Fun Spring Treat!

I am always in search of fun hands on ideas and tasty treats to go along with lessons and this one looks like a keeper!

Marshmallow Rainbow Kabobs


A great springtime lesson would be to talk about the weather changes and how much rainfall there is during this season. Of course storms are often times followed up with a beautiful rainbow. After lesson have the students build their own marshmallow rainbow for a tasty treat!

The visual above and instructions on how to make the kabobs can be accessed The Decorated Cookie blog.

*Tip-if you do not want to use the sugar suggested above you can use different flavors of jello. Place jello flavors in different sandwich bags for each color. Also provide a bowl of water for each jello flavor you are using. After coating the marshmallow in water, shake off the access water then place in baggie and shake. When you remove marshmallow from bag you might stain your fingers so you will want to use gloves during this process.

Valentine's Day Creations

What a fun week leading up to Valentine's Day!

In our life skills classroom we plan on doing some crafting and fixing a special lunch, with all students helping of course! There are so many wonderful TpT resources available to stay with the valentine theme. Here are pages of items to look through. Here is one of my FREE products for some Valentine's Day fun!

On Pinterest I found some very cute ideas as well that include the following:

http://thecraftingchicks.com/2014/01/extra-awesome-valentine-free-printable.html

http://www.modernparentsmessykids.com/2014/01/3-healthy-strawberry-snacks-for-valentines-day.html

http://3garlandgirls.blogspot.com/2013/02/happy-valentines-day.html

http://www.oneartsymama.com/2014/01/valentine-mailbox.html

For more great ideas from crafting to food, here is a great board of ideas from Pinterest.
 Valentine's Day Projects

Enjoy!!

PVC Pipe in the Classroom

I absolutely love to find and create multiple uses for products that some people think of as only what the product is intended for. One such product is PVC pipe and fittings.

PVC is one of the most popular products to use in the home for plumbing solutions but there are so many things you can create to benefit your classroom.

As I was building up our arsenal of task products to fill our shelves, I asked my husband to create some PVC pattern designs which I took pictures of to give the students a pattern to follow. Example of our product below,


The students love to recreate the patterns and like how they become more challenging. We also have some students that like to try creating their own pattern that we take pictures of so other students can try to recreate their design. This is just one of the many uses for PVC in the classroom. The nice thing is that I went to the local building store and told them what I was using the products for and they graciously gave me the materials shown in the box for FREE!!

Here are just a few images of ideas you could do from helping create student aids to organization.

Teaching in a Multi-Learning Level Classroom

Having a multi-level learning classroom can present many challenges. To teach effectively in this environment it is important to design instruction to meet the individual needs of each student.

One of the issues in some of today's classrooms is the use of standardized teaching which basically teaches all students in a particular grade at the same grade level when in reality there can be up to a 6 grade difference within the class. It is important to embrace these differences and design instruction to meet the multiple learning levels in a way to help each student progress to the next level. This is no easy task! It takes a lot of planning and collaboration with team teachers and paraprofessionals.

I work in a multi-learning classroom and we structure our teaching in a way that embraces the differences in each of our students. As a para I work closely with the teacher to help meet each of the students needs. We teach the basic core subjects that include English, math, social studies, and science. Along with this we also teach life skills and pre-vocational skills.

During our core subject blocks we begin with an introduction to a themed unit and during that time allow for some group discussion about their personal experiences. For example we had a unit in science about outdoor life. This unit included nature and outdoor living. We opened up each science block with a topic story that involved comprehension questions to answer. Because of the different learning levels we answer the questions together as a group.

After the opening introduction to the topic. We allow time for students to share experiences that relate to the topic. This helps the students to be engaged in their learning and shows how the topic relates to real life experiences.

To finish our block we provide individualized time for each student to engage in a task about the topic that helps them to learn more about it. With our higher functioning students this may be working in pairs to research via internet or possible scavenger hunt questions related to the topic, and our lower functioning that may need to work on writing or visual skills can work on individual tasks that relate to the topic such as putting sentence strips in order from the story via cut-and-paste or work box tasks that relate to the topic itself.

The most important thing is to make sure you are meeting each students individual needs and helping them to progress to the next level of learning. Like I said, this is no easy task and takes lots of planning but the end reward is great when the students are engaged and showing progress!

To see one of our classroom tasks that some of our students use that relates to outdoor living, go to my Task Tips page and check out the Ready to Camp Life/Vocational Task This is a task that is adaptable to various learning levels and skills.

The Benefits of Work Box Tasks for All Students

Work box tasks are beneficial in many ways for all students. They are not only used to help individual students meet IEP goals, they can also be used to help reinforce a concept taught in the classroom.

All core subject areas are presented by teachers in various teaching methods to accommodate the needs of all students. Where work box tasks can be beneficial is in the area of reinforcing the key concepts that the students have been taught.

For example:

The teacher may be doing a lesson on interrogative questions...who, what, when, where, why.
While some students may clearly grasp the concept of asking informative based questions, others may need further help and visuals to increase their understanding.

This Who? What? Where? task is an example of a resource that can help reinforce this concept:


I encourage you to browse my store and look at the many tasks that can be used to reinforce money skills, spelling, addition, subtraction, map skills, life skills, vocational skills, etc...

FREE Task to Begin the New Year

Here is a FREE task to say thank you for your interest in my blog! I appreciate you!!

Winter Science Activities

Winter can be a challenge especially just coming back to the classroom after the holiday break.  A great way to keep students interested and active in the classroom in providing hands on activities to make learning fun.

Science is a great subject to incorporate hands on learning and experiments. I came across this wonderful article with ideas that will work with various grade levels.

http://cocopreme.hubpages.com/hub/Easy-Snow-and-Ice-Experiments

Here is just a sample of one of the activities presented in the article. Enjoy!

Salt and a String

Kids can perform a “magic trick” with an ice cube, a string, and salt. Place an ice cube in a cup of water. Cut a piece of string a few inches long. Have the kids try to pick up the ice cube using just the string and not their fingers. They will see that it does not work.

Now dip the end of the string in the water and lay it across the ice cube. Sprinkle some salt on top of both the ice cube and the string. Wait a minute or so and then try to pick up the ice again using just the string. It should work this time because the salt will have melted the ice slightly and the water will have refrozen around the string.