• Shidonni.com- Animation Creations
• Keyboarding Resources
• Internet Browsers for Children
• HandiPoints- Chore Charts and Virtual Worlds for Kids
• Alternatives to Starfall
• Cozi.com- Family Organizational Tools
• More on Tutpup

This week, one of our 4th grade teachers brought to my attention a song entitled “44 Presidents” she found on an Inaugural resources site I had e-mailed to her. This lead me to the Educational Rap website. This group offers rap songs for Math, Science, Language Arts, and Social Studies.

Here is an excerpt from the website:

Rhythm, Rhyme, Results, LLC (RRR, pronounced “Triple R”) is a production house and online media company founded in 2006 in Cambridge, MA. We currently focus on producing the most entertaining and effective educational music on the planet.

Four versions of each song!

In response to teacher feedback, our albums come with four versions of each song, each of which makes use of a different educational technique to assist the learning process:

• The Original Track presents the complete song at its normal tempo.
• The Downtempo Track presents the complete song at a reduced tempo.
• The Recall Track™ feature eliminates key words and phrases from the lyrics.
• The Instrumental Track provides a karaoke-style version without lead vocals.

As a bonus, the group offers free live streams of nearly 10 songs (lyrics included) for each subject. This is a great way to test the songs out on your students before you buy to determine if they will meet your students’ needs.There are 3 ways to purchase: Amazon, iTunes, and directly from Educational Rap.

If you have used educational rap in the classroom, I would love to hear about your experiences. I will report back with comments from the 4th grade teacher at my school who plans to use this in her classroom.

Here is a list I’ve compiled so far:

Literactive- A wonderful interactive website for reading materials for PreK-1 and ESL students. The Road to Reading section is especially great for centers!

Literacy Center- The Play and Learn section of this site is available in 4 different languages. Activities include uppercase, lowercase, shapes, writing, and many more.

Bembo’s Zoo- A stylish animal alphabet site with illustrations created from the letters in each animal’s name.

Roy the Zebra- Includes interactive reading games, guided reading stories, songs, and more.

Interactive Alphabet- Students can see the letters written, hear their sounds, and see a picture beginning with each letter.

I will add to this list as I find more.

Here are the rules:

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post – some random, some weird.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter and/or Plurk.

So here are my 7 Things You Might Not Know About Me:

1. I am ambidextrous. I write left handed and throw a softball and bat left handed. Everything else I do right handed, including serve a volleyball and throw a football. Yes, I know it’s the same motion as throwing a softball, but it’s just different!

2. I shared a room with my older sister until the day she got married. Plus I lived in the same house for 22 years. I’ve never lived anywhere other than my hometown.

3. I can juggle. And what’s more, I can juggle a football, basketball, and softball at the same time.

4. I am recently obsessed with Guitar Hero. I have already beat Easy and Medium levels over the last month, and am halfway through Hard.

5. My husband sent 2 dozen roses to my workplace 3 days after we met. The people in my office said “You better marry him!” Well, I did.

6. My husband won a local fear factor competition about 6 years ago which sent us on an all-expenses paid trip to Orlando to see Metallica and Limp Bizkit in concert. He laid in a coffin with snakes, put dead fish in his mouth, and drank something that is too embarrassing to mention here.

7. I have 3 dalmatians and 1 cat. I used to be an adoption coordinator for our local animal rescue. Once I had children, I had to stop. Too emotionally and physically draining (the animals, not the children). I still love animals dearly.

If I find someone to tag, I’ll update this post.

I went to Wordle, clicked on create, and typed in all of the 1st through 3rd grade teachers names. I also typed in my school’s name multiple times so it would show as the main word. I then changed my font, layout and colors by editing the custom color palette. I made a print screen of the image and pasted it into the Paint.net program (LOVE THIS PROGRAM!), added a title and some clip art images that I found here, and BAM- a quick and easy holiday card!

