Blossoms of Blue

As summer break gets closer and closer, teachers often worry about the dreaded "summer slide." If you haven't heard of the summer slide, it not a water slide or a park slide. When students get off for summer break, a lot of the time they think it is a break from learning and anything school related. They end up making no gains in learning over the summer, and even falling backwards and losing some of the skills they had gained.

As a teacher, you can't follow your students home and make sure they are reading and learning. It is up to the parents to make sure this happens. But you can give the parents some tips to help them along.

Here are some ideas for you to give to parents.

Visit your local library

Many libraries have summer reading programs for kids. Some also have story time and other activities that can be a lot of fun.

Read aloud with your kids

Reading aloud to your kids has different benefits. It helps them hear how reading should sound; it brings you closer together; it helps them see your love of reading. You can even use props and silly voices to make it more exciting.

Send home a summer packet

There are a lot of different packets available for purchase, or you could make your own. I have one for sale that has a variety of different types of activities to keep kids active and learning. You can click the image below to check it out.




Do activities that go along with books

Encourage parents to do fun summer activities and read books about what they are doing. If they go to a baseball game, they could read a book about baseball. If they go to the zoo, read some animal books. There are books on every subject you can imagine.

Set goals and celebrate

Parents and their children can set goals about what they need to work on. They could also set time goals, like working every day for a certain amount of time. If they meet their goals, celebrate! They could go out for pizza or ice cream, get a special prize, or any other type of celebration.


These are just a few ideas that can help you and the parents of your class stop the summer slide. Hopefully some of them will be helpful and your students can have a fun, engaging summer.

Have you heard of this cool app? I heard about it recently and it seems like such a fun addition to a classroom. It helps you make a decision. Basically, you plug in your choices and then spin the wheel.

In order to customize your wheel, you do have to buy the full version, but it is only 99 cents. Not too bad.

There are so many different ways this can be used! You could use it to decide who answers a question, gets a reward, job, etc.

http://5tanfieldlea.weebly.com/blog/decide-now-ispin-hd-selection-apps-choosing-whos-turn

This could also be used to choose a reward. It might be fun to pick a secret student before an activity who will get a chance to spin the wheel. Watch them to see how their behavior was during the activity, and if they did what they were supposed to, they could spin the wheel for a prize.

http://misslifesaver.blogspot.com/2013/05/teacher-tip-tuesday-classroom.html

There are so many ways this could be used, and your students would love to be able to spin the wheel.

Hopefully you will love to use this app! If you liked this blog post, consider following this blog or checking out my facebook page, instagram, or Tpt in the menu above.

Thanks!

Another new product! I already have a set of awards on Tpt, but they are pretty basic. So I decided to update them with these new space-themed awards. They are Out of This World!!

This set includes 40 different awards so that you can choose one to fit your students' personalities. I had 33 students, so I used a lot of these.

This was one of my favorite things to do on the last day of school. I would usually bring in donuts and chocolate milk, and we would watch our end of year slideshow, play games, and give out awards. It was so fun. Most years I had every student there because they were so excited to watch the slideshow and get their award.

Anyway, if you want to check these out on Teachers Pay Teachers, click the image below.




If you want to see the more basic awards, click here.

I love games in the classroom to help supplement learning, so I have created a template board game that can be used for any subject your heart desires. I think this is pretty cute.


This is the first in a series of board games I am going to make; I would really like to have a bunch of different themed board game templates so you can choose your favorite, or have a bunch of different games available for your kids to play.

Click the image below to check it out on Tpt:

If you download this game, you will get the following:
 On the game cards, you write your questions or math problems on the back.
 There is a set of generic instructions and also a blank "how to play" page so you can write your own instructions, if you prefer.

 I have used board games to practice spelling words, math problems, odd/even, etc. You could even do main idea, or context clues. The possibilities are endless!

I have been working on a bunch of activities to put together into a weather unit, and now it is ready! I am really happy with it. I am going to call it a bundle, because it isn't a comprehensive unit that includes everything you need to teach your kids about all aspects of weather. It really focuses on weather tools and measuring the weather, but it has some other activities with it too.

Click the picture below to download from Teachers Pay Teachers:



Here's what is included:

-Powerpoint Presentation (in PDF form) about weather instruments and instructions on how to make your own instruments. (anemometer, thermometer, rain gauge, barometer).

Includes why we measure that type of weather, how to make that instrument, and why the instrument works.

Here are a few examples:


-Weather recording sheets .Here is just one example. The recording sheets included are temperature by location; temperature by time of day; 10 day rain, temp, and weather recording sheet; and a 10 day analysis.



-Weather data flap book-measure the weather and graph your data



-Weather instruments flap book



-Thermometer practice



-Weather venn diagram

-Lift-the-flap clouds activity



-Weather quiz

-Cinquain template


-Word mix-up (make as many words as you can using the letters from weather words)



-Word search



When I was teaching I never knew quite how to teach about the weather instruments, so I think the powerpoint is really helpful, because it explains about the instruments and then as a class you can make those instruments and measure the weather together. You could also do the weather instruments flap book as you go through the powerpoint.

Hope you enjoy!