March's reading month / Beans & jelly beans

Happy Spring everyone. On the first day of spring my school wore yellow. We are doing March is reading month events. Some of the examples are; bring your favorite book, read a shirt, read a hat, read a pin, share a poem and read and munch day. Along with secret readers that come in and read a book to the class. Do you do anything special for March’s reading month? I love all the jelly bean activities for Easter but I just don’t trust some of my students not to eat them at the centers. I came up with another way to play them without the jelly beans.

I took beans and colored them to match plastic eggs.

I made sure that the eggs have different amounts of beans in each egg. Check out the pictures for my final product of bean / jelly bean counts.

This way they can open the eggs and add or subtract the two numbers. I have added a recording addition and subtraction sheet to my tpt for free. I just ask that you friend me on my blog or on tpt.

St. Patrick's Day necklaces

St. Patrick’s Day is almost here! I am not Irish but I love making cute and fun crafts. I am making St.Patrick’s Day necklaces with my students. It’s so easy and they are so cute! I dye noodles green; this website has great directions on how to dye noodles http://www.craftycrafty.tv/2008/08/how_to_dye_pasta_for_crafting.html the picture is what they turn out like after you dye them.

Then I just use my die cut machine and make tons of clovers. If you don’t have a die cut machine at your school you could have the students cut clovers themselves from a pattern. I then cut string and tie it thick at one side and put tape side ways so nothing falls off one end. After threading it all on the string you have a nice green St. Patrick’s day necklace. Here is a picture of the final product modeled by my wonderful husband and cute dog Pepper.

Pinterest

O how I have a love hate relationship with Pinterest. I love how many great ideas I find on there for everything. I hate how I can be on it for hours and I don’t work on anything else but that. So I have made a Pinerest for my teacher blog. I guess that it’s ok when I spend forever on Pinterest because it is all for the good of teaching and the blog. Check me out at