Hapopy New Year & New Year Resolutions

Happy 2013! Now is the time to bring in the new and improve the old! It's the perfect time to make some healthy changes. Even if weight loss isn't your number one goal, there are many healthy changes you can make right now. Here are a few you can choose from....

• Drink more water each day.
• Drink green tea- it's full of healthy antioxidants and you'll be adding to your water intake!
• Exercise at least a few minutes every day.
• Take the stairs instead of elevators.
• Avoid or cut down on sweets.
• Eat more fruits.
• Eat more vegetables.
• If it's made with white flour or white sugar, don't eat it.
• Get a step counter- and walk at least 10,000 steps per day.
• Get more sleep. 8 hours a day is perfect!
• Avoid negative people.
• Think positively.
• Relax and make time for YOU every day. You'll be happier.

Download and use my FREE healthy journals. Research shows you are more successful with your goals if you write down what you are doing. You can print them in two different sizes. They are available for FREE in both of my stores:

Goal setting is great for your children/students, too. Writing down ways they want to improve will help them focus on making those positive changes. I made these goal setting door hangers yesterday and they are in both of my stores:

Children can write 5 goals and then color and decorate their door hangers. There are 11 years in the set- for 2013-2023. The set is $1.50.

Good luck with your goals and Happy New Year! Be safe, healthy & happy!

New Year Goal Setting Door Hangers

Happy New Year! Help your students set goals for the new year! There are two door hangers per page and 11 pages (for the years 2013-2023). Seeing their goals hanging on their bedroom doors will hopefully remind students to work to achieve their goals! I suggest you print the door hangers on cardstock, a thicker paper, or on construction paper. Happy New Year!

Easy To Make Heart Card Template

Do I have Valentine's Day on my brain?! I just finished this one today and it's in my stores now. This template is great for making cards for Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, or any other occasion. Just photocopy or print the template on regular paper or construction paper for your students. Then they will cut it out, fold it and personalize it. Directions are printed on the template. The card stays closed with the hearts on the front. The finished heart card conveniently fits in a business size envelope, or you could send it home as it is, since it stays closed by itself. This is a good "following directions" activity for your students, too! Note: Very young students will need help cutting, folding and closing their cards.

FREE Math Operations Posters

This set has four 8.5" x 11" posters for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Each poster shows terms for that operation and a sample problem with labels. They are free in my two stores! Enjoy!

 

Valentine's Day & St. Patrick's Day Fortune Tellers

I don't know why my students were always so fascinated with fortune tellers/cootie catchers! They always loved them, especially when I gave them a holiday version. Let YOUR students have some fun on Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's Day with these fortune tellers (cootie catchers). Folding directions are included in case you've never made one before. I hope your stduents have as much fun with them as mine did. Have a Happy Valentine's Day and a Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Bee & Frog & Owl & Monkey Valentines

Happy New Year!  I hope you are having a fun and relaxing vacation! I just finished all of  these Valentines today. Even if you don't have a BEE, FROG, OWL, or MONKEY/JUNGLE themed classroom, these Valentines would be super cute to give to your students! There are four different Valentines in each set. I suggest you print them on cardstock, a thicker paper. Happy Valentine's Day!

Robot Math Game

This exciting $2.50 game helps students learn their addition and subtraction facts. Older students can also use some of their multiplication and division facts. It can be a math center activity or your whole class can play in teams at the same time. My students loved this game and begged to play it, especially when we were having a tournament (directions for tournament included). My students came up with their own strategies to help them win. These tips are included for you. You can let your students discover them on their own, or you can share some of the strategies with them.

Important Words Poster

This poster will look great in your classroom!  Teach your students the most important rules of all so they will be successful throughout their lives. This poster is 11” x 17” and is only $1.00.

Lucky Shamrocks Math Game

This exciting $2.00 game helps students learn their addition and subtraction facts. Older students can also use some of their multiplication and division facts. It can be a math center activity or your whole class can play in teams at the same time. My students loved this game and begged to play it, especially when we were having a tournament (directions for tournament included). My students came up with their own strategies to help them win. These tips are included for you. You can let your students discover them on their own, or you can share some of the strategies with them.

It's 100 Day! Packet

This packet includes everything you need for a fabulous day of fun and learning for the 100th Day of School! There are directions and ideas for many activities, sample parent letters, color and black and white bookmarks and door hangers, a "We are 100 Days Smarter" banner, a "We are 100 days smarter" door poster, ceiling stars, "It's 100 Day! and "I am 100 days smarter!" buttons, graphing activities, 100 Day headbands, reproducibles for a class book, Roman Numerals. reproducible worksheets for "100 Day" student books, writing activities, lots of math sheets, etc.

