Mother's Day Project Ideas and Freebies for May

Mother's Day is right around the corner! It always sneaks up on me. Every year, I say that I'm going to get an early start on the projects. This year I mean it! I am heading out to the craft stores with coupons in hand to get everything I need for upcoming Mother's Day projects! 

My class will be making a project similar to this one using a 2 inch binder clip, some fuzzy rainbow craft yarn and flower scrapbook embellishments. (I found colored binder clips at Staples!) You can use it as a recipe holder or photo stand! 


source~ My Lovely Inspirations


My Mother's Day Lunch Bag Scrapbook is officially my number one selling craftivity to date and I am just thrilled! I've gotten such positive feedback letting me know how adorable the projects turned out! I made one for my mom too and she loved it! :)

If you're looking for a sweet, unique gift idea, you may want to check it out at my shops!

Last year, our team decided to work our project in with our unit on plant life cycles so my first grade kiddos painted 4 inch terra cotta pots with their choice of a variety of beautiful, spring-colored acrylic paints. I have decorated pots with my students in every way, shape and form over the years and think I have finally come up with the simplest, nicest design of all~ white polka dots on a colored pot! 

I found the perfect supplies for painting at Joanne's. They make disposable rollers with handles! These are great for little hands and cheap too! I also purchased some dot painting sticks. They have a felt tip rather than a sponge. They are the perfect size and won't splat paint when used.

Rather than planting the traditional flower in the pot, I send home the gift as a planting kit. This is the best idea ever! The soil goes home in the pot inside a baggie. I purchased large seeds and put them in one of those plastic ziplock earring bags also at Joanne's. I made colored copies of the seed pack and reduced the size of the image to place one in each tiny bag with the seeds. I found these cute colorful shovels and kids garden tools in the dollar spot at Target. The seed bag is attached to the shovel with a ribbon and little cardstock card that reads:

Mom, my love for you grows and grows! 

The kit was adorable and I did not have to worry about the plant getting crushed or broken on the way home or dirt spilling inside the bag and making a mess of our pretty pots! Depending on your budget, you could add a pair of garden gloves to your kit. That would be super-cute!

Speaking of planting and flowers, here is a May flowers-themed attendance for the SMARTBoard freebie for you!

 Are you having a Mother's Day Tea or Muffins with Mom celebration? This is not a poem for your students, but one for busy moms based on the pattern in Laura Numeroff's books! Your moms should get a kick out of it! It's also a freebie at my TPT shop. Click on the picture to download a copy.

I'll leave you with a fun video you can pass along to anyone who needs a good laugh!This is hilarious!

It's The Mom Song!

I can relate, can you? 

Earth Day Activities in the Classroom

Our school has earned the distinction of being a Green School. There is quite a lengthy process to go through to earn this title so we are quite proud of it! We are very involved in recycling projects, adopting endangered species and being mindful of the three R's! This week our lessons were themed around  the Earth, conservation, natural resources and "going green"! Here are just a few of the activities we did and ones that I remembered to take a picture of!

The class viewed this Earth Day PowerPoint I made.  They really enjoyed seeing the real photographs. We had some fantastic discussions during the lessons!

We sang a catchy song about goin' green and keeping the Earth clean too! You can download these songs on iTunes or Amazon. They are from Have Fun Teaching. I try to work music into our daily routine and into every lesson when possible! The kids love to sing along as they work or during brain breaks!

I love all of the songs on this album!

We discussed the meaning of the words reduce, reuse and recycle! The children discussed ways that they can help the Earth both at home and at school. Tomorrow we work on an Earth Day sort with things that help and hurt the Earth.

Monday, the entire school participated in a school grounds clean-up challenge! It was disgustingly good fun!

We worked on calculator skills as we totaled up how many pieces of garbage the class collected as a group. We counted over 700! We decided to clean up the area around our baseball diamond where visitors drop and leave behind their drink containers and snack wrappers. The kids were shocked at how much trash had been left behind!

