Getting my Game On ~ The Meek Moose Rears Her Tired Head

As per usual,  I get really crappy at maintaining the blog during the school year. But it doesn't mean that I've been hiding under my covers- though some days I wish I were able to... blah.

So how did everyone's Thanksgiving break go? I ended up with an extra day, as we received about five inches of snow Wednesday morning.

Ain't it grand?  Don't get me wrong, I liked the extra day off.  It's just that this Alaskan girl can't get excited about snow.  Like- I've done that, ya know?  Kids beyond excited though.  So, yay, Winter!

Today, being the thirtieth of November, I am aware that I completely missed doing the November currently. And I will not dare to link up today, I will wait and do the December one when it comes out (in theory- you never know with me)  But I did go ahead and fill out November's just so you could see what I'd been up to in the last month:

click to go to Farley's post last month

Most of these don't need a lot of further explanation.  I will say that as far as the song goes, my favorite part is when Nicki Minaj is rapping B to the A to the N to the G to the "heyyyyyyy".  I can do that part super duper dorky, yo!

I plan to do another post about Code.org this month in honor of The Hour of Code, so I'll just leave it at that for now.

Career direction.  Always a hot topic.  Stay in the classroom, become a specialist, change grade levels- you know, all the normal thoughts you start to have after parent teacher conferences when you have that mini-breakdown about the direction your life is headed.  Today I hope to pursue a career as a full time gamer playing Sims 4 24/7.  Because there's a life I can completely control....

I got a nasty cold just before my birthday.  Nasty enough, in fact, to put me in bed on my birthday, and obnoxiously near death for my entire birthday week.  I missed all of the planned celebrations.  All of which being two.  But for me, that is quite a full social calendar.  I recovered enough the following week to go out to eat with two of my best local girls and we had Mexican food and I wore the birthday sombrero.  I would not allow the staff to come out and clap and sing for me.  That would have been too much.  But I hammed it up for the camera enough to make a random man stop and take my picture.  What he plans to do with that photo- I don't want to know.

Apparently, this thing I am doing is called Duck lips.  I THOUGHT I was just puckering up for the camera.  Since my lips are so lovely. Ha.  But whatevs.  I was not intending duck lips.  I was intending to show off my true dorkiness in the middle picture though- as I'm sure that is much more like my normal face than the other two.  Either way, all three make fantastic profile pictures for my newest experiment and #epicfail of on-line dating.

I came to the obvious conclusion that one cannot marry an outrageously rich organic strawberry farmer, regardless of how ridiculously adorable one is, by sitting around doing nothing.  So I foolishly signed up for this virtual meat market gig.

Kittens...as socially awkward as I am...as out of practice as I am...as destined to be single for all eternity as I am.... on-line dating does little more than confirm for me the death of the English language in our culture.  And how irresitible I am to the AARP crowd.  Seriously- old men LOVE me.  I get winked at eighty times a day by 65+ guys wearing cowboy hats.  And they do not know the difference between womEN and womAN.  And I'm sorry if that sounds snobby, but this English major can't handle it.  #butI'mnotsorry  I will say that I recently received an ice breaker message from someone my age, however it began with "Sup" (no, really, it started with Sup) and ended with "Bitches stay back i have no room for drama" (and the i wasn't capitalized. And this line was preceeded by an announcement that he was passionate for all things science, including vaping and hikking.)  So, if you don't mind, I will be hiding under my bed from my phone for the next three decades...

To distract myself from this travesty, I shall throw myself into my work.

Did you know there was a TpT cyber sale tomorrow and Tuesday?  Of course you did.  Here's the ad that's been blasted across your eyeballs as of late:

click to go to my store

I have put the entire store on to the maximum discount for ya'll, and even added in something new- which my children have been LOVING.

Click to go to the product

The product description sums it up for you:

Cute owls and Superheroes?!?! Get outta town!

I have a lot of students this year struggling with sight words. The words on the Dolch lists comprise 80% of everything we read – if I can help my students master these words, then I can concentrate on multi-syllabic decoding, comprehension and other reading strategies. And so can you!

