Sweets for the Sweet!

I am collaborating with my girls over at A Class-y Collaboration for a wonderful Valentine's Day Freebie Link Up: Sweets for the Sweet!

 



Today I will be linking up one of my all time favorite activities to do on Valentine's Day with my big kids.  It's such a hard time with them because most of them are "too cool" for valentines yet others want to do it, so it's this fine line of what is appropriate for them and if they will even like it or find it too cheesy.

Now, the item in the pictures will be different than what you receive because my flash drive met an untimely demise earlier this school year and I lost A LOT of stuff.  This item being one of them.  Note to everyone reading this... GO COPY YOUR FLASH DRIVE NOW!!! 

This activity is called Famous Couples!  The student's wear name badges that have one name of a person or thing from a famous couple.  I make the badges into necklaces but you can also just tape them to their shirts.

Make sure the badge is on their back though!  They cannot know who they are!



The whole point of the game is to figure out who their person is by asking "yes" or "no" questions to everyone else in the room.  Using the clues they find out, they will try and guess who they are!



Once they have figured out who they are, they have to go find their famous pair.



There are a lot of different activities you could do with this after everyone has found their partner!  I usually have them write a creative story about how the famous couple met and how they became synonymous with each other.  It's hysterical what some of them come up with!



Don't forget to check out A Class-y Collaboration for more fabulous Valentine's Day freebies and feel free to link up your own as well! 

Valentine's FREEBIES and Birthday SALE!

In honor of Valentine's Day and my birthday I'm giving some goodies away!  This week's 52 Weeks of Pinterest creation is a gift for my kiddos.  I'm sure you have seen these cute glowing valentine's all around Pinterest and they are from the wonderful Lindsey at The Teacher Wife (she has super cute stuff if you haven't checked her out yet!). I just recreated them with my fonts (partially because I didn't realize that clicking on her picture would take me to a google doc until it was too late, haha).  If you click on the picture below it will take you to a google doc where you can download it for FREE!!!

Or if you want to sign your own name, click here for a blank valentine.

Also in honor of the duel holiday (for me anyway, lol) I am giving away my newest product for free and since I'm turning 27, the rest of my store will be 27% off !  My only birthday wish is that you please leave feedback and let me know what you think :o)  Here is a sneak peek at my newest product: Tricabulary - Fractions!

 

It's a new twist on your classic matching game.  Along with having to match a term to its definition, you will add a third category and match an example to the two as well.  Now the example card can be a challenge so feel free to use it as an enrichment.  This game works great in my TIMER tubs for math centers and depending on which groups are playing this game I take away or add certain cards to differentiate for review or enrichment.  Click on the picture above to take you to my TN store for your free download!  If you don't have a Teacher's Notebook account the same freebies and sales are going on at my TPT store.

Remember all this fun free stuff and sale is only available on February 14, 2013!

Happy Valentine's Day y'all!
Sabra

Valentine's Day Postcards

In celebration of the upcoming Valentine's day (and my birthday) I am bringing you last year's Valentine's Day "craft"!  It is not as easy to come up with fun holiday crafts in fifth grade.  Either they have already done them or most of the ideas are a little too cheesy, but the kids still LOVE doing stuff.  So we decided to make a Valentine's Day craft/memento.  Did you know that you could send your prepackaged valentine to Loveland, Colorado, and they will send it off to your loved one with their yearly art work/poem stamp?  Who wouldn't love to get a valentine from the Sweetheart City?!  I have also heard that other cities like Kissimee, Florida and places with themed names like that will do this but Loveland is the most famous.  I always tell the kids it's like getting a letter from Halloweentown for Halloween!  I know it seems a little redundant to send them all the way to Colorado and then have Colorado send them back but it's something different and fun :o)

This past year I created a postcard template and my students spent about a week designing the front of their postcard and writing a special message on the back to their parents.  I liked this project a lot more than I thought I would and the kids did too!  It helped them with their letter writing and envelope labeling skills and showed me that sometimes we really take the little things for granted (like kids not knowing they need to put the recipient's name above the address).  And who doesn't love to get a piece of mail that isn't a bill?  Even the kids were excited to receive the postcard at home and it wasn't even for them!

The template with a note to my old coworker

Once our final product was finished I sent the postcards off to Loveland, CO, they stamped them and sent them back to us.  The neat thing about this is that every year the city holds a contest for the artwork of that year's stamp.  So every year you can expect something new!  Here are a few of their masterpieces and what it looked like when it was returned.

 

Yes, I am aware that this student wrote Valentime's Day... (agh, one of my biggest pet peeves!)  Even after editing it is apparently still ingrained in her head, lol.  What can you do?  I liked that this was a new twist on the ordinary Valentine craft and hope that you enjoy it just as much!

Sabra

Year of Dates

Now I know this has nothing to do with education but it does fall into the category of "life's other joys" from the title of my blog.  As much as I love teaching, it's not as much as I love my man and sometimes I feel like teaching can overshadow our "us" time.  So I wanted to do something special for him.  You can probably tell by this point that I love to create things and so does Mr. S.  If he can make it he will try that before he buys it, and I mean anything: boat, surfboard, bookshelf, desk, gun, car alarm, etc.  So I knew this gift would be right up his alley for multiple reasons!  We had a lot going on this year and we started to slim down on dates (for one reason or another) and I just wasn't having that.  So for Valentine's Day I gave him a year of dates (another fabulous Pinterest find)!  Every month on the first we open up the envelope for that month and inside is a preplanned and mostly prepaid date.  Most of the dates are new to us but some of them are oldies but goodies.

February: Couple's Massage

March: Picnic and Movie in the Park

April: Great American Pie Festival

May: Day of Relaxation at JW Marriott Pool

June: Summer Blockbuster Hits

A lot of the dates were suprisingly minimal in cost or free!  I think the most expensive was the couple's massage and even that I got with a Groupon.  This was such a big hit that two of the other gals on my team also came up with dates for their significant others.  One of the ladies tweaked it (since she has four kids) so that they just pick an envelope whenever they get free time and I think she even added in dates with the kids!

This really boiled down to seeing how much time I spend on my students and my classroom and realizing I need to spend some of that time on me and my life.  I know there are plenty of y'all that can relate!  If you have any other great date night ideas, please let me know!  I would love to do this again next year ;o)

Sabra