Crafting and Creating

I'm joining up with Blog Hoppin for their fun week-long linky!

I LOVE crafting and creating fun things for my classroom, home, and gifts.  On my sidebar, you'll find labels of DIY and Crafts.  I also have a lot of projects on Classroom DIY that you can check out.

Back before I started my whole teacher blog journey, I had a craft blog, Nicole's Crafting Adventure.   I haven't posted on it in some time, but if you search around, you'll see the projects I like to make are not strictly for my classroom.

A couple Christmases ago, I decided to do all handmade gifts.  It was really fun to get creative and make things for people with my own hands.  I, for one, LOVE getting handmade gifts.  They are so thoughtful and I know the amount of time, effort, and love that goes into them.  The past two years, being in Hawaii, I sent people gifts from here, things they can't get on the mainland: macadamia chocolates, Hawaiian print things, shirts that say Lanai, cute surfer-chick hats, Hawaii Starbucks mugs, etc.  But now that the hustle and bustle of Christmas is over, I think I'm going to go back to my handmade gifts. In January and February, I have 7 friends and family birthdays.  What better way to celebrate, than to send them something I've made (especially since they should all still be full of Macadamia Kisses from their Christmas packages!)

Here are a collection of pins of things that I'm thinking about making:

I am obsessed with Colleen Wilcox's art.  It's so colorful and fluid.  I want to try to paint like her.

Via Pinterest

 I have the materials for making soap.  I need to do more of it and have fun with it.

Via Pinterest

I have an old towel like this from my Grandma.  I love how it never falls off the oven handle!  I need to make some of these in cute fabrics for friends who cook.

Via Pinterest

Some placemats would be a nice gift and easy to sew (I like projects that mostly include sewing a straight line).

Via Pinterest

I've made quite a few oven mitts and they make fabulous gifts.  I should do more.

Via Pinterest

Aside from planning upcoming projects, I've been hard at work getting classroom projects ready, too.  Here is my latest unit, hot off the presses - Snow Much Fun!  It's a language arts unit that incorporates science and art!

There are 2 art projects, quite a few writing projects, a literacy center with compound words, symmetry and alike/different practice, literature links, comprehension passages and questions, vocabulary, and even a poem! I'll post more about it later, but I wanted to be the first to let you know about it! :)

What projects do you have coming up?  If you make handmade gifts, what are you go-to's?

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Nicole Heinlein

Five For Friday

I'm joining Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday!

Last week we started our nocturnal animals unit by Surfin Through Second:

We learned about bats and used bits of Erica's Bat unit and Reagan's Stellaluna unit.

We read a Reading A-Z book about bats, gathered facts, and learned how to write an informational essay.

We then painted and made Reagan's Bat Facts.  I hung them outside our classroom and all the kids loved reading them during recess!

And after a busy week, I deserved this on my Friday evening! :)

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Nicole Heinlein

Pumpkin Week!

Last week my class learned all about the pumpkin life cycle from my Pumpkin Life Cycle and Experiments pack!

We started off by reading the mini book and filling in the blank spaces with the correct life cycle terms.

We then reviewed the vocabulary using posters and vocab cards, then added some activities to our interactive science notebooks.  We also filled out a life cycle sheet as a check-in assessment.

Then, I brought a pumpkin to school and we got started on the experiments.  There are 4 experiments that follow the scientific method.  As practice, we walked through the steps of the method and did Stephanie's egg experiment from her Life Cycles pack as practice.

First we found out if a pumpkin could sink or float.  Boy, were those kids surprised when it bobbed in the sink!

Then, we read the book How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin?, then we predicted how many seeds we thought were inside our pumpkin.  

Here are my kids counting out the seeds on laminated 10's frame mats.  I divided the seeds into 5 bowls, then gave 1 bowl to each table and had them work together to fill up their mat.  At the end, each group reported out how many seeds they counted and we added them all up (by 1's, 10's, and 100's!) to find the total amount.  We had 674!  Only one kid got a close prediction, he thought 602.  Most kids chose either 100 or 1000! :)

After we counted them, I collected all the seeds and filled the bowls with water.  I walked around to each table and dropped a spoonful of seeds into each bowl so the kids could see if they sank or floated.  Only one boy predicted that they would sink.  I think he wanted to go against the majority :)

Our last experiment we will do on Monday, because I had to take the seeds all home.  Our school permits teachers and parents to bring in food cooked at home, so I roasted all the seeds in my kitchen, then flavored them 3 different ways: salty, savory, and sweet.  

