Water Cycle, Holiday Elf Craftivity and December Memory Book Page Freebies!

Hey Y'all! I have not been able to post in 15 days, but who's counting? It's exhausting working all day and having a 12 week old baby! I looooove my job and I LOVE my son more than life itself, so any free second I have in the evenings has gone to one of the two above. The house, hubby and dog have been neglected...as well as my blog! But no use crying over spilled milk...here I go!

I thought since I'd been MIA so long I'd offer up some freebies that you can pick and choose from. In science this week we are learning about the water cycle. We did an experiment where we left a cup of water in a ziploc bag and taped it to the window. We observed what happened in the cup when it was left in the sun and recorded in our science notebooks. I created a water cycle wheel from some super cute Melon Headz illustrating graphics. You can get the water cycle wheel here. (I know the words "water cycle" are kind of cut out, but I couldn't get it to fit perfectly.) We used a brad to fasten it to the page so the kids could spin it.

 

 

We also created water cycle bracelets. I got this idea from a training in my district but I changed the color of beads based on the beads I had in my closet. :) It worked though! For this activity, I gave the kiddos black pipe cleaners and one bead at a time as we went through the water cycle. Yellow is for the sun, white is for the clouds, purple is for precipitation, green is for the plants, black is for soil and blue is for rivers, lakes and oceans. I don't have a pic of the bracelets, I left the iTouch I took pics with at school. But you can get the recording page here. (I added the arrows after the fact, I am going to have my kids draw them in tomorrow to emphasize the "cycle" part of the water cycle.)

Last week we reviewed parts of speech with a fun elf craftivity I created. The kids had to use adjectives to describe their elf as well as nouns (common and proper) and verbs to create a story about their elves. You can check it out at my TPT store here. I am also attaching a freebie writing page you can use. Grab it here.

And last but not least, we will work on a memory book page for December. I keep a writing sample from each month and compile them into books at the end of the year. I change them up each year so I don't have a whole year's ready, it really depends on what we are doing in class at the time. Here's one we are doing this week, grab it here. 

 

Ok, baby is getting fussy with daddy, mommy duty! Night y'all!

Class Dojo

Well my first week back in the classroom was AMAZING! Monday was very tough I will admit. Leaving my baby for the first time brought me to tears but luckily he was home with Daddy so it wasn't as tough as daycare. This coming up week he will be with Grandma and I feel really great about that. :)

This week back I started Class Dojo with my kids. OMG I LOOOOOVE IT! If you haven't heard of class dojo you need to check it out: www.classdojo.com. It's a behavior management system all online. You can add your students and award positive points for positive behaviors and take away points for negative behaviors. When you give points, the computer makes a sound. There is a different sound for positive and negative behaviors. Our computers are hooked up to speakers in our ceilings so the whole class can hear when points are awarded. So without me saying anything, students know when their on task or off task behaviors are noticed.

About midday I show the students their's DOJO percentage for the day. This way they know if they are making oto many negative choices that they have time to get back on task before the end of the day. If they have 70% or more at the end of the day, that's considered a good day. I created a chart for their take home binders that says 80%-100% is green, 70%-79% is yellow and below 70% is red and a conduct mark.

One of the coolest things about DOJO is that you can print out a report that shows the percentage of behaviors targeted throughout the day. I print out reports for students who struggled with a percentage lower than 70%. This is a GREAT tool for parents to see where their child is struggling in class. As you can see below, Hugh Jackman had a very bad day!

 

On Friday I printed out their weekly average. Every child looked at their scores and set a behavior goal for the following week in their data binders. For students who had 100% all week, they earned a special treat from me and got kudos from everyone. I looooove love loveeee this program! Oh and I don't want to forget to mention that students can login at home, change their avatars and see their reports from the week.

 

You've got to check it out! Also, I'm teaming up with Melissa at Don't Let the Teacher Stay Up Late for her 100 follower give-a-way! I"m donating my Rudolph Creative Writing Unit. Check it out!