Summer School & I'm leavin' on a Jetplane

I survived!  My husband has been in Japan for two weeks without me and in exactly two hours my plane departs to join him.  Hooray! (For the joining part, not the long flying part)  This week I've been staying with my sister who recently had a baby and teaching summer school.  My school decided to let the teachers have free-reign over their summer school classes this year and I decided to teach a Dinosaur class, a Fairytale class, and a Mystery class.  It has been a lot of fun!  I did a lousy job of snapping photos of all of the fun things we did - but here are just a few:

 We talked about and read LOTS of awesome fairy tales.  Then the kids created their own inside an awesome castle card foldable.

 We talked about lots of fun dinosaurs, wrote about them, drew them, modeled them with clay, and even made our own plaster of paris fossils! 

The kids had a lot of fun with these.  They were tricky for a lot of the kids - but they were thrilled nonetheless.  I had an assortment of flashlights so we turned off all the lights, shut the blinds, and partnered up.  We taped a piece of black construction paper on the wall then ended up using chairs to rest the flashlights on to cast a shadow of the student who was sitting very still in front of the black paper. Then they cut them out and mounted them on paper.  They turned out pretty great and the kids LOVED guessing who each other was.

We made magical wands, plus glittery castles and crowns, but I forgot to photograph those :(

 This picture I added just for fun.  I've been a little bored of my hair recently and I saw a hairstyle sort of like this on Pinterest and thought I'd give it a whirl.  It turned out pretty well considering that I did it all blind.  My favorite part of the photo is my cute kitty, Lucky, who jumped up on the bathroom cabinet to pose for the picture and get the camera flash.  So cute.  

Are you teaching summer school?  How does your school do it?  Is it purely academic review or more like summer camps?

Well I can't wait to hear, but it's TTFN because I'm off to Japan!

Sentimental + end of the year student gift freebie

Last Friday was our last day of school and I was torn between elation and devastation.  I just really love what I do.  Plus, I think the fact that my husband was leaving to Japan in a few days also put a damper on things.  Who am I supposed to enjoy summer with?  :(  sniff, sniff.  But we had a fun last week at school.  I got really attached to my kiddos this year and call me crazy, I've actually kind of been wishing we had school this week. 

 I was a bit of a procrastinator on student gifts and put it off until THE. very. last. moment. I made a trip to Ross and the Dollar store (LOVE them!) and found these goodies.  I decided to do separate boy and girl gifts because I couldn't walk away from the BIG pack of colorful, sparkly, smelly lip glosses hidden behind all the water toys.  I knew my girls would love them!  Then I came up with this gift tag:  (click the image to download a FREE generic version that doesn't say Mrs. Bell)

 I got a little lazy with the assembling, I mean come on, they're kids, it's a gift, who cares what it looks like!?  If I had cared a wee bit more I would have printed them in color and actually cut them in circles or something, but see as how I was cutting them THE morning of the last day of school I think they turned out okay. 

The girl gift contains two lip-glosses, a sour fairy pixie stick, and water balloons.  The boy gift contains goggles, a squirt gun, and water balloon. And guess how much each one cost?  My husband and I calculated just for fun - Only $0.80 a piece!  Pretty good deal, eh?

 

Now of course I got spoiled by my darling students and their wonderful parents since it was the last day of school and these were two of my FAVORITE gifts.  This book, Mrs. Bell's Adventures, details how my student (the author) and I travel in his time machine to each of the different civilizations that we learned about this year including Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Aztecs, and the Mayans.  It is SO CUTE!  (I wish there was a bazillion times underlining button).

 Here's the last page.  Adorable!  This same student gave me the cutest magnets ever for Valentines that were our inspiration for our Mother's Day gift. (See the magnets here)

 

 This was one of my other most favorite gifts.  You've probably seen them on Pinterest. A few teachers at my school have them and I had eyed them enviously a few times and crossed my fingers that one day a student would give me one.  Well my wish came true! I love it!  (And... I must say mine is the cutest one of all, shhhh, don't tell)!

I can't wait to see what fun things other teacher bloggers are doing/giving/receiving!

I've been doing some blog-hopping with my free time and I found some awesome Linky Parties and decided to link up.  Come check them out and link up too! (Click the images to go to the hosting site).

Oh and stay tuned - I've been working on a new unit for My Father's Dragon, and I can't wait to post it!

Students Appreciating Teachers

Last week my first grade team was trying to think of ideas for the last week of school when I had the idea that we should swap students and make a thank you gift for one another with each others' students. 

 It was fun for the kids to experience the other teachers and they were ecstatic about creating a secret gift for their teacher.  I came up with this little booklet and each student made a tissue paper flower then we put them together into a bouquet.

To make the flowers thread a pipe-cleaner through the bottom of several layers of tissue paper cut in various sizes of circles, we used 5, then thread a button through the pipe-cleaner.  Take the pipe-cleaner back through the button then twist the pipe-cleaner ends together to make a stem.

 Each page inside the book contains this simple poem and the students wrote 3 reasons why they love their teacher.  Their reasons, like "you plan really fun fieldtrips, you always help me, you teach us everything" were super sweet and thoughtful. Click any of the images to download the book for FREE. Enjoy!

 This is the gift my students made for me - SO cute.  They each wrote a letter to me on the back of their apple.  They were really sweet. :)