Free Christmas Mini Kit

I made this free mini kit for Kim Broedelet's December Color Challenge. Go HERE to participate.
My kit has 9 papers (4 solids and 5 patterns) and 13 elements (3 big snowflakes, 5 snowflake confetti pieces, ric rac, string, 2 stars and a Christmas tree frame). I hope you like it. Please leave a comment if you grab it. Merry Christmas! You can get it HERE.

Christmas Owls Math Game

Your students will have so much fun playing Christmas Owls, they won't even realize they are practicing their addition and subtraction math facts! $2.50
Older or advanced students can use multiplication, addition and subtraction to play. The game is for 2-4 players. All they need to play is a deck of Christmas Owl cards and a pair of dice. I suggest you print the cards on cardstock, a thicker paper, and laminate them for years of use. Make multiple decks so your whole class can play!

Christmas Fairy Fun

Add some Christmas Fairy Fun to your classroom this December! This set includes 5 blank fairy note sheets (2 notes on a sheet), 5 teacher thank you postcards (2 on a sheet), and 5 sheets of Christmas Desk Fairy notes (2 on a sheet). A few ideas for each are included.
Have a great weekend!

Healthy Smoothies with SPINACH

We own a Vita- Mix. It's a super powerful blender that can chop up anything. It's an expensive blender, but we bit the bullet and bought it a couple of years ago because hubby and I were drinking healthy fruit smoothies every morning for breakfast and I knew we would use it daily. We still use it every day. Actually, we use it multiple times a day, so it was a good investment. In our fruit smoothies, we put Reliv nutritional powder, an apple, an orange, frozen fruit, flax seed oil, ground flax seed, ground chia seed and spinach (you can't even taste the spinach!). Many days we msised throwing in the spinach because we were out of it, or it wasn't washed and we were rushed, etc. Last summer I had a great idea and you can use this with whatever blender you own or with whatever smoothie recipe you use. We bought a large container of fresh organic spinach. We ground it up in our Vita-Mix unitl it was liquified. We poured it into ice cube trays and froze them. When the spinach cubes were frozen, we popped them out and put them in a freezer ziploc bag. Now in the morning, we just throw a couple in the Vita-Mix with our other ingredients. It's so convenient and we are now getting a serving of spinach daily. You could thow a couple of frozen spinach cubes into your kids' shakes and malts, too, and they wouldn't even know they were getting some good veggies!

Punctuation Packet

Last year my second graders LOVED this punctuation cootie catcher! So I decided to make it available for everyone to use. This packet will help your students learn about 8 punctuation marks- the period, question mark, ellipsis, comma, apostrophe, quotation marks, colon and exclamation point. The packet includes an 11" x 17" poster for your classroom (in color) and two cootie catchers (one in black and white and one in color) for your students to use to review the information on the poster. Your students will be punctuation experts!

Free "Reindeer Noses" Snack Bag Header

Fill a snack size plastic bag with chocolate malt balls and 1 red cherry ball candy or red bubblegum. Then attach the cute "Reindeer Noses" header. Use them as gifts or stocking stuffers for your students, teacher friends or family members! Merry Christmas!

Reindeer Gift Tags- FREE!

Use these cute Reindeer gift tags for school or at home. Merry Christmas!

Let's Get Healthy!

Teachers, let’s get healthy!

These FREE health journals will help you with your New Year’s resolutions, or just to get healthy any time!  You can download them at either of my stores. The inside pages have spaces for you to record your daily exercise, food, weight, and water intake. There are also spots for added notes and goals. You can print them in two different sizes- 5½” x 7” or 8½” x 11”.

 I don’t give you specific health advice, for example, how much water you should drink in a day, because I’m not a doctor. Even doctors’ opinions differ on the subject.  I do know, however, that we should drink A LOT of water every day.  I also know that I drink more water when I get to write it down in my health journal and that I eat less goodies when I know I have to record what I eat!

This journal has been effective for me and for friends of mine who have used it regularly. I hope it will help you to get healthy and to stay healthy, too.

I suggest you print the cover on cardstock and laminate it, to make it last a long time. Print a month’s worth of pages at first, to see how it works for you. There are two sizes of each journal, so print the size you think will work best for you. It’s helpful if you can always have it with you, so printing a smaller size might make it more convenient. Remember, with any program, commitment is the key.