To play this sight word game, students draw a card from a face down pile and read the word aloud to the group. If correct, they keep the card If incorrect, the card goes back into the pile. Bonus cards drawn either entitle the player to draw more cards or lose cards. Bonus cards are not returned to the pile after being drawn. Player with the most cards at the end of the game is the winner.

I have all five sets of Dolch words in separate games, if you want to just zero in on one needy group of students.  I have two videos here for you to see my kids playing the Pre-Primer words game with me.  I only have a couple of kids with trouble on the pre-primer list, but my class is also 80% ESOL this year- so I added in a variation to the basic game where we practiced making up sentences to go along with the words.  You'll see that in the second video.  I've found this variation of the game to be excellent practice for oral language skills with my kids.

When the game is over, you can also have your kids write down the words that they "won" and create sentences using them if you'd like to add some extra accountability to the game.

And I reallllly need to work on my positive affirmations, as I say the same thing over and over in the videos.  Maybe I'm just nervous when I film.  Or just a huge dork. As always, there is at least one kid completely off task in the background.  Just keeping it real, yo!

Enjoy the sale, kittens!  

Pixiclip- A Meek Moose Adventure in Sponsorship

I've got a website review for you today.  And to be all upfront about it- I was contacted and asked to write the post, and they are compensating me for it.  But- with that being said- I was planning on writing about it anyway. So I'm not feeling particularly conflicted, and we all know I am compulsively honest- so I'm going to tell you exactly what I think.

I've been talking about all my social media adventures lately- the instatwitterlinking, as it is now.  I ran across an article about Pixiclip by Monica Burns from Class Tech Tips on my Linked In groups a couple of weeks ago when I first started reading group posts.  Monica writes an excellent article every day about some sort of technology that I now want to try.  And then I end up tweeting about it.  Which I believe is how it came to the attention of the Pixiclip people in the first place to make them ask me if I wanted to do a blog post about it.

Click on the picture of Monica to go to her site and see her Pixiclip article that got this ball rolling in the first place.  But then click the home button and read ALL of her articles on ALL of the fabulous technology that's out there waiting for you to use with your kids.  And then tweet it.  Become addicted to hashtags like me. #completelyrational #itsnotweird

Twitter.  It owns me now.  I even took an on-line free Udemy course about it to make sure I was doing it right. #totaldork  I'll talk about Udemy another day though.

Before I show you the two Pixiclips that I made, here is a very nice tutorial I found on YouTube:

If you know about the Educreations App, you can see right away the similarity.  In fact, here's a sample Educreations lesson from my second graders this year when we were studying about Solids, Liquids, and Gases:



Pixiclip has similar features- but two important differences that set it apart.   1. It's (right now) meant to be used on a PC from a web browser.  So if you don't have an iPad, or regular access to one, but you do have student computers- this is a big plus.  I have access to iPads at my school, but the whole school shares 20 iPads.  So, obviously, sometimes there's a line.   I will say this- I had the most success with Pixiclip using Mozilla Firefox as my browser.  Internet Explorer had a tantrum (which is common for it nowadays, no matter what you're trying to do), and I noticed something funky happening when I used Google Chrome and attempted video.  And that could completely be a my fault sort of thing.     When I made my two Pixclips I made sure all other applications were closed and I was only running this site on the browser.  That made everything go super smooth.   2. It has a video option that puts you in a box on top of your presentation.  I find that appealing to me for use in digital portfolios.  Also, some kids really like seeing themselves in their work.  For those that don't, they can stick to audio.   One thing to note- there is a limit of five minutes to the presentation recording.  When it comes to digital portfolios, this is good.  Less data to store, and the student needs to make sure they are giving only the most important information and not going by Albuquerque to get to the point.  This is bad, if you're a teacher like me that can drone on for hours- and wants to!  So you're all saved today by Pixiclip having a time limit.   I chose to do both Pixiclips about George Washington. Click this picture of George to go to the audio clip:

