
- Cristina a Jamberry Consultant contacted me about doing a review and giveaway. She is a New York teacher!
Thank you to Glitter and Glue Designs, Pink Cat Studio, and Hidesy’s Clipart for the graphics above.
You can register here:
a Rafflecopter giveaway
This is my review of Jamberry nail wraps: When they were on the next day I really enjoyed looking at my fingernails and felt very spring time-ish since I picked a pretty pastel pink with polka dots. I figured that they would match the nude colored polish I wear most often. I definitely couldn’t have pulled anything off like this with the polish I have at home!
The reason I say that I liked them the next day is because when I first put them on, I probably needed to file the edges down a bit more and little wear and tear between days helped finish the edges off better. This is the first time I had ever used these nail wraps. I will see if the Jamberrys make it to their expected two weeks worth of wear. Even if they make it to one week, I will be impressed. (I will post an update later.)
Now the drawbacks to the nail wraps. They took me a long time to put on–more than an hour. In fairness, I have never done this before so I don’t know if this is normal or not. If the wraps really last more than a week, then the extra time put in at the beginning will be worth the wait. The other problems I had with these is they didn’t fit perfectly in width to my ring finger. From the side you can really tell. I was surprised about this because I have generally small hands.
Overall, If I want to feel festive, the wraps are definitely a way to dress my nails up. Just look at the possibilities. I wouldn’t be able to accomplish any of these looks without Jamberry. Oh, and FREE SAMPLES PEOPLE…whoever wants a free sample just go here.
No Regrouping Needed!
Why does this alternative to regrouping work? I have noticed an image similar to this on Pinterest/Facebook.
The comments go something like:
- Wow!
- Cool, I’ve never seen this before!
- How does this work?!
- Why does this work?!
I thought I would take a moment to explain why this works. A simple piece of ribbon gives us a chance to explore this concept. Above I used smaller numbers to demonstrate. 100-88=12, but subtracting one from the minuend and subtrahend gives us the same answer. 99-87=12 also. When moving the ribbon down the number line we can see how the distance on the number line stays the same because we took the same amount from both the numbers. Hence, the ribbon remains the same size because the distance doesn’t change.
The distance = the difference. As long as the distance is constant between the numbers this will work.
Now, you tell me, will this work if, instead of subtracting one, I subtract five from the minuend and subtrahend?
How You Can Improve the “Office”
I know you probably have a collection of “offices” in your classroom–you know the two file folders stapled together and laminated if you went the extra mile. I have a collection of colored file folder ones from when I was in the classroom. I loved these things! We would pull them out any time we tested or I wanted students to think independently.
Well, guess what! Someone has improved “the office”! The resource teacher borrows the back of my room to work with some of her students. One day she left this up. I thought it was genius! If using a round table, do this for four kids at a time. 
She made four regular offices by stapling two file folders together…
Then she clipped the four offices together with paper clips and binder clips. This allowed four students to sit and work privately.
And voil’a taking file folder office to the next level!
Liebster Award Nomination
Wow, what a nice surprise to find that Pat, from Growing Grade by Grade, sweetly nominated my blog for The Liebster Award!
What is the Liebster Award?
The Liebster Award is given by bloggers to up and coming bloggers who have less than 200 followers. It is to show new bloggers that they are appreciated and to help spread the word about new blogs.
The rules:
*You must post 11 random things about yourself.
*Answer the questions that the nominator set for you.
*Create 11 questions for the people you nominate.
*Choose 11 blogs you love {with less than 200 followers} and link them in your post.
*No tag back {but please leave me a comment on this post with the URL to your Liebster post so I can learn more about you!}
Here goes…
11 Random Things About Me:
I love photography!
I have a furry black chipoo.
I love the Greek song where they break plates! It makes me happy!
I hate going to the doctor.
I think sitting in the DMV feels like a Seinfeld episode which makes me chuckle to myself when I go there.
To relax at home, I use essential oils in my diffuser. My favorite is 2 drops of lavender, 2 drops of peppermint, and 2 drops of lemon.
One of my goals is to read A Patriot’s History of the United States. It is 800 pages and so I’m not very far along.
I love to bake desserts!
The older I get the more I realize that you are still the same person but in an older body, so it may be true that youth is wasted on the young.
I like to make a change in jobs about every five years to keep myself from being stagnant. I don’t ever want to be resistant to growing and learning. Challenge is what makes you stronger.