This was a fun and cute rebus story from Lori at Teaching With Love and Laughter! The kids absolutely loved it. I was impressed with the creative ways they used the pictures in their writing.

The class enjoyed making this colorful project from A Cupcake for the Teacher to display on the bulletin board!

  These sparkly raindrops and an adorable raincoat kid decorate our ceiling for our April Showers theme. Keeping the Earth's water clean and conserving natural resources is something we discussed as well.

We are also reading informational texts from Scholastic News Magazines that focus on Earth Week topics.I save an issue every year and read them together like a big book on the SMARTBoard under the doc cam.

 During these reading lessons, we are reviewing nonfiction text features like bold print, captions and headings. Head over to Scholastic online to see the great collection of free resources and printables!

Our read alouds are from author and illustrator Schim Schimmel. This is one of my favorite books! The illustrations are amazing! The author asks the children to deliver the important message and just simply to love the earth. This is a great story for teaching point of view. It is told from the perspective of the Earth.

We are wrapping up the week with a fun Friday movie that ties in beautifully with our theme~ The Lorax! Yay for a much-needed movie day!

Love this little guy!

Hope your Earth week activities were lots of fun! Here's a little freebie poem you can save away for next year. I meant to get it up sooner, but it was just one of those weeks! :)

Creative Lesson Cafe is on Instagram!

My niece has been bugging her Auntie to get an Instagram going. She's been having a blast with it in a teenager sort of way, so I thought I'd give it a try too! 

If your not familiar with it, I'd describe it as a cross between Pinterest and blogging. I like it because I can add a photo right from my phone from either the camera roll, photo library or one that I take on the spot.  My Instagram will have photos of my life, my loves and my lessons. 

Try it out and download the free app. It's fun to play around with frames and editing of your photos!

Find me and follow me there! Search for me by user. I'll find and follow you back too!  :)

Link up your Instagram at What the Teacher Wants or Apples and ABC's!

Type the hash tag in after your photo comment so we can find you! Hope to see you there every Tuesday! :)

Marvelous Math Sites for Kids

Have you heard of Symbaloo? It's a nifty site where you can collect and display all of your favorite sites in an app-style widget. I have a Symbaloo added to my classroom blog so my families can access the sites I have recommended for home practice. You can create your own Symbaloo! It's really simple and fun too!

Here is one that I organized for the linky party with Jivey on math sites.

Click on the link to grab my Marvelous Math Sites Symbaloo. Feel free to change the name and make it your own! You just need to create an account to do so, but it's free!You can click around here to explore a bit! 

Of the ones featured, Dreambox is my favorite. My class absolutely loves it!I assign 15 minutes on the site for math homework. The kids never complain and they beg to use Dreambox in computer lab and in the classroom.

 The great thing about it is that you can monitor time spent on the site and check on the progress of individual students. Dreambox operates using Adaptive Learning Technology. Read this excerpt from the Dreambox blog to learn more.

Intelligent Adaptive Learning (IAL) personalizes and blends learning by putting students at the center of learning.  IAL uses digital learning experiences that immerse students in modular learning environments, where every decision a student makes is captured, considered in the context of sound learning theory, and then used to guide the student’s next learning experiences.  IAL adjusts the student’s path and pace within and between lessons, and provide formative and summative data to the student’s teacher.

Only DreamBox Learning has the Intelligent Adaptive Learning™ Engine.  It enables truly formative assessment to improve teacher and elementary math student performance. It’s the ideal platform to individualize and personalize instruction.  Learn more.

Dreambox will offer a free trial period for your building, but a license will need to be purchased after the trial. I believe this is money well spent and perhaps your administrator will too after you share the info! :)

Hold your cursor over my Symbaloo here and scroll down to get a better look. I could not figure out how to resize this! At the bottom there is an option to view on Symbaloo. 

Leave a comment with any site that you just love and I'll add it! I'm working on Symbaloos for other subject areas and if there is enough interest, I can pass the link along! 

Remember to head on over and link up! Just click the adorable button at the top of the page to take you there!