  Like I said in the clip- I think it's a good tool for a summative assessment.  The student can annotate text passages or images with their understanding.  As the teacher, you'd just need to make sure the images necessary are available for the student to upload or that the student is well trained in how to get the images and upload them on their own.
Personally, I think I'd prepare a shared folder or flash drive with options for the students to use.  There would still be choice involved, but I would have framed what was acceptable. Click this picture of Mount Vernon to go to the video clip:

To reiterate- I HATE myself on video.  But I think it would be great for the kids to see themselves.  And I suppose, it's more like I don't want adults to see me on video- But I could easily do a five minute direction clip for the kids to watch to give them an assignment while they were on the computers.  Sort of a flipped classroom take on it.
And as far as storytelling goes- it would be easy enough to take pictures of their work on paper, and then load the Jpegs for them in a shared folder or flash drive and have them tell their story this way.  Just another ebook alternative.
Once you've created your clip, you can choose if you want to make it public or private or hidden.  And while you are watching it through, you have options to share on Facebook, Twitter, through email or by embedding code.
Now- as far as what I might like to see changed or added to Pixiclip.com:   1. I couldn't get the embed code to work.  It wouldn't show up on my post at all.  This might be my error, but I was able to get the YouTube video and Educreations video to embed- so I'm not sure.
2. The two photos I used of Christopher and Mount Vernon, I had to open up in a video editing program and scale down the size, so that they would be turned right side up in the upload image drawer.  Straight from my camera, the file size was apparently too large, and the program flipped them sideways.
3. That being said, I would like to see the ability to rotate pictures added, and not just moving them.  That way, I could have shrunk them with the diagonal arrow and them flipped them right side up.  I have a photo editor and am comfortable manipulating digital images- but other users might not be.
4. And look into whether or not it does really matter which browser you use.  I'm fine switching between browsers- but some schools might be limited.
5. Lastly, I'd definitely like to see it transition its way onto a tablet as an app as well as the PC.  Just to give me more options.  If it was a good day at school, and I could have a few iPads plus my student computers, I could have ten or more of my kids working on a Pixiclip at the same time.  
But, if I were to do that, I might want to invest in some of those headphones that have a microphone attachment on them by the ear piece, to cut back on background noise if all my students were recording simultaneously.
And there you have it- my first sponsored post, on a topic I was going to write up anyway.
So what did you think?  Try it out and then let me know if you come up with some other ways it would work in the classroom. I love technology...

Mr. Cookie Baker - an unexpected mentor text

Today I am linking up with Mrs. Jump's Class for the Let's Talk About Books Linky.

***UPDATED with more pictures because I finally found my book! Sheesh 6/6/14***

I first owned Monica Wellington's Mr. Cookie Baker as a board book that I read to my youngest.  The book is bright, colorful, and I love cookies and baking.  So it was a win-win for reading to the baby. But the more I read it and noticed the illustrations, the more I got to feel that this would work excellently with my second graders as well. (The link to Monica's site also offers some activities to go with this book)

1. Illustrations

At my school we teach an Illustrations Unit to our kids.  It's one of my favorites to teach.  We spend time looking in books that we admire and noticing how Illustrations are an important part of the story.  They either clarify text, or add more information.  They can help the reader experience the emotion of your character or situation simply through facial expression or color choice.

What I like about Mr. Cookie Baker are how the illustrations frame the text- much like Jan Brett's technique in her books.  I like showing this to the kids as an example for if they don't feel comfortable with their drawing skills to draw one bog picture, they can assist the story by drawing small items around the edges.

2. Writer's Workshop

This book is also great for the beginning of the year to help reserved students realize they can still write a good story in a few sentences.  They just have to make sure their sentences are constructed with word choice in mind.

This book can come out again during our Informational Writing Unit as an example of How-To.  The entire story is a description of the steps the Baker takes everyday to make cookies and sell them to children.  Usually, How-Tos are straight directions.  This is a nice transitional example for kids still bent on the narrative form.

3. Math

An example of math in real life.  The page above, in particular.  "He counts and measures..." shows the importance of precise work.  It leads to the discussion- What would his cookies be like if he had only estimated?  When would it be appropriate for him to estimate? A trip tot he grocery store for what he needs for the week, becomes a relevant answer.

