Desk Fairy Idea

The desk fairy stopped in again...

This time she had three different notes to leave.

Those who had messy desks got this note:

with some Cry Baby Candy (these do have gum in them- just so you know!)

Clean desks go this note and some candy...

And the top desks received candy and a wand since they were KING or QUEEN of CLEAN!

Believe it or not, but my fourth graders were quite jealous of the three kids who received the honor of king or queen.  :)  Who would have thought that a ten year old boy would be envious of a sparkle wand?!

All candy and wands are from the Dollar Store.  I have also seen the wands at Target and the Party Store.

*I got the Queen of Clean idea from pinterest which led me to this blog post.*  Aren't her wands cute?

Want other Desk Fairy Ideas?

I posted here about an I-Spy Edition and here about a Snake Edition.

More to come!

Also, I'm thinking about making the Desk Fairy notes a bit cuter and posting them here- interested?

Fav Dollar Store Find

When you are out of the classroom for 12 weeks, it makes it a little hard to come up with good stuff to blog about... so I took a look through my pictures from this past year- because I finally found my camera cord! :) - and found a few pictures that I hadn't blogged about yet.

Below might just be my single most favorite find at the Dollar Store...

They have sold them during back to school time for the past two years, so if you don't have any, hopefully you can find them again next August.

They are just so perfect!

I have two sizes of them- a little bit larger size and then a smaller sort of squarish size.

They are magnetic, so they are perfect for holding my dry-erase markers, scheduling cards, stickers for charts and tons of other things that I like to have handy!

Has anyone else found these great for the classroom?

Any other ideas for them?

A Train Tour of the Northeast

In fourth grade, we study the US regions.

We do have a textbook, but let's be honest- it is a little bit boring.

So, my 4th grade team and I decided to spice it up a bit and  make our study of the regions into a tour.

This is inspired by Beth Newingham who has awesome ideas.  Really, check out her website- I would love to visit her classroom and see it in action!

We used some of her ideas and switched some things to make it work for us and our curriculum.

For the Northeast, we made it a train tour...

We visit 9 different places in the Northeast.

For each place that we visit, we look at pictures and videos to learn about the region and then each student is responsible for completing a section in the foldable for the place.

They write facts and information on a index card and color a picture of the place.

 

Once they complete their foldable, they receive a train ticket.

They love learning about where they will go next!

 

 It's so fun to see all of the places that we "visited" put together in our foldables.

My students love looking back at all the places and talking about their favorite ones.