Good luck!
Barb Johnson

Leibster Award!

I have been nominated for a Liebster Award!! Thanks so much, Teach with Laughter,  for nominating me!  The Liebster Award is designed to bring attention to bloggers who have less than 200 followers.

 

First, I am supposed to say 11 random things about myself, so here goes...

1. I am married.

2. We have an 18 year old daughter who just started college this fall.

3. I love photography.

4. I love playing on the computer and creating things in Photoshop.

5. I enjoy gardening (flowers).

6. Walking through forests is my favorite thing to do.

7. I love to try new recipes.

8. I have two sisters.

9. I taught first and second grade for 26 years and subbed for 3 years before I was hired.

10. I LOVE animals.

11. I LOVE my mitten (Michigan).

 

 These are the 11 questions I must answer:
1. How old were you when you knew you wanted to be a teacher?

 

I was ten years old. My teacher would put me in charge of the class while he had safety meetings in another part of the school. I also helped other kids when I finished my work. I knew then that that was what I wanted to be.

 

2. When did you start blogging?

My blog has been in existence for a while, but I just really started blogging this past summer.

 

3. What is you favorite word word activity?

I'm not sure what that means! LOL Word wall maybe? I'll come back to this one later!

 

4. What is your favorite television show?

My fav show is Big Bang Theory! If you ahven't seen it, watch it- hilarious. I highly recommend you rent the episodes and watch them from the beginning though, so that the characters will  make more sense.

 

5. Who is your favorite author?

I love true crime books written by Ann Rule.

 

6. What is your favorite children's book?

I loved Pippi Longstocking and Little House on the Prarie books.

 

7. What is your favorite food?

My mom makes the best German potato pancakes. I eat them slathered with apple sauce- yum!

8. What's at the top of your Christmas list?
I want to spend time with family and friends.

 

9. Do you have any pets?

We share a house with a dog, a parakeet and two cockatiels.

 

10. What is your favorite childhood memory?

I had a very special parakeet that could do somersaults when he wanted to be let out of his cage. He was so smart and funny. 

 

11. What is your favorite part of your teaching day?

I just retired this summer. I would have to say when I was teaching and I'd see light bulbs going off in little heads- when things would suddenly make sense after a child struggled with something.

 

Here are 11 questions my moninees must answer:

1. How long have you been teaching?

2. Do you have a theme for your classroom, and if so, what is it?

3. Do you have any pets?

4. Do you have children of your won?

5. What state do you live in?

6. What is your favorite subject to teach?

7. What is your favorite movie?

8. What is your favorite book?

9. What is your favorite children's book?

10. What is your favorie season and why?

11. Why did you start blogging?

 

Here are the 11 blogs I am nominating:

 

Scrappy Teaching

Ms Brown's Grade 2 Class

Hoot & Holler in Second Grade

Grades 1 and 2 at Ancaster School

Mrs. Obach's Grade 1 Blog

Grade 2 Happenings

Mrs. Haulk Grade 2

Mrs Hugill's Classroom Blog

Day in First Grade

Mrs. Smith's Room

Wild World of Kindergarten

 

I can't wait to learn more about all of them!
Have a great rest of the weekend, everyone!

Barb :-)

Gingerbread Magic

I always loved the Monday after Thanksgiving break because that's when I put my gingerbread doorway up. I loved watching the kids' faces when they came in to school that morning. It was so much fun! Some years we read different gingerbread stories and did compare & contrast activities about the different stories. One year we made felt gingerbread men and sewed on the decorations ourselves (with a lot of parent volunteers!). Other years we made paper gingerbread men.  Every year we made gingerbread houses from milk cartons covered with graham crackers, licorice, frosting and LOTS of candy. This is what we started with:

Parent volunteers used glue guns and assembled the houses onto styrofoam meat trays. Last year, I gave the kids felt elf hats as an early Christmas gift. They wore their hats and we listened to Christmas carols as they decorated their houses with lots of frosting and candy. This is what they looked like when they were finished:

I really loved this symmetrical one... isn't it nice?

Then we put them all around a tree on some tables that were covered with white chart paper and white cotton fiberfill. We added some lights and tah dahhhh! Isn't it pretty?

 Especially when we had the overhead lights turned out!