Lucky for you, I made a freebie for this last experiment, as well as a How-to writing prompt: Pumpkin Seed Experiment, Recipe, and Writing Freebie!

 Three different writing pages:

I love teaching about pumpkins around Halloween time!  The kids love it, too!  I have a Jehovah's Witness student this year, and since I don't want him to feel left out, I am not doing any traditional Halloween activities.  This unit is a perfect alternative to Halloween, or even a perfect supplement!

What other things do you do with pumpkins?

I'm Linking Up

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Nicole Heinlein

How Inventive! A New TpT Unit Giveaway and a FREEBIE! {giveaway closed}

Back when I taught 3rd grade in Oregon, one of our science standards was to learn about inventions.  Students were to create a prototype and test it.  My district used OCDE Project GLAD® (Guided Language Acquisition) units to teach science that teachers in the district wrote.  The people who wrote the inventors unit were not given a lot of resources or time, so the unit was lacking.  Because of this, I decided to write my own!  I taught my unit to incoming 4th graders at summer school, tweaked it, then taught it again to my 3rd graders that year.  I tweaked it again and used parts of it (the informational text and biography writing) with my 2nd graders this past year.  Now it is all ready for TpT and I can't wait to teach the whole unit this year!  It is by far the best version of the unit!

To introduce the unit, I start off with a KWL.  I want to know what background knowledge the kids come in with.  I then give the Pre Test.  There are 4 different homework sheets, too, that involve the families.

The next step is to build academic vocabulary.  I whole-heartedly believe that students can handle this type of technical vocabulary,  We just have to break it down for them in easy to understand chunks.  Students will predict the definitions, look up the origin of the word in a dictionary to study the root, draw pictures of the word, and finally define the word.  I have essential vocab and additional vocab in this pack with picture clues and definitions.  I also have a literacy center for matching vocab words and definitions.

 Poetry is the best way to learn new content!  Kids will get these songs and chants stuck in their heads!  My class likes to sing all day long and some kids will choose to read their poetry books during Read to Self or even as recess!

Each inventor has a poster with a motivational quote, informational text, various sheets to choose from for note taking, various sheets to choose from for organizing an essay, and paper for writing a biography.  You can choose to split up your class and have each group learn and write about one inventor, then teach each other in a Jigsaw manner, or you can have all students learn about all inventors.  It's up to you!

These activities are for when you are done learning about the individual inventors.  Sheets are included for if you choose to do a jigsaw and students can write down information that they learn from each other.  There is also a geography and timeline activity to tie in Social Studies.

This is such a fun, new component!  When I found out that Holly Durst from The Bachelor wrote children's books and that her book, Chocolate Socks was about inventing something, I knew it would be perfect for this unit!  In her book, the main character wants to combine two of her favorite things in the world: chocolate and socks!  She makes them on a conveyor belt (brings in some Henry Ford history!) and shares them with her friends.  It is a darling book about being creative and following your dreams!

In my literature connection, I created two writing prompts, a synonym literacy center, and an invention brainstorming sheet.  This book is a great segue into the Invention Project!

The last component is the Invention Project!  Students will go through the steps of the Scientific Method to create their own product!  How fun!

Here are some of the inventions my kids came up with when I taught 3rd grade:

"Robo-Mom"

"Camera with a radio"

"Radio Shirt"

Pretty funny!  The kids loved this culminating activity and it brings in those scientific method standards!

You can check out my unit here on TpT!

Does this look like something that you could use in your classroom?  Well I am going to giveaway one of my units and a Signed copy of Holly's book, Chocolate Socks!  Enter below! GIVEAWAY IS CLOSED.

And as a freebie for all of you, you can download the literacy center, Synonym Socks, that I made with go with Holly's book!  Just click the picture to download.  Enjoy!

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Nicole Heinlein