After Christmas break, I’m thinking of letting them fill out a Google Doc form telling me one thing they got for Christmas. I’ll then make a wordle out of the results to see what the most popular gift was!

I cut them out and put them above my white board, just like a “regular” teacher would. Hope you find them useful. If you look real hard you can see them in this picture.

Teachers’ hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or 10
months a year! It’s time we put things in perspective and pay them for
what they do– baby sit! We can get that for less than minimum wage.

That’s right. Let’s give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they
worked, not any of that silly Planning time. That would be $19.50 a day
(7:00 AM to 3:30 (or so) PM with 25 min. off for lunch).

Each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their
children.

NOW…How many do they teach in a class, 30? So that’s $19.50 x 30 =
$585.00 a day. However, remember they only work 180 days a year!!! We’re
not going to pay them for any vacations.

LET’S SEE….That’s $585 x 180 = $105,300 per year.

What about those special teachers and the ones with master’s degrees?
Well, we could pay them minimum wage, and just to be fair, round it off to
$7.00 an hour. That would be $7 x 6 1/2 hours x 30 children x 180 days =
$245,700 per year.

Wait a minute–there’s something wrong here! Average teacher salary
$50,000/180 days = $277/per day/30 students = $9.23/6.5 hours = $1.42 per
hour per student. A very inexpensive baby-sitter and they even try -with
your help – to EDUCATE your kids!

WHAT A DEAL….And the parents don’t even have to buy them pizza!

Make a teacher smile; send this to someone else who appreciates Teachers…

The Winter Wonderland Project is an online project for grades K-3 that includes winter-themed technology activities with reading, writing, and math components. Registration will open on Monday, November 17th. The Project will begin December 1st and end February 29th. Teachers who participate will share student work on their own personal page(s) on the wiki. Suggested thematic activities and resources for each month will be provided. We will have a Featured Activity each month that we hope all classes will be able to complete. We have chosen our Featured Activity to introduce you to some new tools or websites or new uses for tools you already use. We do realize that there may be times when sites are blocked at schools or schools do not have access to the programs or tools used. If you cannot complete the Featured Activity we would still love your participation in the Winter Wonderland Project.

Please visit the Winter Wonderland Wiki to register, learn about the planned activities, or to get more information about the project.

Thank you,
Winter Wonderland Project Coordinators
Amber Coggin, Nedra Isenberg, & Vicky Sedgwick

4th Grade- Butterfly Life Cycles on Kerpoof.com

Our 4th grade Science teacher asked me to plan an activity on animal life cycles. I remembered seeing a lesson plan on Kerpoof for butterflies, so I decided that would be the route to take. I spent about an hour creating my own butterfly life cycle so I could make a list of tips and tricks for the students. I’m thankful I did, because this handout turned out to be a lifesaver. The students printed their life cycles in medium card format, then took them back to class and wrote an explanation on the inside of the card.

Click here to see the picture full size.

3rd Grade- I Love Money

The students have been begging to use the SMARTboard in lab class. A few students have had the opportunity to interact with it, but not all since time is so short in the lab. This week my third graders are reviewing counting coins in math, so I checked my delicious resources to see if I could find an appropriate activity for whole group participation. I lucked up and found the CA$H OUT game. The game shows characters in a grocery store setting. The character tells you what item they want to buy, how much money it costs, how much money they will give you, and how much change you owe them. Your job is to give them the correct amount of change by touching the dollars or coins and clicking “give change”. The great thing about this game is that it has 3 different levels. The easiest level works only with coins. The medium level works with dollars and coins, and the hard level works with dollars in the thousands. You can also choose to display the change amount, or let the students calculate the change amount themselves.

After showing them the process, I let the students come up one at a time and add a coin. It didn’t take long for everyone to have a turn, and they were so engaged and excited about getting to interact with the SMARTboard. Once they went to their seat, they had the option of either continuing to play on CA$H OUT or visit the H.I.P. Pocket Change website.

Not much planning for the money lesson, but it was a success nonetheless.