I like to grow things! For example, I like to take the green onions from the grocery store that I don’t use and put them in the ground or grow herbs.
My 11 Questions with Answers:
- What’s your guilty TV pleasure? The bachelor…I get sucked in to it every time!
- What is your favorite movie of all time? Chronicles of Narnia
- What is your favorite book of all time? The Hiding Place
- What is your favorite holiday and why? Valentines Day because you can give to someone without them feeling obligated to give back.
- As a teacher, what is a strength of yours? Classroom management
- Describe your favorite dessert. Cold, yummy ice cream specifically Rum Raisin from Haagan Daaz
- What describes your home decorating style? Thrift store remakes. I like to refinish used furniture.
- If you could meet a celebrity, who would it be? Jim Caviezel
- What do you hope to receive for your next birthday? jewelry
- What is something that you learned recently? Since I have been studying essential oils, I learned that they have a MHz reading and so does our body. I learned that the human body has a MHz reading between 62 and 68 MHz. When your MHz dip below 60 you start getting sick, but essential oils raise your MHz making it more difficult for your body to get sick.
- What is your favorite subject to teach? Math!
Questions for Blogs I’m Nominating:
1. Who is your celebrity look alike?
2. What is your teaching super power?
3. What is something you wish you knew 10 years ago and why?
4. If you had $10,000 to give away, who would you give it to? Why?
5. If you could put yourself in a TV show, which one would it be and why?
6. What is your favorite hobby?
7. What book have you learned most from?
8. What do you like best about teaching?
9. What do you like least about teaching?
10. When you have had a bad day at work, what is your comfort food?
11. Who is your teacher hero? Why?
The 11 Blogs I’m Nominating:
- Managing and Motivating Math Minds
- Fantastically Fifth
- Kinder Molly
- Hamilton Ed Solutions
- True Life I’m a Teacher
- Third Grade Grapevine
- Steele Teaching
- Strive to Sparkle
- Ms. E Teaches Math
- Teaching in High Heels
- Food and Forte
And don’t forget that if you were nominated, to come back and comment on this post with a link to your post so I can go and read all about you!
How to Use Clocks to Teach Fractions
I just recently revisited one of my favorite lessons due to teacher request. I used to teach in a Title I school last year, but now teach in a more affluent area. I found myself teaching differently with the new set of students. Still, this lesson is one of my favorites, and helped 100% of students answer one of our practice standardized test questions (we are taking the ACT Aspire this year). First, I copy clocks on three different colors of paper for the students. Students get 3 different colored clocks each.
I pose questions to get the students to think about how we would cut the clocks into halves, fourths, and thirds. I found with the new group of students they had more intuition to think about how to divide the clock–reasoning about a clock face containing 60 minutes. Next, I questioned them about how we could divide the clocks into halves. This was easy for students. They knew we could split the clock into 30 minutes for each half.
Because halves relate well to fourths, through discussion I had students break their next clock into fourths. Sometimes there is a misconception when students break a clock into quarters or fourths because there are four quarters in a dollar. Students want to start their sections dividing on the four. This didn’t happen in this case however. Students knew that they could split the circle on the 3, 6, 9, and 12.
Next, I had students divide a clock to make thirds. This is always more of a challenge to students because thirds are not multiples of twos. I allow students to have a little group discussion at this point among themselves because they are unsure of how to divide the clock into thirds. When I remind them that the clock face contains 60 minutes, suddenly, they realize that they can divide the 60 minutes on the clock face into three parts on the clock face into equal 20 minute sections. Some also realize that they can take the 12 numbers and divide them into 3 equal parts which places four number sections in each part. The kids say, “Oh! It’s like a peace sign!”
From here, I have students do a worksheet which asks them questions about fractional parts of a clock. For example, what is 2/4 of an hour? ¾ of an hour? ⅔? And we explore how the size of the whole affects the size of the fraction when times smaller than a whole are used. Read here if you want to know more about this lesson.
If you want materials for this lesson, go here:
Know Your 5s Facts by Doing This…
So recently I discovered that the 6s multiplication facts multiplied by an even factor have a repeating pattern in the tens place. This made me rethink the 5s multiplication facts. Could there be patterns there, too? Here are the 5s multiplied by even numbers. Well, tell me what you think. 
I see that the facts all end in zeros and the tens place is half of one of the factors. Is there anything else?
Here are the 5s multiplied by odd factors.
