Busy, Busy!

We are busy at school this week, finishing up our units, getting grades in and trying out our fun manipulatives! Our kids would play any of our Happy, Happy Headbands games all day if we let them! They also really loved the multiplication scoot (Beach themed!) that we’ve created and will post soon. Here are some pictures of how we store them in our room.

Now onto the good stuff! This past week the third and fourth grade teachers took turns bringing in desserts or a special treat teach day to celebrate the end of the year and to help beat the heat. Mary made these AMAZING peanut butter chocolate truffles. I loved them so much that I’m making them right now!

Here is her recipe, which she originally got from How Sweet Eats

Crispy Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookie Dough Truffles

Makes about 50-60 tsp sized balls

Ingredients:

-2 cups creamy PB

-2 cups powdered sugar

-6 TBSP unsalted butter, softened

-1 TBSP vanilla extract

-2/3 cup crisped rice cereal

-2.5-3cups milk chocolate chips

Directions:

1. In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat PB and butter until creamy and smooth. Gradually add vanilla and powdered sugar. Mix until smooth until you have a “cookie dough” like texture.

2. Using a spatula, gently fold in crisped rice cereal, being careful not to crush it.

3. Once combined, roll dough into balls (mine were more like a small golf ball size) and place on parchment covered baking sheet.

4. Refrigerate for about an hour, popping them in the freezer if you’d like to speed up the process. Melt chocolate in microwave, stirring at 30 second intervals.

5. Remove PB balls from fridge and dip in chocolate, then place back on baking sheet. Refrigerate from an additional 30 mins before serving. ENJOY!

Happy, Happy, Headbands FREEBIE

Meg and I have been playing many different versions of Happy, Happy Headbands this year. It is a great opportunity to get your learners up and out of their seats. This is a great way to reinforce learned skills and to practice new skills. Our students love this activity and we are sure yours will too!

Happy, Happy Headbands is easy to play. All you need to do to prep this acitivity is to print the multiplication cards on cardstock or laminate them so you can reuse them. Have your students make headbands with construction paper and attach a multiplication card to each students’ headband. Distribute a template page to each student and have your students walk around and match up each students’ fact to the correct product. Each students’ goal is to figure out what multiplication fact is on their headband.

This activity comes with 26 cards. We have included two different templates for your students to make it easy for you to differentiate your instruction. If your students are more advanced, we suggest using the template that is blank. If your students are new to multiplication, we suggest using the template that lists the products. Alternatively, you can also fill in your students’ names in the blank template.


Click this link to download Happy Happy Headbands Multiplication edition.


We also have created a Fraction edition of Happy, Happy Headbands.

Click the image above or this link to download Happy, Happy Headbands Fraction edition.

Hope you and your students enjoy this activity!


Mary

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

It's finally June!!! Can I get an AMEN!  I don't know about you but we have had a looong year!  Our kids were certainly full of spunk and personality this year, but that, combined with test scores, data scores, walk -thrus, etc, it was a whirlwind year to say the least.  Two full weeks to go (not that we're counting...)!

Mary and I have really turned our classroom in a guided learning zone.  Being an in class support room really let's us hit all of our learning goals via small groups.  One of us is teaching the lesson objectives, while the other can have a small group teaching MAP skills, previewing or reviewing skills, or just reaching our students on their exact levels, be it basic skills or higher levels.  With all of our time spent in small groups, our kids enjoyed centers A LOT this year!  Which for us as teachers meant preparing and creating center activities, which brings us to our blog!  We've created so much this year that we'd love to share!  Here is our first official item on our TPT store: Beach Bump Multiplication and Division! 

Download it, let your students enjoy it and let us know what you think!  

Love,

Megs

When Meghan met Mary

Welcome to our little slice of the blog world!  We are two third grade in class support teachers in NJ.  I have been teaching for 6 years, and Mary for 2.  We came to be together because my usual co-teacher (Hi Andrea!) went out on maternity leave the beginning of November. 

Mary and I quickly became friends!  We are both laid back, have the same sense of humor and both love to eat!  Mary already has an awesome blog with her sister (Hi Tina!) www.sistersrunningthekitchen.com
but as we continued our teaching journey together we began to create learning centers, games and manipulatives for our students.  We figured what better way than to share them than with a blog...and a teachers pay teachers store! So welcome to our blog where you'll find great games and ideas for your classroom, and some yummy recipes as well!

Enjoy and let us know what you think! 

TPT store: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Mary-Ponzio

Love,

Megs