Origami Frog Freebie {Use With Your Frog Units}

Here's a cute activity to add to your next lesson about frogs. My Origami Frog Pattern comes complete with directions, photos, and a frog pattern to use to make your very own jumping frogs!

Just click {Here} to download this very fun freebie.

Thanks and Enjoy!

Robin @ Sweet Tea Classroom

100 Sweet and Simple Classroom Dollar Store Solutions

When you're spending your own cash to teach students, you learn how to be resourceful. Many teachers have learned the power of the dollar for their classrooms. From the dollar bins at the front of Target (I always have to check out their school items.) to the Dollar Stores, teachers have walked through the doors of those stores and come out with their next teaching solution for just a dollar.

My challenge for you is to share your best dollar store classroom creation or find. Let us know how you plan to use it in the classroom. Please share any other tips too.

Then add your link to the bottom of this post and be sure to link back to this post too. I've got room for 100 Sweet and Simple Dollar Store education creations below. (Be sure that you are Pinterest friendly. We'll want to pin these ideas and even feature some favorites here.)

Here's mine: Rainbow Craft Stick Tally Marks

I picked up this pack of rainbow craft sticks. These work really well for a hands-on tally exercise. Give children five of each color and show them how to make tally marks.

Since they will only have five of each color, it will be easy to create like sets. This is a natural way to then work with counting by fives. Then, of course, the kiddos can work with ordering the colors of a rainbow.

And that's a sweet and simple way to use a dollar store find to help teach the kiddos.

3-D Watermelon Life Cycle Craft

Are you ready for local Watermelon festivals or even Watermelon Day or are you even studying life cycles in your science unit? Here's the perfect watermelon craft to integrate science and art.

Create a 3-D Watermelon craft when you teach about watermelons, life cycles, or plants during your science units. This craft is perfect to reinforce the topics taught during this science lesson and it works well as a science center too.

My 3-D Watermelon Craftivity includes directions, patterns, watermelon sequencing cards, a black and white watermelon life cycle poster, and a color watermelon life cycle poster. The six life cycle sequencing cards are for seed, sprout, vine, flowering vine, baby watermelon, and mature watermelon. You can ask children to add labels using their own descriptions if you wish.

If you teach ESL or ELL, the watermelon life cycle poster in this packet is also in Spanish and reads el ciclo de vida de una sandia --the accent mark is over the i--


If you're interested, you can buy this packet in my teaching resources store {HERE}

Illustrated Alphabet Polka Dot Printable Word Wall Decor

Are you required to have a Word Wall in your classroom? If you are, I have created a cute polka dot word wall that uses an illustrated alphabet. It's SO cute! Even if you aren't required to have a word wall, I highly suggest one too! They are useful teaching resources--- and great for classroom decor too.

 Alphabet Classroom Decor Word Wall Fun: Create an A to Z Word Wall with these polka dot, illustrated Word Wall Headers. 

 This set includes full size alphabet decor posters from A to Z and smaller word wall labels using an illustrated theme from A to Z.

If you're interested, you can purchase this set from my teaching resources store {HERE}.

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3-D Sunflower Craft: Life Cyle of a Sunflower Craftivity for Plant Units

It's spring and planting time and if your little ones have planted any sunflower seeds during your plant units this season, I have the perfect sunflower craft for you. I created this 3-D sunflower life cycle craft where students color the the printable sunflower life cycle sequencing cards. Then they paste them on the sunflower template in order.

It's super cute and you hang it from the ceiling in your classroom or homeschool room. You'll be able to use it for reinforcing the life cycle of plants too. Simply turn the sunflower life cycle craft around and don't stop at the last step. The continual turning illustrates that the cycle is a process that repeats itself.  This craft is perfect to reinforce the topics taught during this science lesson and it works well as a science center too.

Plus, I've made this craft extra special for ELL ESL and Spanish Immersion teachers. The graphics don't include labels so the kiddos will add their own. Then, I created a sunflower life cycle printable poster in English and I have a printable water cycle poster in Spanish too.

If you're interested, hop on over to my teaching resource store {HERE}. The 3-D Sunflower Life Cycle Craftivity includes directions, patterns, sunflower life cycle sequencing cards, a black and white sunflower life cycle poster, and a color sunflower life cycle poster.

Ladybugs in the Classroom

Today we learned about ladybugs in school. Ladybugs in the classroom are a great way to integrate fun and lots of other subjects too. First, we labeled the parts of a ladybug. Then we worked on a ladybug glyph. A glyph is a great learning tool that lets students learn ways to visually represent data. This is a shapes ladybug glyph, so each question on the glyph asked the kiddos to add another shape like an oval or circle for the ladybug head to the ladybug. 

We sorted through lots of old buttons--which was fun--and used these for our ladybug eyes.

 I think the ladybug glyphs turned out cute as a button.

Student ladybug glyph

Teacher ladybug glyph example

Then we used some web resources to learn even more. I liked seeing how the humane society used ladybugs for a good purpose. Here are the online ladybug resources we used.

Life Cycle of a Ladybug Video

Humane Society Ladybug Solution

Everything about Ladybugs

Ladybug Resources

Then we integrated some writing. I chose to use a draw and write writing prompt where the kiddos draw about what they've read and then they write about it.

Ladybug writing prompt

 We cut and pasted the life cycle pictures to paper plates. This is such a good way to make a nice learning display.

Life cycle of a ladybug plate craft

We even got a bit creative and made a ladybug headband hat. Just take two sentence strips and tape them together. Then tape the ladybug glyph to the front and the life cycle of a ladybug illustrations on the side.

Ladybug fun

Ladybug headband craft

We planted butterfly bushes to attract butterflies a couple of year ago. Each plant was less than five dollars. In no time, they are taller than I am, and they are a wonderful habitat for our insect studies. We took the camera with us and looked under the leaves to see if we could find any ladybug eggs.  Guess what..?...

Student picture of a ladybug larva

We found something even better. We found a ladybug larva. They are ugly little things. Forget the ugly duckling. What about the ugly ladybug?

Ladybug larva

The world is our classroom and learning is fun. We enjoyed our ladybug exploration, and there's even more fun things to come.  We're working with graphing our ladybug glyph data tomorrow.

The ideas in this post came from my teacher-created resource title Ladybugs! {Shape Glyph, Writing Prompts, Graphs, and Life Cycle}. Click {HERE} for more information about this ladybug learning resource.

Here's a parts of a ladybug printable freebie that's part of my Ladybugs! set free for you too. Click {HERE} to get your free printable ladybug activity.

Free Printable Ladybug Activity

Enjoy!

Robin @ Sweet Tea Classroom

This post is linked to:

Teacher-Created St. Patrick's Day Activities and Education Bloggers To Follow

One thing I love about teaching is the talent other teachers bring to the classroom. I have to admit that teachers are a creative group. I'd like to introduce you to a group of creative, talented teacher bloggers. Please take a moment to visit their blogs listed below.

• Sweet Tea Classroom
• Simply Skilled in Second
• Teach 123
• My (Not So) Elementary Life
• Journey of a Substitute Teacher
• Peace, Love, and First Grade
• My Life as a Third Grade Teacher
• Flying Into First
• Fabulously First
• 2nd Grade Surprise
• Fluttering Through First Grade
• Fern Smith's Classroom Ideas
 

Here's a great collection of teacher-created St. Patrick's Day Activities too. Please click the links below to check them out.