The illustrations are a great intro to fractions.  The subject matter lends itself to hands on exploration of either making real cookies according to recipe, or craft dough for pretend cookies.  Either way- the kids are counting and measuring. And, so important- PROBLEM SOLVING.

Computation and Estimation lends itself to how many cookies did we cut out, how many have we baked, how many will we have all together? 

Skip Counting enters the court when we start looking at cookie sheets with set numbers of cookies on them.

Time is easily put into play with how long will they be in the oven?  What time will it be by the time they have cooled?  How long does it take to decorate one cookie, or twenty?

Money can't be forgotten ass the Baker sells the cookies near the end of the story.  how much should you charge for one cookie?  How much will you have if you sell ten?

I sincerely doubt that there is a math strand that can't be applied to this book.

4. Social Studies

No way! Yes way- Economics, my kittens.  Mr. Cookie Baker is a producer, the kids are consumers.  Mr. Cookie Baker uses several natural and capital resources during his day, and he himself is a human resource.  Does he provide a service, or does he sell goods?  Is it both?  What other producers does Mr. Cookie Baker have to rely on to make his cookies?  Is he therefore also a consumer?

And all this easily translates into enough background knowledge for the kiddos to design their own shop and list the natural and capital resources they would need to offer a service or sell a good.

5. Science

I've got to be kidding, right?  This is a book I read to a toddler for Pete's Sake!  But it's in there.  Solids, Liquids, and Gases when you analyze the ingredients Mr. Cookie Baker needs. Scientific Method if you just give the kids some ingredients to make craft dough but no instructions on how to actually do it. The role of evaporation as a cookie gets harder as each day goes by.

Convinced yet? If you click either picture, it'll take you to Amazon to buy it now! You know you want to!

I was inspired today to try to make some complimentary clipart.  My attempt is a freebie in my store for the next 48 hours.  I'd love to know what you think- as I did all of the art this time by myself. Click the picture below to go get a set.

Speaking of my wonderful sister- she's getting ready to go work on Pinkalicious: The Musical in the next few weeks.  She'll be making costumes!  How cool is that?  My daughter has always loved the Pinkalicious books!  I'm looking forward to getting to see the show and share about it here on the blog! Wow, I went a bit nutty with the exclamation points there, but it IS exciting!!! Ok. Now stop, Heather.  Stop.  But- if you're near the DC/Maryland area- you might want to check it out.

And even MORE news- 

I'm on a roll with the clip art, kittens.  I finished up the next Armadillo pack in the wee hours of the evening yesterday:

And of course, I had to make him a video:

I've been checking in regularly at the linky to see other teachers' book selections- and I've found tons more to load up my Amazon wishlist with (oh, but to win the lottery and spend it all at Amazon and Target!) - professional books too!  Go to Deanna's post to link up your own book - I want to know! and see all the other great ideas out there.  Thanks for the great linky, Deanna!

I'm going to go find some cookies...

GAR! I almost forgot!  Did you hear about Reading Rainbow on Kickstarter?  I do not have $10,000 for the chance to wear the one and only Geordi Laforge original STNG visor- but I did donate $25 for a great cause.  My first investment!  Next, up, the i-STAAPS!

Learning Spaces - A Meek Moose Adventure - Color Scheme

Before last summer- I never thought much about my classroom "theme".  To be honest- I'd never really heard of it until two years ago, and my first reaction was "That is waaaaaaaay too much work!  Plus, I thought it was frou-frou.  Then I took a learning spaces class with Sally Haughey from Fairy Dust Teaching and I changed my mind about it- a little.  

Today I'm just going to talk about color scheme.  I'll go into other things about my classroom in other posts.  My color scheme is based on this color palette, which I found at Design Seeds.

But, a little Business before we get started:

Jess at I {Heart} Recess is having a 1,000 follower giveaway, and aside from having many fantastic prizes- The Meek Moose is offering up Winner's Choice in one of the prize packs.  So go try you luck by clicking her button below!