Now for students who count on their fingers for their 5s this is another tool that could help them arrive at the answer faster than counting by 5s on their fingers.
I notice that the 5s multiplied by odd factors always have a 5 in the ones place. Now is there a way you could describe the pattern in the tens place? Hmmmmm….I don’t know. What do you think? Do you have any strategies for making 5s easier for kids to learn?
And finally, here is a question you could pose to children. How can knowing your tens facts help you learn your 5s facts?
How to Intervene with Children Who Don’t Know Their Addition Facts
I have worked with children from 2nd grade on up to help them learn their addition facts. One common denominator exists among all of these students. That is THEY DON”T SEE PATTERNS! I remember having a difficult time learning my 9’s facts when I was growing up. To help myself, I just took one off of the number I was adding to 9 in the ones place. I noticed this pattern. No one taught me this. When I was growing up, learning facts was like, “Ok, Class, let’s learn all our 8s facts, let’s learn all our 6s facts and so on.” This is not effective for students who don’t recognize patterns on their own. Now with the common core mathematical practices, we should be teaching children to explore patterns through thoughtful placement of number facts to help them recognize these patterns. Giving students opportunities to see the patterns will result in more students who are fluent in their facts. I have shown examples of this before such as in this post about using 10s to help with adding 9s.
But now I have actually put all of my work with struggling learners into a packet which could be used whole group for grades 1 or 2. At the 3-5 level this could be used for students in intervention or as part of the RTI process. Here is a look at the packet that I have put together to help students become fluent with all of their addition math facts. It is on TPT !
You can also try out a little sample of this product for FREE here.
Need a Thoughtful Inexpensive Teacher Gift?
For Christmas I wanted something thoughtful, yet inexpensive to give to a few of my close coworkers. Since I have been learning about essential oils, I recently attended a make-and-take party at which we made sugar scrub. As a result, I decided to make sugar scrubs for my co-workers and decided to even take a scrub to a retirement party I am soon to attend. For the retirement party, I put a label on the lid that says “Reti
rement is Sweet”. Here is the one I am taking to the retirement party…
Now the cute “handmade just for you” labels I found ready made at one of my favorite places–Hobby Lobby. I made the sugar scrub labels/directions and you can download them here if you like. They don’t really show in the above picture but they are behind the “handmade just for you” tag.
After considering many different recipes, I didn’t like the dryer feel of using a tablespoon of coconut oil so I made mine with almond oil.
Recipe:
Make sure you have two different bowls. You will want a smaller one for the oil and a larger one for the sugar. Use any combination of white and brown sugar you want. I chose white sugar because I didn’t want to overwhelm the smell of the essential oils. Brown sugar tends to do this.
I used 8oz. sized mason jars.
In the oil bowl:
I put ¼ cup of almond oil (available at health food stores such as whole foods).
5-8 drops of essential oils of your choice.
a few drops of Vitamin E oil
Stir the oil ingredients slowly in the oil bowl.
In the sugar bowl:
I put ¾ cup of sugar.
I slowly poured the oil into the sugar bowl and mixed with a fork until the oil was absorbed by the sugar little by little.
To complete, I spooned the sugar scrub mixture into the mason jar. You can cut out pretty scrapbook paper to place underneath the ring of the mason jar. To get a perfect circle just trace the flat circular lid. Then attached pretty ribbon and the tags.
Are Your Students Adding and Subtracting 10?
Are you teaching your firsties to add ten, subtract ten, add 1 and subtract 1? The week before Christmas we added this game to one of the selections in the students’ math stations. This game is called “Bubble Gum Pop”. The kids absolutely LOVE it!!! 
Students move “bubble gum balls” (bingo chips) up and down the 100’s chart mat according to the spinner. The game is differentiated for students who need more of a challenge so that they can use a mat that counts to numbers past 100 or they can use a bubble gum spinner that allows them to even add or subtract multiples of up to 20.
In this photo above, students are tied with both having an equal number of chips on the board. The one who knocks the other student’s chips off the board first is the winner. What makes this game fun is that there is an element of chance when students land on the pictures, their chips are out. Also, the game requires children to know which direction to move on the board to add or subtract 10s and 1’s so they are learning at the same time.
The game is also available in color. I copied it in second grade however on colored paper, but ended up liking the black and white better because I felt the students could see the chips and numbers better on the board. The color definitely did make the game happier though.
