A Super Swap and a Giveaway

Yesterday was the wonderful "magical product swap" hosted by Jessica from Mrs. Stanford's Class!  I just love these product swaps, and I'm always thrilled to have the opportunity to participate!

I reviewed one of Fern Smith's products and Fern reviewed one of mine!  Make sure you check out Fern's blog for tons of great tips and some awesome freebies!

I got to try out Fern's Halloween themed multiplication center games, and the kids and I loved them!  Pick them all up from her store for just $5!  

She tested out my scoot game called rounding robots!  It's one of my best selling products on TPT, and it is great practice for rounding to the nearest ten and/or hundred!  If you liked her review and want the chance to win your own copy of the game, enter below by Wednesday at midnight!  All you have to do to enter (and maybe win!) is follow my blog!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

A Tip for Today

Happy Sunday!  I hope everyone had a great week last week and has had a wonderful weekend as well!  I have a tip for you today.  You probably already know all about it, but I found it by accident working on my latest product!

When I create new products for TPT or TN, I use power point to make a collage of the pages included in the file.  In the past I've always saved each slide from my document's original power point file as a picture to insert into the collage.  Well I have found a better way...at least for me!

Create your document (I use power point) and save it as a PDF before you begin to create your preview picture!

First, open a blank power point presentation and insert any backgrounds or frames you'd like to use as well as the text you want to include, such as the title and your name.

Next, choose 'insert - picture from file', and choose your product's pdf file.  You should see a pop-up screen that says 'Select Page' and is showing the first page of your product.

Now you're ready to find the page you want to insert!  Scroll through until you find the picture you want to include and just click to insert it.  Easy-Peasy!  Resize it and put it in place!

Finally, insert the rest of your pages/pictures and arrange them to your liking!

To me, this is so much easier and less time consuming than saving each slide as a picture then going back to find them later.  Plus, it saves space on your computer if you're like me and forget to delete all of those slide pictures when you're finished with them!

Anyway...I hope this quick little tip is helpful to somebody out there!

My rounding unit, "Ready and Rounding" is now up and active on TPT and on TN if you're interested, and don't forget to download your rounding freebie from my last blog post!

Everybody have a great week ahead!  We're out on Friday, so I'm thinking it'll be a great week!!

I'm back!!

If anyone is still here, I'm back, and I have lots to share today!

First I have some big news....

Can this count as a Monday Made it?

Tomorrow we'll be 12 weeks, and as awesome and amazing as it is (at least to me), I guess it can't be a Monday Made It! haha...but I do have some things to share with you over the next month or so that have already made my year easier!  I'll save a couple for next month's linky!

Now hopefully I can make math a little easier for you this year!

We just finished up rounding to the nearest ten and the nearest hundred.  One of the things my kids have the most trouble with is knowing their options!  I usually see many answers at the beginning that affirm that...6 rounded to the nearest ten is 60...236 rounded to the nearest hundred is 600.  So that's always where I start, learning how to find your choices.  We review counting by tens and hundreds first.  Then we practice finding the two multiples that a number is between.  We make a color coded hundreds chart and then practice A LOT by writing our options down to find the correct answer.  That hundreds chart and other worksheets for a rounding unit are in my new "Ready and Rounding" unit that's {almost} for sale in my TPT store or TN shop.  But I have a freebie for you too!  Click on the picture to download the freebie and use these two worksheets to practice finding your options for rounding to the nearest ten and the nearest hundred!

If you like those worksheets remember to check out my "Ready and Rounding" unit {soon} and my "Rounding Robots" Scoot Game in my TPT store or my TN shop!

And I want to apologize again before I go...can you forgive me for my month long (and then some) absence??  Finding out we're having our first precious little one, school starting about 2 weeks later, and a few scary moments with a one night hospital stay in between (already...ugh...) have really kept me occupied!  I've already missed two days of work due to unplanned doctor visits...and I HATE missing work!!  Hopefully things will straighten themselves out soon and my body will start cooperating!  And hopefully I'm back for good...for at least a post or two a week!

So if you're still with me and you're still reading this 'forgive me, please' post, if you'd like to proofread my rounding unit leave me a quick comment!  The first person will get to keep the finished unit for free!  I'd love to post it within the next couple of days so make sure you can look over it soon!  Anyway, thanks again for sticking with me, and know that I'll try to be a better blogger during this school year! :)

Now go grab some more great freebies!

Everyone enjoy the week ahead!  

I hope it got off to a great start today!

Multiplying - Sharing Ideas and Freebies

Well, I got the privilege of being a guest blogger today for the first time!  I helped out Courtney at Miss Third Grade while she is vacationing...wish I was there!  But anyway, I shared my thoughts on the importance of teaching multiplication and starting early!  Check out that blog post to get a couple of freebies!  One is for skip counting, and one has a great graphic organizer (and more) that we use for writing our very own word problems for multiplication facts in my class.