So- back to the color.  I was looking at the Science Penguin's Facebook Page the other day, and she posted a pretty interesting article about classroom decor. It basically came down to the more decorated your room is, the more distracting it is.  People {teachers} get really hot over this topic. And I'm not interested in debate- it's a personal preference thing.  But let me submit to you my reasoning on classroom design: 1. Don't dress your room like a circus and be surprised when a clown shows up. 2. Rainbows are beautiful- but they are also way up high in a complimentary colored sky and only last a few minutes. 3. There is something to say about how being in nature is grounding and calming.  What does nature look like? And that's where I get my three main colors.

There is lots of information out there on the psychology of color.  The picture above goes to one of these posts.  You can see quickly why blue and green are good choices.  This particular one has a negative for brown- but if you keep searching:

I put this in to play in my room in a few different ways.  I used fabric (duck cloth specifically) in brown and green to cover up cabinets and boards in my room. Here are a couple of pictures from when I first got my room set up this past September:

Beneath those brown curtains are tons of teacher books and boxes of manipulatives.  Covering them up removed distraction.  Those cubbies are actually for student supplies, and those were my library books in them at the time of this photo- they ended up elsewhere.  The nice thing about the curtains is that I can put any anchor chart or sentence strip up on them using stick pins.  They also contour to anything possibly sticking out beyond the lip of the shelves.

I put the green on the bulletin boards.  The blue I chose was more of a sky blue, and pretty stimulating, so I made it more of an accent than a focus.  Those squares on top of the bulletin board are covered in art paper from the teacher's lounge.  They were part of some really really really ancient computer programming game in the 80's that my Dad found.  They turned out to be magnetic on one side- so a bonua is that I can put things up on them easily with a magnet.

On areas of walls where I needed to hang more things, but everyone knows how unforgiving cinder blocks can be- I wrapped foam board in the fabric and hot glued them up.  This area in particular is my data wall. I stapled sheet protectors and sentence strips up on it so I could change data in and out but still have headings for each area.

And that striped paper?  Wrapping paper from Target that had my color scheme.  It was a nice hit of pattern in just one area of the room, above the board.

When I was looking for an alphabet scheme, I found these Ground, Grass, Sky letters. It's based on a Montessori concept.  I found out just recently that the website where I had downloaded them from was sketchy- the guy was a child porn guy or something- so I'm going to have to come up with an alternative alphabet for next year.

Awesomely, Mr. Sketch has these three colors in their marker pack.  Mmmmmm- mango blue... Anyway- I use these three colors when I write on sentence strips and anchor charts too. I saw a post once about a teacher who did that, coordinated her anchor chart colors to her room scheme- but now I can't find it...

I also use these colors when we create word cards.  I don't have a picture, but whenever we generate words for any subject we might be writing about- I write nouns in brown (because we're grounded by labels), verbs in green (we actively play in the grass) and adjectives in light blue (airy thoughts).

Now, remember that design seeds palette I had- there were three other colors:

I use these in different places in the room for accents.  Flowers especially.  In the end, I have a calm color scheme- but it's still fun and I don't feel confined by it at all.  My room is warm, balanced, and a place I don't mind spending time in.  It's also pretty easy to shop for- as these colors aren't hard to find.

If I get a hankering for wild colors, I can create clipart or Activinspire charts.  No big.

Speaking of clipart- I put up another Armadillo pack today.

And made an animoto video:

Ah me, I love that little guy.

How do you feel about color scheme?

My First "Currently"

First of all- does anyone want to know these things about me?  I feel a bit like I'm imposing the uneccesariousness (completely not a real world, the red line underneath says.  But whatevs) of ME upon the masses.  I suppose you could stop reading.  I choose not to take on the responsibility of such a choice...

Anyway- today is My Daddio's 66th birthday!  He's super excited about getting social security now- even though he's still working.  But my Dad is sort of goofy like that.

Yes.  This is the man who raised me.