Yesterday I finished a set of gingerbread houses.  The pieces that included in this kit are:
• Gingerbread house with a “To/From” Tag on top to be used as a gift box.
• Gingerbread house (without tag)
• House in color with snow
• Sheet of decorations
• House in black and white (to be colored and decorated)
• Sheet of decorations in black and white (to be colored)
• Gingerbread house in black and white to be colored

I recommend you print the houses on cardstock, a thicker paper.

Young children can color their houses, but they will need adult help to assemble them. It would be helpful to have parent volunteers assemble the houses after your students make them. This is NOT a project for small fingers to complete independently.

The black and white sheets can be enlarged to 11” x 17” size and photocopied onto white construction paper to make it easier for children to make their houses.

I recommend the houses be colored with colored pencils or fine-tipped markers. Glue sticks can be used, but double sided tape will work better for assembling the houses. It should be placed on the four flaps labeled “adhesive”.

After the houses are finished, you can make a gingerbread village like we did! Put the houses on a large table coved with white chart paper, or a white table cloth. Add white fiber fill stuffing to look like snow. Christmas lights can also be added!

My good friend Vicky Moore also has a cool gingerbread unit for sale. Go look at TPT for it:

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving, everyone!
Barb :-)

Cyber Monday & Tuesday Sale

Clock Labels in Use

My friend sent me this picture of my rainbow star clock labels in her classroom. It's another way to label your clock, besides putting the stars right on the rim of your clock. Thanks, BarbH for sharing your picture with me! 

Roll 'em for the Reindeer Math Game

 

Your students will have so much fun playing this Reindeer game, they won't even realize they are practicing their addition and subtraction math facts! Older or advanced students can also use some multiplication and division facts for added practice and strategy. The game is for 2-4 players. All they need to play is the gameboard and a pair of dice. I suggest you print the gameboards on cardstock, a thicker paper, and laminate them for years of use. Gameboard and game directions are included.

Handwriting Assessment Freebie

Use this quick assessment tool to check your student's handwriting skills. It can be used as a quick check before each report card marking period, for a handwriting sample for parent-teacher conferences, to assess new students' handwriting skills, for portfolios, for a homework assignment, as a handwriting practice sheet or as a center acvtivity. I hope you find it useful! It's free in my stores! :-)

Barb

Digi-Scrapbooking Freebie

Happy Sunday!
I found a digital scrapbooking challenge this morning by Kim Broedelet and decided to do it. If you want to join the fun, go here:

Kim B's Color Challenge

This is what I made to contribute...

here!
Hope you like it!
Barb

Rainbow Star Clock Labels

Attach these colorful stars to the edge of your classroom clock to help your students learn how to tell time.
Photocopy the two sheets of star labels on cardstock, a thicker paper. Laminate both sheets and then cut out the stars. Attach the star labels to the outside edge of your classroom clock with tape or sticky tack.

Beehive Addition & Subtraction Math Game

Your students will have so much fun playing Beehive, they won't even realize they are practicing their addition and subtraction math facts! Older or advanced students can use multiplication, addition and subtraction to play. The game is for 2-4 players. All they need to play is a deck of Beehive cards and a pair of dice. I suggest you print the cards on cardstock, a thicker paper, and laminate them for years of use.

Free Christmas Cootie Catcher

The last couple of years I made my second graders cootie catchers for different holidays. Second graders LOVE cootie catchers! Today I finished this one to share with all of you. There are fun "fortune" type messages under the flaps. Folding instructions (with pictures) are included. It's free in my stores!

 

Yummy Pork Chops- EASY!

 Barb's Easy & Fast Barbecued Pork Chops

  

I made these pork chops tonight. So tender they just fall apart. The best part? 10-15 minutes prep time! Here's the recipe:

1. Brown thick-cut pork chops on all sides- top, bottom and all 4 sides. This keeps the juices in and helps the meat stay tender while cooking.

                  

2. Then put them in a crock pot.

3. Add 1/4 of a medium sized onion, chopped. I used two different kinds of onion that I had chopped and frozen.

4. Pour a bottle of barbecue sauce over the onions and pork chops.

5. Put the lid on the crock pot and turn it on LOW. Cook for 6 hours.

That's it! When you take them out, they are super tender and very delicious! Enjoy! If you try them, let me know what you think!

Barb :-)

Also, new frog desk name tags in the stores today:

Free " Happy Halloween From Your Teacher" Tags

Happy Halloween! Attach these cute tags to your spooktacular student surprises! A sheet of female teacher tags and a sheet of male teacher tags are included. Enjoy!

Go here to get them for free:

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Free-Happy-Halloween-From-Your-Teacher-Tags