My post was getting really a little long, so I had to cut myself off!  I thought I would just come on back to my own little blog and share the other two freebies I wanted to give to all of our readers!  On Courtney's blog I talked about how we learn the multiplication facts we need to know, but now I want to share more about what we do after we've learned them!

After we have studied and learned all of our multiplication tables, we take timed tests!  With each test they pass, the kids earn a part of a banana split, yes a real one!  It never fails, when I tell my students about this, one of them always asks me if they get a real banana split!  They love doing this and look forward to it all year (we usually do our tests in the spring).  It always surprises me how well they do!  The quizzes I give are 40 questions long and cover only that table (all 2's or all 6's for example).  This year we set a time limit of two and a half minutes and required a 90% (36 correct) or better to pass.  In my homeroom 16 out of 18 students passed EVERY test!!  Everyone got their bowl and banana and at least one scoop of ice cream to enjoy!  It is really set up so that everyone can earn those basic parts!

My "Multiplication Madness: A Trek to a Treat" Unit is for sale in my TPT store and my TN shop.  Even better though...I'm giving one copy away in my 100 follower giveaway (along with items from other great bloggers)!

But today, I have a couple of freebies for you that can be used with this unit or on its own if you do a similar activity with your kids!  On banana split day, we serve the kids, and in all the hustle and bustle, it can be hard to remember who got what.  These helped me out last year!  

First, these stickers will let you see quickly and easily who earned their whole banana split!  These were made using an Avery Print-to-the-Edge Round Label template and they are compatible with products 22807, 22817, and 22825.  Just click on the picture to download the PDF from my Teacher's Notebook shop and print onto the labels! {tip: do a test print first :)}

The second freebie is to help you remember what the other kiddos did earn.  You can highlight the parts a student earned on these notes and have them carry their note through the line.  I didn't make these into stickers to avoid embarrassing any students who didn't pass some of the timed tests.  If you prefer to make them stickers they could easily be printed onto full sheet labels and cut apart.  Click on the picture to download your copy!

Be sure to check out Courtney's blog if you aren't following her already!  

And don't forget to enter my giveaway!!

How do you teach multiplication in your class?  

What really makes it stick??

aROUND and aROUND we go

We have been in school for just over 3 weeks now...so far, so good!  My reading group is going strong!  We completed a great social studies unit, and we've spent the past week in our first science unit investigating the world around us using our 5 senses!  My little detectives tried to determine ten different concealed objects using only their sense of touch, different scents using their sense of smell, and the objects creating different sounds in closed containers using only their sense of hearing.  We also observed for details using our sense of sight.  But I think their favorite by far was exploring their sense of taste!  Little secret - it was mine too!  Don't we all love a good snack?

Place value was a huge success!  Our first chapter in math was place value - ones through thousands - and all that it entails.  Well about 14 or 15 out of my 19 homeroom students earned an A on the chapter test!  The other three homerooms had good reports from their math classes as well!  Now that we have mastered place value we're moving on for a unit on rounding to the nearest ten and the nearest hundred.

We started out by coloring this hundred chart from "super teacher worksheets" that shows which numbers round up (we colored them blue) and which round down (we colored them yellow). The kids will keep this in their binders that they take home.  Then we colored a blank hundred chart to match.  We used the second chart to make a foldable.  We cut out the square chart, folded it in half, and cut it to the crease between the numbers that round down and those that round up to make a simple two tab book.  We glued this book to the bottom of a piece of construction paper and labeled each side with round up/down.  The kids then took a blank piece of paper and created another two tab book.  We labeled this one with "Rounding to the Nearest Ten" and "Rounding to the Nearest Hundred".  On the inside we wrote our rounding rules - "I look at the digit in the ones/tens place" (respectively) and "If it is 1, 2, 3, or 4 I round down.  If it is 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9 I round up."

The foldable was a good interactive project to introduce the subject and I love the original hundreds chart we colored.  Both will be great reference tools for them as we go through this unit.  Most of the kids seem pretty confident with the basic rules of rounding.  The trouble starts when they don't have answer choices.  My kids are having a hard time figuring out which two numbers they should choose between for their answer.  In rounding a number like 26, for example, I might have a student say it will be either 20 or 60.  Another might say 20 or 10.  Of course there were those who got it right away and know that it is 20 or 30!    Super teacher worksheets has a couple of number line pages for rounding I plan to use, but I created my own for some extra practice for our kiddos too!  If any of you can use it, feel free to borrow!  You can download it from google docs here or from scribed (I'm trying it out since I can never seem to get google docs to embed right).

Rounding - Finding Your Choices

Everyone have a great Labor Day weekend!  Enjoy the extra day off...I know I will!