But on to the Currently a monthly linky hosted by Farley at Oh Boy Fourth Grade:

Listening:

While I've been on leave, the chicken eggs I had in the incubator at school hatched.  Or- I should say- one of them hatched.

Chicken in a cup holder. Side seat driver.

Peep is an Easter Egger  As in, if she turns out to really be a SHE- she will lay colored eggs.  Light blue, pastel green, pink, or lavender.  You don't know what color will be laid until the first one comes out. AWESOME!!!  I'm sad that only one hatched though- but I don't know what happened since I didn't get to do the hatch at all.  Anyway, I picked Peep up this past Friday and brought her home.  And after two Old Wive's Tales tests for gender- I'm saying it's a she.  I am only keeping her for a few more days and then she's going to a friend who has more chickens.  I've read that chickens can die of loneliness, so I think it's best she gets the best chance she can to be happy.  She's so adorable though!  And my son refuses to be quiet when I ask him too....

Loving:

I did a deep clean of my bedroom and bathroom today, and am basking in the purity of it.  Of course, I am down to my last one of these glade thingys, and have just discovered that they aren't available anymore unless I want to buy them on Ebay.  I don't think I'm quite that nutty yet for scent loyalty though- so I'll have to move on to other pastures when this one runs out.

Thinking:

Learning Spaces are huge to me.  I've said before how I took an on-line course with Sally Haughey from Fairy Dust Teaching last summer- and I'm still working on how I want my room to be.  I went in on Friday to pick up Peep and take some room pictures, but sadly, the sub had taken some liberties and my room wasn't much like mine anymore.  My plants had been taken off the tables and were dying in corners.  My fish were swimming in goop.  There were kids' names written on the board.  I got really sad.  I'm still feeling sad.  I brought my fish and plants home though, and all but one plant is recovered. There was a scare with my one blue Betta, thought for sure he was a goner- but he has perked up and I think he'll be ok.

In the meantime, I've been investigating furniture options.  Around Spring Break, I put a dining room in my classroom. This is the best picture I could get on Friday, but it used to be more impressive:

The idea was this:  The majority of the kids I teach have never had the experience of sitting at a dining room table to do their homework and have Mom or Dad check it over.  There is something magical about that experience- so, I figured, next best thing.  This is where we would meet for reading groups, writing conferences, or small group math.  When I wasn't using the space, they used it when they could pick their own working space.  I keep all my teachery supplies in the armoire there.  The blue boxes are my library.  It needs a different table cloth...I know. *sigh*

Anyway- now I'm thinking about changing up the carpet area of my room to be more of a living room.  Because if the kids haven't been sitting at a table to do homework, many of them haven't ever sat on a couch or a chair to be read to or read to someone.

How can you do living room furniture without it getting expensive or something you have to spray for bugs or whatever?  And can it hold up well?  But then it dawned on me- Patio furniture!

Lowe's has the set I really want:

But don't rule out Target (NEVER rule out Target):

 And I even found something at HomeGoods:

Why outdoor patio furniture?  It's made to stand up to the elements!  Waterproof and all!  Sounds like a great idea to me.  Now- will the set still be there in August when they discount all of that stuff?

Wanting:

Don't worry- I just ate some while I was writing this post!

Needing:
Better allergy meds.

And I'm sort of afraid the chicken might have made them worse.

Summer Bucket List:

For more details- refer to this previous post-

But I have decided to try to hatch some more eggs- and see if I have better luck than only one.  I get my eggs shipped from My Pet Chicken - click pic to go there!

And I didn't get to do caterpillars at all this year!  So I'm going to order some and try it out with my kids for the summer.

Interestingly, they also sell silkworms...hmmmm.

That was sort of fun.  I might do that again in July.

Oh- store news- I finished putting realistic eyeballs on all of our kid packs. So what once looked like this:

Now looks like this:

I think the change made a big difference.  If you have bought any of our kids packs in the past, you can redownload them for free through TpT. If you've never bought any of them, head over to the store and check them out! 

I even finished up the season kid series and have Winter kids done! Cuties!

Anyone planning on doing anything new with their learning space for next year?